The Hackenblog

Just FYI.

Is this really the sum total of… of… something.

Pretty soon, in six or seven hundred years, language is really going to be meaningless.

“The wheels are falling off of Rocky Delgadillo’s career. Well, if you enjoy implosions, grab some popcorn. Not since Chuck Quackenbush has the state of California such a spectacular downfall of a politician. While Delgadillo didn’t garner that much support against the far more well-known Jerry Brown in the Attorney General primary, he certainly wasn’t laughed off the stage.

“So, the litany of stories about Delgadillo’s downfall were a bit much. First came the stories about Michelle Delgadillo driving without a valid driver’s license, and then emerged the stories about Delgadillo driving without auto insurance. You know, both of those things are pretty big no-nos. Especially considering that the suspended license charge was the same one that Delgadillo prosecuted Paris Hilton for. Now, Mrs. Delgadillo didn’t have the extensive history of run-ins with the law like Paris Hilton, but it does seem a bit sketchy.

“And that’s not all on the driving mishaps. You can throw in the fact that Mrs. Delgadillo backed into a pole with a city SUV (while driving without a license), and then Rocky had it repaired at city expense. Rocky since reimbursed the city for the repairs.”
The Implosion of Rocky Delgadillo, by Brian Leubitz, Calitics, Sat Jun 23, 2007 at 09:05:17 AM PDT

Oh, and there more if you click the above link.

And of course let’s not forget this either:

“Enter Rocky Delgadillo, the L.A. city attorney. Since his election last year, he’s focused on child abuse, creating a special unit to deal with it. As useful as that may be, in the hands of an unscrupulous prosecutor it can become an instrument of persecution—especially when aimed at a star with a prior sex rap. Sources say that when the D.A. rejected the Reubens case, officers involved in the investigation brought it to Delgadillo. (The D.A.’s office says the case was transferred because it involved a misdemeanor.) With just a day to spare before the one-year statute of limitations expired, Delgadillo issued a warrant for Reubens’s arrest. If convicted, he could spend a year in prison, but even if acquitted he will probably suffer professionally. For an androgynous former star of children’s TV, two strokes and you’re out.”
Persecuting Pee-wee. A Child-Porn Case That Threatens Us All, by Richard Goldstein, Village Voice, January 15-21, 2003

Here’s how that case shook out:

“One of the most well-publicized prosecutions by Delgadillo’s office was that of entertainer Paul Reubens, more commonly known as Pee Wee Herman, for possession of child pornography. Delgadillo’s office arranged a plea bargain requiring Reubens to pay a $100 fine and serve three years of probation.”
Rocky Delgadillo, Wikipedia. Here’s the Press Release on the verdict. Does the City Atty always issue press releases on verdicts? I was glad Jerry Brown won the Attorney General election and now I’m even more glad.

Oh, and Mr. and Mrs. Delgadillo also made Franklin Avenue’s Angelenos of the Week.

“In Bernstein’s account the mystery of Hillary is largely explained by her fraught relationship with Bill. She was pretty enough, but an awkward, wonky, young woman; he was a brilliant, ambitious, sexually magnetic stud; and in following him to Arkansas she seemed to have thrown her future as, say, a high-profile Washington public interest lawyer. ‘My friends and family thought I had lost my mind,’ Bernstein quotes her as saying. He insists that theirs is, or sometimes was, a deep connection – sexual, intellectual and committed to their joint political ‘journey.’

“But it was a relationship irreparably twisted by Bill’s compulsive priapism, which seems to have put the young Hillary into a permanent rage, but, perversely, also bound them ever more tightly together. In the unstable molecule we used to call ‘Billary,’ he was the id and she was the super-ego, a role she clearly relished even as it poisoned her with resentment. As Bernstein argues, Bill dalliances only increased her power in the relationship, since, as a rising political star, he needed a smart, loyal wife to fend off the press and publicly stand by her man. When they entered the White House in 1993 on the heels of the Gennifer Flowers scandal, the outwardly forgiving Hillary was at the height of her power, eager to assume the ‘co-presidency.’”
Who is Hillary Clinton?, Barbara Ehrenreich, June 19, 2007

Y’know, unless it’s Satan or a DINO, I’ll vote for whomever gets the Dem nomination next year, but, please God, could it be Al Gore (or someone cooler [if that's even possible]) and not anyone else? Please?

“Here are a couple of reasons to support grocery workers if they are forced to strike or are locked out of their jobs:

“Grocery workers haven’t had a raise since 2002, yet Ralphs, Vons, and Albertsons made over $8 billion in profits last year while their three CEOs raked in over $27 million.

“Since 2004, the markets have stopped providing health insurance for more than half of their grocery workers. That’s more than 40,000 workers and 20,000 of their children who have no access to health care coverage.

“The employers claim they can’t afford to offer a fair contract, but Stater Bros. and Gelson’s Markets — two regional employers that are dwarfed in size by the national chains — agreed to a fair contract with their workers before their contracts expired.

“This is a problem facing millions of American workers who are trying to make ends meet while corporations are making billions of dollars in profits. It’s time to send a message to corporations like Ralphs, Vons and Albertsons that their workers deserve a fair wage and decent health care benefits.”
Would you cross the line?, The Liberal OC, June 27, 2007

I didn’t cross their picket line last time and I won’t cross it this time. And when it was over, I shopped in Union stores again and I will this time, too. The grocery workers are fighting the war on the working class for all of us.

“PARIS (AP) – BlackBerry handhelds have been called addictive, invasive, wonderful – and now, a threat to French state secrets.

“French government security experts have reportedly banned – with mixed success – the use of BlackBerries in ministries and in the presidential palace, for fear that they are vulnerable to snooping by U.S. intelligence.”
BlackBerry Ban for French Officials, The Guardian, Wednesday June 20, 2007 3:46 PM (via Bruce Schneier)

I mean, if this is the best reason anyone can find to ban crackberries, well, okay.

“The cities of Beverly Hills and West Hollywood today began testing solar-powered parking meters that allow motorists to use coins or credit cards. The FlexPay Parking Meters are being tested in Beverly Hills along the east side of the 300 block of North Canon Drive and in West Hollywood on the west side of the 1000 block of La Brea Avenue. According to officials from both cities, the FlexPay meters will use existing poles and will blend in with the traditional meters. But they will be clearly identifiable as FlexPay meters and offer step-by-step instructions for people using credit cards. The meters use encryption technology to protect credit card numbers. ‘The encryption technology used is the same as used by banks and credit cards,’ Beverly Hills Mayor Jimmy Delshad said. ‘All the transactions are very safe. Nobody knows your credit card number and nobody can mishandle that.’ Each meter will include a hotline number for people who run into troubles with the machines, which are monitored by city officials using wireless connections.”
Feeding a new meter, Bottleneck blog, June 19, 2007

“So you’re saying that in a city that outlaws fruit, only outlaws will sell fruit?”
From the comments of How to be a legal fruit vendor, LA City Nerd, June 22, 2007

And the answer is: you can’t. Oh well.

“Efforts to fully fund construction of a 700-mile high-speed rail link that would begin in San Diego, travel through Los Angeles and end in the Bay Area won the unanimous support of the Los Angeles City Council today. The proposed electricity-operated train would travel 220 mph, whisking passengers from Los Angeles to San Francisco in less than three hours. The council also agreed to support a $9 billion bond measure that will go before voters in November to begin construction on a portion of the $40 billion rail system. Backers say the rail system is projected to carry 68 million passengers annually by 2020. Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger has said that California cannot afford the bond money to pay for construction of elevated and underground tracks at a time when more highways, levees, schools and prisons must be built.”
LA likes high-speed rail, Bottleneck blog, June 22, 2007

This would rule so hard! The Schwarzenegger is a big party pooper.

“The first annual O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing conference brought together a little more than 400 digital and book publishing professionals for three days of intensive and often entertaining projections about the future of publishing in the digital era—not to mention the future form of the book itself. By and large they left San Jose, Calif., thoroughly satisfied with the first TOC and looking forward to the next one, planned to take place next year in New York City.

“After two days of tutorials and panels on technology and information, the last day of the show managed to bring the focus back to the old-fashioned printed and bound book—but with a hip digital twist. Dale Dougherty, editor and publisher of O’Reilly’s Make magazine—a delightfully useful (and graphically inventive) DIY guide to making all kinds of cool stuff— cited an unusual but pertinent fact during the final keynote presentations. ‘More horses were used in World War II than in any previous war,’ he said. His point is that old technology and new technology typically coexist where you least expect it. Make magazine, Dougherty said, is about how to make old things new again.

“It was the perfect introduction to the next speaker, Manolis Kelaidis, a designer, engineer and lecturer at Britain’s Royal College of Art, and his extraordinary project bLink, an idiosyncratic effort to create a book that combined the qualities of the physical book with the digital functionality of a computer—the next generation book. Constructed with embedded electronics and conductive inks, it’s the prototype of a bound and printed book that, believe it or not, includes hyperlinks like a Web page. A reader can use a finger on the book’s paper pages like a computer’s cursor on the screen. Touch the paper hyperlink and a Bluetooth signal opens a Web page on a nearby screenthat serves up information, music, translations or video that correspond to that link, as if the book were a paper and ink computer.”
Making the Old New Again at TOC, by Calvin Reid and Jody Culkin, PW Daily — Publishers Weekly, 6/21/2007 (Or here if the link is dead)

“People fighting a war dehumanize the enemy. That makes it possible to kill with a clean conscience. But by a perfect inversion, dehumanizing people in your mind makes them all the more human in reality — vulnerable, desperate, trying to save themselves and their children and their homes.

“And truly, dehumanizing others in one’s mind dehumanizes oneself in reality. We are mutating amid our rhetoric of self-congratulation into monsters.”
Mutating Into What We Hate, by Crispin Sartwell, Baltimore Sun, May 6, 2004 (via CommonDreams.org)

“Michael Kamburowski, the Australian immigrant hired as a top official in the California Republican Party, was ordered deported in 2001, jailed three years later for visa violations — and has filed a $5 million wrongful arrest lawsuit against the U.S. Department of Homeland Security, according to U.S. District Court documents.

“Kamburowski was named in March to be the chief operating officer of the California GOP. He is responsible for the state party’s multimillion-dollar budget and oversees campaign funds and financing for the nation’s largest state GOP organization.”

(more…)

“Because, obviously, how women are treated in comics stories is ultimately part of many larger issues. But just focusing on comics – if most major women characters are eventually cannon fodder of one type or another, how does that affect the female readers? Do they give up?”
Gail Simone Women in Refrigerators, no date but somewhere around 1999 (sheesh!)

Give up? Nah.

“Male creators of comics act out subconscious adolescent male hostility toward women in their art.” (Gerry Conway)
Supergirls in comics, by Istlhimank Sharma, Times of India, June 16, 2007

I was shocked by the rawness of this quote, so I googled it and it’s only slightly less shocking in context:

“I haven’t read the comments of your other respondents, so mine is a fresh, uncontaminated response. As a writer who’s killed (Gwen Stacy), raped (Cinder of Cinder and Ashe), and maimed (well, no, I don’t think I ever maimed anyone, but if I did it was probably during a blackout in the late ’70s), I can hardly plead innocence when it comes to violence against fictional females. In fact, I think you’re on to something — there does appear to be a disproportionate high number of female superheroes who’ve met gruesome deaths. Of course, since comic book superheroes began life as an adolescent male fantasy figures, and for the most part continue to fill that role, we shouldn’t be surprised the (primarily) male creators of comics act out subconscious adolescent male hostility toward women in their art. Powerful women = mommy = enemy/love object/tormentor of the post-pubescent male psyche. Sadly Freudian but true. Even so, the intensity of violence against comic book superheroines (in fact, against everyone — male, female, super or otherwise) seems to have increased exponentially since I quit writing comics in the late ’80s. I was appalled by the comic page reproduced on your web site, but I suppose it’s representative of what’s happened to the medium. It confirms a belief I developed in the ’80s — that more and more, mainstream comics were being designed to appeal primarily to the kids in River’s Edge. (If you don’t know the movie, find it, rent it, and tell me I’m wrong.) In this context, violence against superheroines is part of a continuum — a cynical, spiritless dehumanization of the superhero art form. As a friend of mine remarked recently in another context, ‘Welcome to the post-ironic world…’”
Gerry Conway, Women in Refrigerators, who knows when.

Hmmm.

Digby is a woman!

Whoa, and all this time I thought Digby was a guy. Shiver me timbers or something.

Ah, she lives in Santa Monica. It’s nice in Santa Monica, no wonder she never wants to leave it.

“As a radical feminist dyke spinster aunt, I am the world’s leading authority on marriage. I have other matrimoniological credentials, too. I am the offspring of two married heterosexuals who dominated me for over 18 years. I’ve read Jane Austen. I’ve spent almost a whole year watching Turner Classic Movies on TV. I was ‘maid’ of honor at my sister Tidy’s wedding.

“Not only that; some of my best friends are married!

“And it’s gotta go, I tell you.”
The Post on Marriage, Twisty, June 13, 2007

Marriage only benefits men. Everything else you hear about it is a lie. Proceed at your own risk, sisters.

Visualize search results on an automated timeline.

dudgeon/dungeon

I love my language but how can you be in a high dungeon?

“Most astounding thing is how DC pretty much wrecked a lot of good character development Dixon provided for Spoiler for almost a decade.

“Stephanie most definitely shouldn’t be forgotten, and there’s still a lot of work needed if she’s to be revived. The best option would be not to buy Robin as they’re doing it now, if that’s how they’re going to behave.”
Chuck Dixon was asked for his thoughts on the abuse/obscuration of Spoiler, and gave some, Four Color Media Monitor, June 20, 2007 (via WFA; Chuck Dixon original post)

I’m already boycotting “Robin.”

“Lee did not wave a flag for his own piece but a look turned it up. He writes the WSJ’s Science Journal column. Today’s is a very good example of explanatory journalism with an edge. It explains lucidly, with a touch of news, why antibiotics keep backfiring — breeding resistant contagions almost as efficiently as if that were the meds’ purpose. The story also links to an online discussion with readers. One such doesn’t like his piece, arguing that little selections of traits are hardly evolution. Lee replies effectively and, in the bargain, raps faith-based critics of evolution.”
WS Journal: Drug resistant bacteria? It’s elementary Darwinism, KSJT, June 9, 2007

“For the Episode 0 of Four Color Heroines, I’ve got a little rant I put together concerning Joe Quesada: Still an Idiot in Public, Only This Time He’s Dismissing Female Fans To Their Faces.”
Episode 0: Think of the Weasels, Hannah Dame, June 17, 2007. Visit Four Color Heroines for more podcasts.

Way too funny and totally correct.

Also:

Hot Girl in a Comics Shop, Episode 1.

“So *why* are they doing this? Here’s Black Canary, and when she’d done well, you stop noticing the fishnets and start noticing that even without her power, she’s one of the toughest and smartest fighters in DCU. And she’s done most of it as a Bird of Prey or in the JSA or on her own – not as Ollie’s girlfriend. Being Ollie’s girlfriend has never been good for her. People respect Canary. Or they did.”

~snip~

“But this wedding stuff – Wedding Planners and Bachelor/Bachelorette parties and what have you? You know what it feels like? It feels like, ‘Hey, we want to get more girls reading our comics! But what do girls want?’

“Not good plots, apparently. Not good art. Not believable acting (let’s not even touch believable looking, given the men) adult women in leading roles (or adolescent women ditto). Nah, girls don’t want that. Girls want to see *weddings*! They want to see Dinah Lance dithering over wedding dresses and cakes and lingerie. (I can’t even imagine this.) They want to see Superman flying out of a cake. That’s what girls want – all frilly and cute things.”
Arrgh! NO!, Debra Fran Baker, June 18, 2007

Debra Fran Baker absolutely nails it. Go read the whole thing, you’ll be glad you did!

And so, for reasons even I don’t fully understand, I saw “Pirate of the Caribbean 3,” “Fantastic Four 2,” and “Ocean’s 13.” Of the three “Ocean’s 13,” flawed though it was, was best because there wasn’t a fucking wedding in it. Twisty’s right, it’s got to go.

And, as was brought to my attention, Sue Storm is a scientist and we know this because she was working on a space station when she got her powers. In FF2, the world is ending but she’s a marriage and relationship obsessed idiot. The Silver Surfer was cool though.

In POTC3, Will Turner and E. Swann get married in the middle of a kick-ass battle and it just ruined the action for me. POTC3 is also about 2 hours too long, though Keith Richards was cool.

Meh, well I got my movie-going out of my system for the year. Don’t pay money for these, GreenCine.com them if you must.

“All good editors know that, commonly, an expert with a gift for writing can provide first-hand a punchy article whose authoritative weight augments mightily those from staff reporters. An excellent example is in the Sunday’s Washington Post where Howard Markel, a professor of communicable diseases at U. Michigan — and an author — explains tuberculosis, punctures the 19th century’s infatuation with ‘consumption’ as macabre and yet delicately romantic, and explains the deep fears that drug-resistant TB inspires among medical people.”
Wash. Post: The white plague is still with us, KSJT, June 11, 2007

You’re SO lucky, I’d love to go to this exhibition:

Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga:

“150,000 pages of manga. 70 anime TV & feature-length productions. Two explosive elements of Japanese pop culture. One visionary: Tezuka Osamu.

“The Asian Art Museum of San Francisco presents Tezuka: The Marvel of Manga, starting from June 2 – Sept 9, 2007. This major exhibition – the first of its kind outside of Japan – features more than 200 original drawings, paintings, and more.”

Oh well. Too bad this show isn’t traveling, like, to LA.

“‘Orange County Boy Scouts chief Leslie Baron and 31 Scouting executives from around the nation did just that in January, with the Orange County chapter picking up the tab for more than $27,000 in banquets, cocktails, rounds of golf and fishing trips.’

“‘Rooms for the three Orange County delegates were an additional $5,200.’”

“I have to point out another irony in addition to that of a non-profit that just recently whined all over the OC about loosing United Way funding spending thousands on an exotic trip to paradise; read this from Steven Greenhut on Orange Punch December 20, 2006.

“It should be noted that the Orange County Boy Scouts raised a big stink over the loss of funding, just three weeks before their vacation in paradise, January 10-13, 2007.

“Key West is the Number 2 ranked Gay Resort destination in the United States.”

~snip~

“Hmmm, they won’t let gays in the Boy Scouts, but they will let the Scout Masters loose in a gay resort destination.”
Where the Boys Are!, OC Liberal, June 8, 2007

There must be something in the water in OC.

“If you hit us over the head long and hard enough, we eventually get the message, so we left this decision up to you. And you apparently decided that you would rather undergo eyeball surgery every morning than read ‘Get Fuzzy,’ the strip about a Satanic cat, a moronic dog and a clueless owner who never seemed to leave home. I kind of liked ‘Get Fuzzy.’ I don’t own a cat, but I could readily identify with the dog and the human. Both seemed to spend an inordinate amount of time either staring out the window or dreaming of their next meal. In the meantime, the cat was plotting world domination.

“But I guess the kindest thing I could say is that this story-line did not resonate with our readers. They actually preferred ‘Tokyopop,’ one of those Japanese animé atrocities that is the leading cause of madness in laboratory rats.”
Hey ‘Fuzzy’ … get lost, David Grimes, Sarasota Herald Tribune, June 11, 2007

Oh, pulease, it only causes a little madness, happy sparkly madness. By the way, Anime Expo is coming up at the end of the month. Bring your lab rats and your rug rats!

stock/stalk

English is doomed, doomed! I tell you.

“Is the jailing, un-jailing, and re-jailing of Paris Hilton a harbinger of anything? Has America’s Love/Hate-o-meter for wealthy celebrities swung in the negative direction? And does that swing portend something more ominous for our society at large? I’ve been saying for a while that the time would come when the moiling masses of the un-rich would turn on their pantheon of media-conjured demigods, and that this would be a symptom of mechanical trouble in the giant gas-sucking Hummer limousine that the US economy has become. Are the wheels about to come off?”

~snip~

“You wonder who the new gods will be. In France, after the bloodbath of the 1790s, the new gods were abstract virtues rather than personalities: justice, brotherhood, equality, et cetera. The mob soon tired of abstractions, though, and turned to the appealing figure of General Bonaparte. Why? because he displayed the prime signature of charisma — the aura that he actually knew what he was doing. In a nation that has lost its head, this is a striking attribute.”
Loose Wheels, JHN, June 11, 2007

Oh man, look: I’m agreeing with Barbara Ehrenreich:

“But it no longer takes a Marxist, real or alleged, to see that America is being polarized between the super-rich and the sub-rich everyone else. In Sunday’s New York Times magazine we learn that Larry Summers, the centrist Democratic economist and former Harvard president, is now obsessed with the statistic that, since 1979, the share of pretax income going to the top 1 percent of American households has risen by 7 percentage points, to 16 percent. At the same time, the share of income going to the bottom 80 percent has fallen by 7 percentage points.

“As the Times puts it: ‘It’s as if every household in that bottom 80 percent is writing a check for $7,000 every year and sending it to the top 1 percent.’ Summers now admits that his former cheerleading for the corporate-dominated global economy feels like ‘pretty thin gruel.’”
Banish the Bloated Overclass, Barbara’s Blog, June 12, 2007