POETRY TUESDAY.

THAT'S ENTERTAINMENT: Comics and music reviews. Really review-y rather than criticism-y, because I'm not sure how much I have to say about any of this stuff.

Comics. Daredevil: The Murdock Papers. The end of Bendis and Maleev's awesome run on Daredevil. You can get my thoughts on the second-to-last book here. This last book struck me as very slow (and with not nearly enough Det. Del Toro) until the end, when it suddenly sped up and became excellent. The ending was perfect enough that I am really looking forward to the first volume of the new team (Ed Brubaker and somebody), even though I'd been resigning myself to putting this title aside when Bendis and Maleev left.

Jaime Hernandez, Ghost of Hoppers. This is a story about Maggie Chascarrillo and the death of Hoppers. So you're either saying, "Oh my God! I need this now!!!"... or, "And I care because why?"

If you're in the first group--well, you probably already have the book. Just in case you don't: This is better, I think, than the other two post-Love and Rockets Jaime volumes (Dicks and Deedees, and even Locas in Love). It's wiggy and funny and--by the end--very frightening, and unresolved. There are the usual beautiful, curvy women (Maggie is especially rowr!), although I did feel like Jaime was making up more excuses than usual to show the women, hot or not, less than thoroughly clad. But basically--this is Maggie, her love life, her friendships, her family, her job, three thousand percent Margarita Luisa Chascarrillo, and you know you want it. [ETA: I will say that in this book Izzy Ortiz felt like a plot device, rather than a character, in a way that distressed me. I still think the book is really good, but... Izzy's misused, I think, in what should have been almost as much her story as Maggie's.]

If you're in the second group: OK, so Love and Rockets. It's two brothers, Gilbert (mostly South American slice-of-life/magical-realist stories) and Jaime (mostly bright lights big city California punker girls) Hernandez. It's given me the best horror comic I've ever read (Flies on the Ceiling) and two of my top five graphic novels ever (Poison River and Chester Square, in that order). The big problem is that L&R stories generally get at least some of their kick from continuity, and it's really hard to just jump in at Act Two. I don't have a hugely satisfying answer. All I can do is promise that if you go to your local comicopia, pick up a volume somewhere between v3 and v6 or v7, leaf through it, and really take your time--you're in for an amazing, addictive read. Just some of the best stuff ever done in comics. So, okay, its peak has probably passed. You won't even care by the time its hooks are in you.

Music: Against Me!, The Disco Before the Breakdown. Okay. So I got this three-song EP because of this thread at HolyOffice, on indie rockers and their God; which is also where I found out about the amazing band The Weakerthans. (And while we're here: The more I listen to Reconstruction Site, the more it gets to me, on every level. It's phenomenal, seriously.) This disc was... not as much my thing. It's yellingish emo rock, and I'm kind of not up for that right now; and I didn't think "Tonight We're Gonna Give It 35 Percent," despite its utterly terrific title, had as much going on as the HolyOffice comments led me to expect. So... not for me, I guess.

Martin Tielli, Operation Infinite Joy. In my continuing quest for bands with songs about Winnipeg.

Anyway, Tielli is... maybe experimental-pop-pastiche is the best term. And for me it was a lot like that Far Side cartoon with the man talking to his dog: "Blah blah blah blah GINGER blah blah GINGER blah blah blah blah blah blah blah GINGER!" For brief moments it was really excellent, firing on all cylinders; and then it would seem like Tielli lost confidence in his direction, and the song would waver and go somewhere else, and no longer be awesome. Too much pastiche, maybe, too much self-consciousness, not enough pop? I'm not sure. I'm warming to this album on second listening, but it still seems like background music punctuated by swiftness. (I mean, I can't completely dislike anything with lyrical quick-hits like, "CINCINNATI! ARE YOU READY TO ROCK? I... I am not"; or, "Anything you do is OK by me," which totally reminds me of the moment when I fell in love with Absolutely Fabulous--"I've known you longer than anybody, Eddie, and everything you do is all right by me! --Can I take the car?")

I feel like this album is working the same end of the spectrum as other people who have done it better. In about this order, I am reminded of Jane Hohenberger (although where you find her music these days, I couldn't tell you); Huggy Bear (especially Rhythm and Destruction, and to a lesser extent the even better album Taking the Rough with the Smooch); They Might Be Giants in their "Nightgown of the Sullen Moon" mode; and Brian Dewan's excellent "Obedience School" song. (The missing line is, "I could ring a dinner bell.") All of those tripped many more of my triggers than Tielli. But... I don't know. I don't think I was the target audience for this album. If the above sounds intriguing, you could check him out for yourself.

ARRESTS IN EGYPT:

As you can read here Alaa has been arrested , and the situation is turning bleaker by the minute. Given what the egyptian police is like , and how they wanted to hurt Alaa for quite a while now, I don't think it's wise to wait until they decide what THEY want to do with him. The fight should start immedietly.

The contact information for the Egyptian embassy is below:
The Embassy of the Arab Republic of Egypt
3521 International Ct. NW
Washington DC 20008
Phone (202) 895 5400
Fax (202) 244 5131
(202) 244 4319
Email: embassy@egyptembdc.org

E-mail them, send them letters, harrass them. The last time you did that we got Abdel Karim released. I am not joking when I tell you that I had information from a source inside that this is the only reason they released him.

more (via Relapsed Catholic, I think)

and:

Alaa is one of the most active people working to support the blogosphere in Egypt. Coupled with his wife Manal, their "Bit Bucket", is the aggregator collecting almost all Egyptian bloggers. He won the special Reporters Without Borders--DW Best of Blogs award in 2005 and was previously interviewed on Global Voices. He is one of the people that the Egyptian blogosphere success and latest wide spreading is indebted to.

(more)

QUICK HITS: Matt Scofield disagrees with me (...sort of) on the merits of Quigley Down Under. Having watched Robin Hood: Prince of Thieves last night, I will concede two things: 1. Tom Selleck is much, much better in QDU than Kevin Costner is in RH:POT. (A surprise to me. I always kind of thought Tom Selleck and Kevin Costner were the same person.)
2. QDU is very far from the worst movie Alan Rickman is in. It is now a toss-up, in my opinion, between RH:POT and the execrable Love Actually.

Here, have a sporking of RH:POT.

And, in more exciting news, Dylan of Tenebrae et Lux is back!! Not posting much just yet, but we shall see. Via Mixolydian Mode.

WHEN I WAS THREE, I THOUGHT THE WORLD REVOLVED AROUND ME. I WAS WRONG.: So okay, I Netflix'd a bunch of movies, because... uh... Alan Rickman was in them. And he's done a lot of random stuff. I mean, Sense and Sensibility was predictable but okay (once you tell me that one sister is played by Emma Thompson and one is played by Kate Winslet, I get that you want me to root for the former over the latter, thanks). But then the mailman brought me Quigley Down Under.

OMG. Okay, so... 1) Did you ever wonder why there are brown people in the world? This movie explains! It's so that noble white people can defend them.

2) Did you ever wonder why there is Australia in the world? This movie explains! It's so that America can be better than it.

[eta: OK, on reflection this point is not as clear-cut in the movie as point #1. I was swept away by parallel structure.... Oh, like it's never happened to you.]

3) This was such a horrible, awful movie, I swear. Politically/philosophically wretched (I don't think a single one of the aboriginal characters had a line of dialogue, including a character who must have been able to speak English; nor did any of them have interesting character arcs; nor did they have characters at all, really--they could have been dolphins and the story would have been the same), narratively cliched (somebody get me a copy of the Evil Overlord List--stat!), hideously mustached.

4) I still gave it two stars at Netflix, rather than one, pretty much solely because of Teh Rickman. He's underused, but he does get to show off his hilarious teeth (I love the thing where he lifts just his top lip, in this evil tooth-baring grin) and occasionally gets to slink menacingly in the background. Other than that, this movie is evil. Like, "If God is all good and all powerful, why did this movie get made?" (...OK, Laura San Giacomo was probably about as good as she could have been, given the utter crapulence of her character. So, yay for her.)

I just hope AR got paid well for this tripe.

ONE OF US: Via Sean Collins, this neat-looking, thinky horror blog with an excellent sidebar. Which reminds me that Final Girl is one of my favorite blog titles ever.

Our duty is to form our sensibilities around our convictions, not the other way around.
--Party of Death

NATURE IS A LANGUAGE: So apparently next Sunday's New York Times Magazine will have an article on opposition to contraception. I'm sure it will be a theologically sophisticated, nuanced, understanding, reasonable--no, yeah, lying's a sin. I expect it will be uber-lame. So here are a couple links instead.

Maggie Gallagher on problems with the consequentialist arguments against contraception. (Not sure what I think of this yet. The Lambeth Conference abandonment of traditional Christian prohibitions on contraception seems like a huge cultural event, maybe bigger than the technological/cultural event of the Pill.)

More importantly, this issue of Eutopia is entirely devoted to contraception, and has a wealth of great articles from a variety of (Catholic) perspectives. I was especially struck by the "language of the body" theology--when I first entered the Church, contraception (like homosexuality) was one of those issues where I took the Church's position on faith, as a matter of obedience, while acknowledging that I really didn't "get it" at all. I still often feel that way about homosexuality--I go back and forth between feeling like I "get it" and like it's totally opaque. The Church's opposition to birth control, OTOH, in my view flows pretty clearly from two of the biggest questions that drew me to Christ in the first place: Why does sex matter? Why does poetry matter?

THE USES AND ABUSES OF JANE JACOBS:

...Given urban planners' almost universal reverence for Jacobs, it is ironic that many have largely ignored or misinterpreted the central lesson of "Death and Life"--that cities are vibrant living systems, not the product of grand, utopian schemes concocted by overzealous planners.

Modern planners have contorted Jacobs's beliefs in hopes of imposing their static, end-state vision of a city. They use a set of highly prescriptive policy tools--like urban growth boundaries, smart growth, and high-density development built around light-rail transit systems--to design the city they envision. They try to "create" livable cities from the ground up and micromanage urban form through regulation. We've seen these tools at work in Portland, Ore., for more than three decades. But the results have been dismal and dramatic. The city's "smart growth" policies effectively created a land shortage, constricting the housing supply and artificially inflating prices. By 1999, Portland had become one of the 10 least affordable housing markets in the nation, and its homeownership rate lagged behind the national average. It has also seen one of the nation's largest increases in traffic congestion and boasts a costly, heavily subsidized light-rail system that accounts for just 1% of the city's total travel. Not exactly how they planned it.

That's because these planning trends run completely counter to Jacobs's vision of cities as dynamic economic engines that thrive on private initiative, trial and error, incremental change, and human and economic diversity. Jacobs believed the most organic and healthy communities are diverse, messy and arise out of spontaneous order, not from a scheme that tries to dictate how people should live and how neighborhoods should look. ...

As Jacobs opined in a 2001 Reason magazine interview, "the New Urbanists want to have lively centers in the places that they develop. . . . And yet, from what I've seen of their plans and the places they have built, they don't seem to have a sense of the anatomy of these hearts, these centers. They've placed them as if they were shopping centers. They don't connect."

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THOUGHT FOR THE DAY: Reason isn't the opposite of mysticism. Both reason and mysticism are the opposites of practicality/pragmatism/"muddling through."

The last night I spent on Blogwatch Street,
Goodbye house forever...

The Club for Growth has created a new Free Speech Action Center to fight restrictions on political speech:

...Since the House passage of H.R. 513, columnist George Will said the action was "traducing the Constitution and disgracing conservatism." Forbes Magazine called that bill "McCain-Feingold on steroids" and said "the move is like banning printing presses because your opponents use them to publish brochures criticizing you." The Rocky Mountain News called it "noxious legislation." Earlier, National Review said "There's nothing conservative about trying to regulate your opponent to defeat."

The provisions from H.R. 513 go far beyond the reviled prohibitions on ads imposed by the 2002 McCain-Feingold law. This unprecedented provision would ban any such ads placed anywhere at any time in any kind of medium by a 527 group unless sponsored by a highly-regulated PAC.

This legislation holds immense dangers to all nonprofit groups and all Americans. Please read the information and take action today to preserve your free speech rights.

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Reporters Sans Frontieres does a round-up on press freedom and attacks on journalists in 2005 ("the most deadly year for a decade")--with a bizarrely sunny closing paragraph about those Mohammed cartoons. Link via Colby Cosh.

Also via the Golden Treasury of Colby Coshery, many many memories of British school fights.

So, for example, some people take the view that human beings become "persons," and acquire rights, only when they acquire the capacity for abstract mental functioning, and cease to be persons with rights when they lose this capacity. If "capacity" is taken to mean immediately exercisable capacity (as it usually is on this view), then it is possible to allow abortion, research that destroys human embryos, and euthanasia of the permanently comatose and persistently vegetative.

There are, however, difficulties with this view. ...

Second: The capacity for abstract mental functioning varies continuously. But it is impossible to identify, without arbitrariness, the minimum level one must have to enjoy rights. It is also impossible to explain why people who have more of the quality should not be regarded as greater in worth, dignity, and rights than people who have less of it. (This is true, and necessarily true, of any of the qualities generally proposed as the conditions of worth: self-awareness, rich interactions with others, the ability to experience pain and pleasure, etc.) The notion that all human beings are created equal becomes a self-evident lie.
--Ramesh Ponnuru, The Party of Death (more when I finish the book)

A BRIEF VISIT TO NEW ORLEANS:

...Driving through Lakeview, a suburb which hugs Lake Pontchartrain and borders the University of New Orleans, where I went to school, I was afforded a much closer view of the same conditions. Here the water line is marked by a thick rusty smear sometimes twelve feet off the ground. FEMA trailers are parked out in front of many of the homes, which seemed to me way past salvaging. Spray-painted glyphs on the sides of houses track the efforts of the SPCA as they searched for pets after the sadder business of human body removal had been completed. Small bushes and shrubs which had been completely submerged in the toxic waters are uniformly dead. They look like no dead plants I have ever seen before: they are not brown but a flat grey, like ashen constructions, like enormous leached brains lined up along the neutral ground and nestled in people's front lawns.

Here it was also clear how social class made a difference. The devastation is now almost categorically confined to low-income areas. Partly this is due to the fact that much of the wealthier New Orleanians lived on higher ground, and as the city expanded the less affluent had to move into the cheaper houses being built on converted swampland. But in the Lakeview area there are some upscale houses, and most of these had already been repaired and looked pretty damned good. Those who were waiting for insurance money to bail them out -- and the insurance companies are insisting that what happened to these houses was flood damage, not storm damage, thereby neutering thousands of claims -- are still waiting.

Claiborne Avenue, once a thriving center of black-owned small businesses, looks like a ghost town. There is nothing open there. Nothing. I used to dread driving through that area because the traffic was so thick; last week, as Ingrid guided me through the city, there were at best a dozen cars on the road.

I promised pictures, and I went there with digital camera in hand, but I have to admit I couldn't bring myself to take any. It felt too much like photographing the grievous wounds of a loved one. I understand there are tours through the devastated Ninth Ward, much to the anger of the people who still live there. I was reminded of a line from the Coen Brothers' Barton Fink: "You're just a tourist with a typewriter, Barton. I live here." ...

After my last post Pam Noles reminded me that for all the neglect New Orleans still suffers, the rest of the Gulf Coast suffers even more. There is at least some measure of national press still devoted to my city; but nothing for the rest of the Gulf Coast, which suffers in the same way.

I want to go back again in the summer, and spend a little more time there. See a few more friends -- including Andy Fox, whom I was supposed to contact while I was there but didn't -- and just soak in the vibe of the place. Because it's still a beautiful city. And -- as I discovered on my arrival that night, feeling the place settle over me like a beaten leather jacket -- it's still my home.

more (via Mumpsimus)

My mistakes are no worse than yours
Just because I'm a blogwatch...

Amy Welborn: "My latest cause ...to get Scholastic Book Fairs to offer titles specifically chosen for Catholic schools. Correct me if I'm wrong, but in my experience at least--which entails about 20 years of looking over the wares of Scholastic Book Fairs in various Catholic schools--I've never seen a "Catholic" book offered--not once. No saints books, etc."

Scalzi: Ten Things Teenage Writers Should Know About Writing. Many continue to apply in later life.... (Via Mumpsimus.)

Virginia Postrel: "Why (Legal or Illegal) Immigrants Are Better for Texas than California: ...Texas has no income tax, which means public services are funded by sales and property taxes. Everyone, regardless of income or legal status, pays sales and property taxes, either directly or indirectly through rent. California, by contrast, relies heavily on a very progressive income tax that doesn't fall on people who are paid off the books or who don't earn much money in the first place."

Wayward Catholic: "The passage I read today was from Genesis, when Adam and Eve eat the fruit and their action is discovered by God. I read a bit further than the selection prescribed, to where He expels them from the Garden never to return. What really struck me there is when God is throwing them out, but before he expels them, He makes clothing for them. It is such a heart-breaking moment, to clothe them and then say 'Now go'. The love is still so intense even though they have so disappointed Him."

LES MURRAY WAS WRONG. Things were better when I was young.

Why?

Because the only Starfleet captain on television was the one, the only James T. Kirk. And nobody would ever think of having Ben Affleck (?!?! interrobang!!!) play him.

I mean, really--what?? What???

Kirk was totally my first TV crush (perhaps coincident with a crush on Diana, the rat-eating lizardess from "V"--yeah, tells you something, I know...) and Il Shatner was a huge part of the reason. He's so awesome.

I am shocked and depressed at the mere thought of AffKirk. Please, no!

FAMILY SCHOLARS blog has a lot of links up today on issues surrounding sperm and egg donation--very much worth your time. My piece on "third-party reproduction" is here.

"Amnesty International is considering changing its neutral policy on abortion to one that would declare legal abortion to be an international human right. The organization is currently asking members to submit commentary on proposed changes to their Sexual and Reproductive Rights Policy."

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GOD IS A THOUGHT THAT MAKES ALL THAT IS STRAIGHT CROOKED: New feature! Because I finally gave in and accepted that I'm probably That Girl, I added a sidebar set of links on God and homosexuality. These are links that do not suck. I will be adding lots more, I hope, in the next few days. Please send me your recommendations. Book recs will take me a while, since I will have to actually read the book, but I do want to get more substantive links up. And yes, of course I will be (re)reading actual-factual stuff from the Vatican and the USCCB, but I make no guarantees that I will like those things enough to link to them.

Some questions for you, the reader:
1. Do you hate this formating? Would you rather I create a separate page, and just link to that page, rather than this sidebar list of links?

2. Obviously, please recommend resources! Things written by women are especially welcome--although I know it's a small pool, since honestly, I think I'm very unusual in the degree to which my own self-understanding parallels gay men's narratives rather than women's. It's really hard to find lesbians whose descriptions of their lives sound like mine (Dorothy Allison is one exception), whereas I could throw a dart in a gay bar and find a man whose story resonates with me. (...This is especially vexing because hello, I like women! I want women's narratives, I want stories where women are central. See my comments on "Absolutely Fabulous" and why it is, indeed, so absolutely fabulous. Anyway, cleft stick, that's life, whatever.)

3. I really want to make clear that the Church's stance on homosexuality is intrinsically related to, and flows from, her general stance on sexual love. So pieces making that connection are especially welcome. I'm not sure whether I should include in this sidebar section resources on other stuff, like contraception or the theology of the body, where the link to homosexuality isn't immediately evident (and where, frankly, it's much easier to find non-crappy resources anyway). Your views welcomed.

3. What should I call this section? Right now it's "Sicut cervus," from the Psalms of course, "As the deer longs for the running stream, my heart longs for You, my Lord." I really like that, but it isn't wildly specific. Other options:
God and Gay Pride
Love comes quickly
I Can't Help Falling in Love With You [a song I adore, but which implies a certain Calvinism....]
The Nightingale and the Rose
Beauty in exile
Pretty girls in their Easter dresses
Lorca's Novena
Lily Among Thorns
[similarly] Rise up, my love, my fair one, and come away
Desert of the heart

other possibilities? ...Anyway, vote for your favorites, if you care.

I've had enough of blogwatch, and messing around with jerks...

Hit & Run:

Now let me state the present rules,"
The lawyer then went on,
"These very simple guidelines,
You can rely upon:
You're gouging on your prices if
You charge more than the rest.
But it's unfair competition if
You think you can charge less!
"A second point that we would make
To help avoid confusion...
Don't try to charge the same amount,
That would be Collusion!
You must compete. But not too much,
For if you do you see,
Then the market would be yours--
And that's Monopoly!

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ShoeBlogs: "Manolo says, how well the Manolo knows the six stages of the shoe-loss grief: denial, anger, bargaining, depression, acceptance, and shopping." Oh, this is so true.

The Rat mocks me. That's what friends are for.

Wayward Catholic: Comparing legal and illegal prostitution, from a woman who has done both. Today's must-read.

And the Institute for Justice has some great stuff on licensing florists, including an illuminating map. I'm not sold on their jurisprudential theory at all, but yes, these laws are more ridiculous than an orchid. Via Hit & Run.

O'zog, kenstu sehn, wen bagin licht dervacht,
Vos mir hoben bagrist in farnachtigen glihen?
Die shtreifen un shtern, durch shreklicher nacht,
Oif festung zich hoiben galant un zich tsein?
Yeder blitz fun rocket, yeder knal fun kanon,
Hot bawizen durch nacht: az mir halten die Fohn!
O, zog, tzi der "Star Spangled Banner" flatert in roim,
Ueber land fun die freie, fun brave die heim!
--(here)