With all these DC characters entering the public domain within the decade, does the potential inspire anything within you? Or not really because you've pretty much already had a proper turn with them?
I have a question about your Savage Sword of Jesus Christ story in Heavy Metal. Did you have more planned of it or were you just making it up as you went along? With all the sad ahit going on in the US right now it’s interesting to think about how the Nazis wanted to change the idea of Jesus in their own image. I won’t be surprised if newer paintings here are giving him blonde hair and an orange hue skin color. Did you have more planned and if so would you possibly go back to it or is it a dead idea? Also have a very Happy Birthday and I hope a groovy party 🕺
Just old enough to get to be old, but not so old that you can't do basically whatever you want.
I think I was lucky to latch on to Mr. Wilson as a role model in my early 20's, because having an old man as your aspirational figure gives you plenty of spacetime to grow.
It's never too late to become an old Daoist sitting on a balcony, watching seagulls fly over the bay, trying to imagine what the world looks like through their eyes :)))
It's funny how much I hated school given that I went through nothing even remotely comparable to that very colorful cruelty! I just couldn't stand being kept from my true will of making comics and watching Gilligan's Island reruns. This adds a nice layer of complexity to the Flex Mentallo school boy story track.
I choose to believe in Steve Skinpole!
TYSM for the Final Crisis commentary! I never fully connected the Final -> Financial Crisis dots. That story has stuck in my crawl with disproportionate ferocity ever since it first came out, prompting pretty frequent re-reads, with seemingly inexhaustible novelty.
Also, I'd like to somewhat echo jwparrishiii's question about the public domain, though to also include the lesser known characters residing in the limbo of the commons.
I've been slowly chipping away at a project called GLORIA DISCORDIA, which is a crisis style copyleft/open work set in the public domain. Like never mind Swamp Thing, I have an idea for THE HEAP!
TCM in the States just showed a bunch of British neo-realist/coming of age pictures in the last day or so, including Kes, This Sporting Life and Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Any strong memories or feelings on those or other similar entries from the era? HBD!
Just gone down a Jethro rabbit hole. Conjures memories of 90s HMV christmas video releases. Mike Osman(winloseordraw) is doing a Jethro tribute show. That is nuts. Grant are you familiar with Stuart Millard's hilarious youtube channel where he reviews this strange world of 80s 90s uk light entertainment?
The school talk rings a bell. I'm younger and I saw the Soviet Union fall in primary school -- we call it that here as well. One of the perks and pitfalls of being the modern Rome is thar we assimilate everything. Pity the poor app delivery driver using translation software when we use Boulevard, Lane, Street, Borough, Avenue, etc. Often with one name in front of each in an area.
But back to the point, despite growing up in Perestroika, I do remember the nuclear drills. I felt kinship when I read your piece on Superman and the bomb because before Superman IV ever came out, I stood up from my toys when adults were talking about The Bomb to say I thought we needed a Superman to get out of this mess. They were embarrassed that I had overheard the conversation. "I'm not a baby," I said. "I know Superman doesn't exist in our world but if we can imagine something, we can MAKE it or something GOOD ENOUGH."
I grew up on the fading edge of corporeal discipline in my family. My younger cousins all got time outs. My older cousin got the belt and the (dollar store) yardstick. My parents' generation got welts and bruises.
I got the yardstick maybe twice and the bare hand a few more. My own parents had a rule that spanking was meant to shape the mind, not cause pain, and had a rule that they would never leave a mark, bare my rear end, or use it while angry. It was a ritual tap-tap-tap for me on the clothed bottom and they refused to sign the requisite permission slips for school authority to use a belt.
I saw the belt used though and I recall that it was common knowledge that the principal would sometimes have his identical twin brother come in to perform the child lashing. I'm not even sure why although I could probably dream up significances to it, none especially comforting.
My last day at my first school before moving was probably my first overt act of rebellion. In the early part of the year, the teacher had me assessed by a psychologist to see if I was remedial because I asked questions she couldn't answer like, "What are the shadows made of?" The clinical opinion at age 7 was that I was "gifted" but severely depressed and I'd be tested into a gifted program at my new school for alternative flavors of trauma.
The second half of the year saw a pay dispute with the teachers' union and a prolonged strike. My teacher turned up on television slashing substitutes' tires. We ended up doing the second session twice when the negotiations ended in failure and the teachers took frustrations out on the students.
On the last day of school, they announced a "field day", often a mini Olympiad of organized physical activities. Only they didn't plan activities and locked the building with no bathroom passes allowed on a day that was over a hundred degrees because the school year had dragged on well into June.
When I discovered my classmates being told to poop outside like livestock and lying down on the dirt overheated and exhausted, I was filled with righteous fury. I ascended atop a large sewage pipe on the playground and began shouting for people to gather around. "We outnumber them," I said. "If we take the building keys and all stand together, they can't punish us all!"
I probably spent the afternoon repeating that speech from my perch to one or two at a time, each telling me I was crazy for even having the idea.
I'd later learn I was far from the first to try such a thing in the larger world and that my lack of success was about par.
Though we moved, when my family would return to the dried up old mining town, post-mines, my mother often remarked that she felt a dark energy in the shopping centers and grocery stores, an anger even from strangers that recognized us as outsiders. One of the nearest towns was shut down entirely and bought up by a contaminating power company. One of my father's best friends and the guy's wife homesteaded and stayed in the disappearing village of Cheshire, Ohio until brain cancer killed them both because he couldn't stand to abandon his parents' house. So many metaphors there.
I come from a line of people driven off land for works projects and industry. My grandfather died embittered at the Tennessee Valley Authority for flooding the old Home Place where the Scottish Roses had settled.
This cancerous yearning for the past was something I saw again and again. Nobody asked to be on this planet and Freud was a poet in my eyes for suggesting that everyone wanted to climb back into the womb and go home to the aeonic before.
When you introduced the meaning of Anti-Life to DC, it was familiar to me. It was the grumbling march of limping workers destined for opioid addiction in hollowed out downs, yearning to be unborn -- and equally obsessed with religion that talked REbirth and "unborn people". They identified more with the unborn than the living, wanting to go back, regress, be great again, have their innate worth as a concept recognized.
Because none of us asked to be here.
And Anti-Life is the state resentment of at being forced to exist when we never asked to be, the violation at the core of creation.
And Life such as it is, is the opposite. It's ecstasy, song, poetry, the runner's flow, the idea that keeps you awake. It's at least tolerating being here but more than that, asking, "What now?" Sometimes that's grief or depression too. You're allowed to be sad that you're here and the resistance to that sadness is what fuels the Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noems of the world. Sadness is forbidden because sadness quiets the drumbeat of resentment, of Anti-Life. Keep a stiff upper lip even if the lower one is gone! Hustle, hustle, hustle. That's the Pied Piper melody of Andrew Tate and his ilk. Fight against the senselessness of being here and leave a mark! Have children! Populate galaxies!
And do it all with the resentment of someone who was pulled out of bed early, only applied to the fact that you were pulled into existence at all.
I know that stigma. I've been touched by it, marked by it. And it's the same mark adults place on children with a belt, the ACTUAL mark of the biological beast. Many have been marked harder and deeper. We've all been marked by discipline at least once, lawful or unlawful. I felt it when my roommate in my 20s was murdered. People feel it when they push their body too hard and break a leg. That hard limit. That piece in your collection that will remain vacant. The song that eludes writing.
And Anti-Life is when that limit pushes us back so hard that we want to go back, in time, in progress, beyond calcification and into unbeing.
People ask when America was great in response to "Make America Great Again". I know the secret answer. It's "BEFORE I WAS" and really any nostalgia or reversal along the way is just a compromise towards either unbeing or full reparations for the violation of being.
And being, living, and ultimately dying is about the opposite. About saying, "I hurt and I let go."
its so mind boggling to me that you and my mother are the same age and yet you are *soooo* much cooler than her in every sense of the word. its hard to remember folks past middle aged aren’t totally maniacal and unreflective.
RK knows the belt all too well as a cyclical generational-delusion. The only time I received it was when my father was still around, though i cannot recall whom was on the whipping end or what possible reason a 3 year old would need such a punishment. it wasnt until i was about 9 or 10 when i finally got the legendary soap in the mouth as punishment for exclaiming “shit” after i dropped a bunch of things down the stairs. unfortunately for my mother, she only had liquid soap, so lathering her fingers up and shoving them in my mouth, simply gave me a normal gut instinct reaction to bite her fingers down to the bone. she didn’t try to curb my language as much after that… the beatings ceased as RK took to martial arts, but the threats never truly got resolved. School itself and the mechanics of avoiding material harm is a whole novel in itself for another time.
*keep running.*
as for our pending answer to this “whats this about life, less so about death” nonsense, it deeply felt like we were missing a piece of the reality puzzle. we could go on and on about the metaphorical/metaphysical meaning of the bullet, the “act” of penetration within magic rites and rituals, the reality of arming oneself as a trans person in a country that would love to see our heads on a stake, or just simply the reality of our finger-gunshot exchanges while in the crowd/on stage.
but the part that felt missing was what it meant for Them to be on the trigger end of the gun. the fact that it felt more like a game or some skill to prove rather than the feeling of being in danger.
it just felt like a reinterpretation of their 2025 US leg of the DRAAG performance.
We got some answers from the Peru show last Sunday. *im not saying we wish we could swap places with Charlie Saxton… but i would at least be willing to be the Phoenix that is set on fire during Mama and waltz across the stage*
as for your response to Dorothy— im sure you already know were there with you. Genuinely feels like we’ve been screaming this from the rooftops in our circles for years. Theres Something Older than the colonies here that is willing to work with anyone willing to turn their back on the American Empire. if only people were willing to give up their teslas and stop throat goating billionaires who desperately want the masses to ignore the class warfare they’ve systematically created. Seems as though theres a lot of people who prefer to be emotionally coddled instead of having the courage to feel anything at all.
Despite the bullshit- we’ve been repeatedly watching the indie pilot by Jorge R. Gutierrez (creator of Maya and the Three, El Tigre, and the Book of Life) called El Guapo and the Narco Vampires. it’s on Youtube and honestly one of the best shows we’ve watched in a while!
as for tunes, besides our little radio list, i’ve been listening to suhREEtah’s thuhDEMO (album) as often as possible. She’s been compared to John Coltrane and Kendrick Lamar, and while i recognize the similarities, her conviction and storytelling prowess, creation of characters and emphatic lyricism has me absolutely hooked and i believe deserves recognition of its own.
as for that lil killjoy radio list as were getting ready to move to the Cali high desert in two weeks :}
1. Purple Rage by dilly dally- (someone ran a red light, hit us, and made me spin out. this song was playing while it happened. a good song to get into a crash to, highly recommend if you find yourself in the situation. trusting the universe and the other person’s insurance company will not total my Silver Bullet because she is the most important inanimate object in my life, though i’d argue she has more life to her than many humans)
2. 100% by sonic youth
3. Damascus by Gorillaz (HYPED FOR THIS ALBUM ACTUALLY!!!!!)
4. Waiting Room by fugazi
5. Cut Ya Loose by emi grace
6. Arschersetzer by Hell Orbs (if G thinks Cheeseburger in Paradise is a silly song, we’d like to counter this banger)
7. Chick Habit by April March (another counter to their murder song by the Monkees)
8. Bong Song by butthole surfers
9. LIVIN IN AMERICA! (: driving my tesla to the protest to film it with the newest iphone ! 0: ) by Clarence James
Jolly Birthday for Saturday. I hope the Reaper leaves you alone. Imagine a morrisonless universe. I don't think anyone could take up the cudgel! who do think in literature/comics comes close?
There are a cavalcade of stories I could tell about my ongoing time as an educator. There was this one kid who tried to do a credit card scam using the school's wifi, only to result in all of the student computers being confiscated for the remainder of the year, right as we were working on the five paragraph essay. There are the number of bomb threats, one of which resulted in a two hour delay and then an early release and a three day weekend. The school experience feels ripe with stories to tell. (The key lesson every teacher learns early on is whatever you do, don't teach middle school.) Among my students, I've seen clever criminals, brilliant bystanders, absolute shitheads who get off on being the worst, and so much more. Are there any other stories that come to mind?
Having listened to a rather charming X-Men podcast, Here Comes Tomorrow, reach its namesake, a question that's been gnawing at me for some time rears its head: Was Apollyon the Destroyer supposed to be, to some degree, the curdled and twisted remains of Wade Wilson?
For a variety of reasons, I've been in the mood to reread The Filth. I recall from the Mindless Ones piece, The Function of the Filth, a degree of parallelism between it and the works of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Which ones would you recommend watching alongside it?
A theme for the book I'm working on has me thinking of the TMBG lyric "Can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding." What do you make of it?
Happy premature 66, Grant!
With all these DC characters entering the public domain within the decade, does the potential inspire anything within you? Or not really because you've pretty much already had a proper turn with them?
I have a question about your Savage Sword of Jesus Christ story in Heavy Metal. Did you have more planned of it or were you just making it up as you went along? With all the sad ahit going on in the US right now it’s interesting to think about how the Nazis wanted to change the idea of Jesus in their own image. I won’t be surprised if newer paintings here are giving him blonde hair and an orange hue skin color. Did you have more planned and if so would you possibly go back to it or is it a dead idea? Also have a very Happy Birthday and I hope a groovy party 🕺
GM 66! That has such an auspicious ring to it.
Just old enough to get to be old, but not so old that you can't do basically whatever you want.
I think I was lucky to latch on to Mr. Wilson as a role model in my early 20's, because having an old man as your aspirational figure gives you plenty of spacetime to grow.
It's never too late to become an old Daoist sitting on a balcony, watching seagulls fly over the bay, trying to imagine what the world looks like through their eyes :)))
It's funny how much I hated school given that I went through nothing even remotely comparable to that very colorful cruelty! I just couldn't stand being kept from my true will of making comics and watching Gilligan's Island reruns. This adds a nice layer of complexity to the Flex Mentallo school boy story track.
I choose to believe in Steve Skinpole!
TYSM for the Final Crisis commentary! I never fully connected the Final -> Financial Crisis dots. That story has stuck in my crawl with disproportionate ferocity ever since it first came out, prompting pretty frequent re-reads, with seemingly inexhaustible novelty.
Here's another internal vision I've externalized: https://weirdoverse.com/IMAGES/LIBERTY_AND_JUSTICE_V_ICE-1280.jpg
Also, I'd like to somewhat echo jwparrishiii's question about the public domain, though to also include the lesser known characters residing in the limbo of the commons.
I've been slowly chipping away at a project called GLORIA DISCORDIA, which is a crisis style copyleft/open work set in the public domain. Like never mind Swamp Thing, I have an idea for THE HEAP!
P.S. R.U. got a kick out of making a cameo in your dreams: https://bsky.app/profile/rusirius.bsky.social/post/3mdjpriez7c2y
TCM in the States just showed a bunch of British neo-realist/coming of age pictures in the last day or so, including Kes, This Sporting Life and Loneliness of the Long Distance Runner. Any strong memories or feelings on those or other similar entries from the era? HBD!
Just gone down a Jethro rabbit hole. Conjures memories of 90s HMV christmas video releases. Mike Osman(winloseordraw) is doing a Jethro tribute show. That is nuts. Grant are you familiar with Stuart Millard's hilarious youtube channel where he reviews this strange world of 80s 90s uk light entertainment?
The school talk rings a bell. I'm younger and I saw the Soviet Union fall in primary school -- we call it that here as well. One of the perks and pitfalls of being the modern Rome is thar we assimilate everything. Pity the poor app delivery driver using translation software when we use Boulevard, Lane, Street, Borough, Avenue, etc. Often with one name in front of each in an area.
But back to the point, despite growing up in Perestroika, I do remember the nuclear drills. I felt kinship when I read your piece on Superman and the bomb because before Superman IV ever came out, I stood up from my toys when adults were talking about The Bomb to say I thought we needed a Superman to get out of this mess. They were embarrassed that I had overheard the conversation. "I'm not a baby," I said. "I know Superman doesn't exist in our world but if we can imagine something, we can MAKE it or something GOOD ENOUGH."
I grew up on the fading edge of corporeal discipline in my family. My younger cousins all got time outs. My older cousin got the belt and the (dollar store) yardstick. My parents' generation got welts and bruises.
I got the yardstick maybe twice and the bare hand a few more. My own parents had a rule that spanking was meant to shape the mind, not cause pain, and had a rule that they would never leave a mark, bare my rear end, or use it while angry. It was a ritual tap-tap-tap for me on the clothed bottom and they refused to sign the requisite permission slips for school authority to use a belt.
I saw the belt used though and I recall that it was common knowledge that the principal would sometimes have his identical twin brother come in to perform the child lashing. I'm not even sure why although I could probably dream up significances to it, none especially comforting.
My last day at my first school before moving was probably my first overt act of rebellion. In the early part of the year, the teacher had me assessed by a psychologist to see if I was remedial because I asked questions she couldn't answer like, "What are the shadows made of?" The clinical opinion at age 7 was that I was "gifted" but severely depressed and I'd be tested into a gifted program at my new school for alternative flavors of trauma.
The second half of the year saw a pay dispute with the teachers' union and a prolonged strike. My teacher turned up on television slashing substitutes' tires. We ended up doing the second session twice when the negotiations ended in failure and the teachers took frustrations out on the students.
On the last day of school, they announced a "field day", often a mini Olympiad of organized physical activities. Only they didn't plan activities and locked the building with no bathroom passes allowed on a day that was over a hundred degrees because the school year had dragged on well into June.
When I discovered my classmates being told to poop outside like livestock and lying down on the dirt overheated and exhausted, I was filled with righteous fury. I ascended atop a large sewage pipe on the playground and began shouting for people to gather around. "We outnumber them," I said. "If we take the building keys and all stand together, they can't punish us all!"
I probably spent the afternoon repeating that speech from my perch to one or two at a time, each telling me I was crazy for even having the idea.
I'd later learn I was far from the first to try such a thing in the larger world and that my lack of success was about par.
Though we moved, when my family would return to the dried up old mining town, post-mines, my mother often remarked that she felt a dark energy in the shopping centers and grocery stores, an anger even from strangers that recognized us as outsiders. One of the nearest towns was shut down entirely and bought up by a contaminating power company. One of my father's best friends and the guy's wife homesteaded and stayed in the disappearing village of Cheshire, Ohio until brain cancer killed them both because he couldn't stand to abandon his parents' house. So many metaphors there.
I come from a line of people driven off land for works projects and industry. My grandfather died embittered at the Tennessee Valley Authority for flooding the old Home Place where the Scottish Roses had settled.
This cancerous yearning for the past was something I saw again and again. Nobody asked to be on this planet and Freud was a poet in my eyes for suggesting that everyone wanted to climb back into the womb and go home to the aeonic before.
When you introduced the meaning of Anti-Life to DC, it was familiar to me. It was the grumbling march of limping workers destined for opioid addiction in hollowed out downs, yearning to be unborn -- and equally obsessed with religion that talked REbirth and "unborn people". They identified more with the unborn than the living, wanting to go back, regress, be great again, have their innate worth as a concept recognized.
Because none of us asked to be here.
And Anti-Life is the state resentment of at being forced to exist when we never asked to be, the violation at the core of creation.
And Life such as it is, is the opposite. It's ecstasy, song, poetry, the runner's flow, the idea that keeps you awake. It's at least tolerating being here but more than that, asking, "What now?" Sometimes that's grief or depression too. You're allowed to be sad that you're here and the resistance to that sadness is what fuels the Pete Hegseth and Kristi Noems of the world. Sadness is forbidden because sadness quiets the drumbeat of resentment, of Anti-Life. Keep a stiff upper lip even if the lower one is gone! Hustle, hustle, hustle. That's the Pied Piper melody of Andrew Tate and his ilk. Fight against the senselessness of being here and leave a mark! Have children! Populate galaxies!
And do it all with the resentment of someone who was pulled out of bed early, only applied to the fact that you were pulled into existence at all.
I know that stigma. I've been touched by it, marked by it. And it's the same mark adults place on children with a belt, the ACTUAL mark of the biological beast. Many have been marked harder and deeper. We've all been marked by discipline at least once, lawful or unlawful. I felt it when my roommate in my 20s was murdered. People feel it when they push their body too hard and break a leg. That hard limit. That piece in your collection that will remain vacant. The song that eludes writing.
And Anti-Life is when that limit pushes us back so hard that we want to go back, in time, in progress, beyond calcification and into unbeing.
People ask when America was great in response to "Make America Great Again". I know the secret answer. It's "BEFORE I WAS" and really any nostalgia or reversal along the way is just a compromise towards either unbeing or full reparations for the violation of being.
And being, living, and ultimately dying is about the opposite. About saying, "I hurt and I let go."
How's that for small talk?
Happy (early) birthday to you friend!!
its so mind boggling to me that you and my mother are the same age and yet you are *soooo* much cooler than her in every sense of the word. its hard to remember folks past middle aged aren’t totally maniacal and unreflective.
RK knows the belt all too well as a cyclical generational-delusion. The only time I received it was when my father was still around, though i cannot recall whom was on the whipping end or what possible reason a 3 year old would need such a punishment. it wasnt until i was about 9 or 10 when i finally got the legendary soap in the mouth as punishment for exclaiming “shit” after i dropped a bunch of things down the stairs. unfortunately for my mother, she only had liquid soap, so lathering her fingers up and shoving them in my mouth, simply gave me a normal gut instinct reaction to bite her fingers down to the bone. she didn’t try to curb my language as much after that… the beatings ceased as RK took to martial arts, but the threats never truly got resolved. School itself and the mechanics of avoiding material harm is a whole novel in itself for another time.
*keep running.*
as for our pending answer to this “whats this about life, less so about death” nonsense, it deeply felt like we were missing a piece of the reality puzzle. we could go on and on about the metaphorical/metaphysical meaning of the bullet, the “act” of penetration within magic rites and rituals, the reality of arming oneself as a trans person in a country that would love to see our heads on a stake, or just simply the reality of our finger-gunshot exchanges while in the crowd/on stage.
but the part that felt missing was what it meant for Them to be on the trigger end of the gun. the fact that it felt more like a game or some skill to prove rather than the feeling of being in danger.
it just felt like a reinterpretation of their 2025 US leg of the DRAAG performance.
We got some answers from the Peru show last Sunday. *im not saying we wish we could swap places with Charlie Saxton… but i would at least be willing to be the Phoenix that is set on fire during Mama and waltz across the stage*
as for your response to Dorothy— im sure you already know were there with you. Genuinely feels like we’ve been screaming this from the rooftops in our circles for years. Theres Something Older than the colonies here that is willing to work with anyone willing to turn their back on the American Empire. if only people were willing to give up their teslas and stop throat goating billionaires who desperately want the masses to ignore the class warfare they’ve systematically created. Seems as though theres a lot of people who prefer to be emotionally coddled instead of having the courage to feel anything at all.
Despite the bullshit- we’ve been repeatedly watching the indie pilot by Jorge R. Gutierrez (creator of Maya and the Three, El Tigre, and the Book of Life) called El Guapo and the Narco Vampires. it’s on Youtube and honestly one of the best shows we’ve watched in a while!
as for tunes, besides our little radio list, i’ve been listening to suhREEtah’s thuhDEMO (album) as often as possible. She’s been compared to John Coltrane and Kendrick Lamar, and while i recognize the similarities, her conviction and storytelling prowess, creation of characters and emphatic lyricism has me absolutely hooked and i believe deserves recognition of its own.
as for that lil killjoy radio list as were getting ready to move to the Cali high desert in two weeks :}
1. Purple Rage by dilly dally- (someone ran a red light, hit us, and made me spin out. this song was playing while it happened. a good song to get into a crash to, highly recommend if you find yourself in the situation. trusting the universe and the other person’s insurance company will not total my Silver Bullet because she is the most important inanimate object in my life, though i’d argue she has more life to her than many humans)
2. 100% by sonic youth
3. Damascus by Gorillaz (HYPED FOR THIS ALBUM ACTUALLY!!!!!)
4. Waiting Room by fugazi
5. Cut Ya Loose by emi grace
6. Arschersetzer by Hell Orbs (if G thinks Cheeseburger in Paradise is a silly song, we’d like to counter this banger)
7. Chick Habit by April March (another counter to their murder song by the Monkees)
8. Bong Song by butthole surfers
9. LIVIN IN AMERICA! (: driving my tesla to the protest to film it with the newest iphone ! 0: ) by Clarence James
10. Praise the Farm by horsegirl.
11. One More Day by 10 Years
12. Jack the Knife by the growlers
Jolly Birthday for Saturday. I hope the Reaper leaves you alone. Imagine a morrisonless universe. I don't think anyone could take up the cudgel! who do think in literature/comics comes close?
Happy birthday!
There are a cavalcade of stories I could tell about my ongoing time as an educator. There was this one kid who tried to do a credit card scam using the school's wifi, only to result in all of the student computers being confiscated for the remainder of the year, right as we were working on the five paragraph essay. There are the number of bomb threats, one of which resulted in a two hour delay and then an early release and a three day weekend. The school experience feels ripe with stories to tell. (The key lesson every teacher learns early on is whatever you do, don't teach middle school.) Among my students, I've seen clever criminals, brilliant bystanders, absolute shitheads who get off on being the worst, and so much more. Are there any other stories that come to mind?
Having listened to a rather charming X-Men podcast, Here Comes Tomorrow, reach its namesake, a question that's been gnawing at me for some time rears its head: Was Apollyon the Destroyer supposed to be, to some degree, the curdled and twisted remains of Wade Wilson?
For a variety of reasons, I've been in the mood to reread The Filth. I recall from the Mindless Ones piece, The Function of the Filth, a degree of parallelism between it and the works of Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. Which ones would you recommend watching alongside it?
A theme for the book I'm working on has me thinking of the TMBG lyric "Can't shake the Devil's hand and say you're only kidding." What do you make of it?