Cultural Intolerance

Recently I was accused of being intolerant of "Arab culture" on the basis that I believed that honor killings are wrong. Typically speaking, an honor-killing means murdering a young woman who violates a cultural taboo, such as wearing forbidden clothing or talking to a boy from outside her family. They're apparently very common in the Middle East and there is a fear that they're becoming more prevalent amongst the Middle Eastern diaspora.

I was surprised at the allegation, and immediately had to analyze it. Now, the offenses that typically lead to a woman being targeted for death are not just commonplace, they're almost natural. Expected. Part of healthy social immersion. Some of the "crimes" didn't just seem out-of-place, but the seemed patently unfair. I remember a news report from my childhood where a woman was raped and her family retaliated by killing her. One man explained simply: she shouldn't have been raped, and if she was raped, it's her fault.

The victims are exclusively female; because the rules are gender dimorphic, it is impossible for a man to commit a crime with an honor-killing as its sentence. That was offensive to my sensibilities right out, and I was given pause. Of course I'm going to disagree with someone being punished for something I consider to be a normal human activity, but then, I'm also going to insist that someone doing something I consider to be a crime be punished.

In one breath, I'm accusing the woman of being innocent and the killer of a crime. What they consider execution and thus an act of justice, I consider a murder. Now, it helps that I believe all forms of execution to be murder and that only the most exigent of circumstances could possibly pardon any form of killing but defense of the self and the explicit and immediate defense of others.

But what makes my cultural assumption (that killing a child for talking to a boy is wrong) any more accurate than the assumption that not worshiping Jesus is wrong? How do I weigh my personal intolerance against a broader scope of intolerances? The answer came in the best way I could have hoped for: an evolving liberal culture that frowns on honor-killings. That way, I can dismiss the honor-killing culture as a negative offshoot, a rotten branch of individuals to be weighed against the virtuous culture that I happen to agree with.

But at the end of the day, I decided that I just had to weigh the facts and decide when it's okay for me to be intolerant. This is one of those times.

Christmas Horror

I was thinking of Halloween scares. Around Halloween, everybody has the same ideas. Werewolves and zombies and mummies, oh my! Halloween things aren't terribly scary because they're known quantities. You can rattle off a number of facts about any of them.

People fear the unknown and the unexpected. Which brings me to what actually got me thinking about Halloween the day after Christmas: Santa Claus. I owned an animatronic Santa Class that would pretend to read from a book while the tape deck in his grandfather clock played. The tape is replaceable: you can install whichever tape you want.

Recording his regular tape with a little extra screaming would be a great Halloween trick. A room in a Haunted House, decked out in complete Christmas gear, but with some disturbing juxtapositions. Plus, it ruins Christmas. Good times!

How To Write A Comedy Article, According to Someone Who has Never Written Comedy

So you want to write a comedy article? Break into the glamorous lifestyle of an internet comedy writer, maybe to impress the ladies, maybe to make a little scratch? Holy shit, that's actually a good idea. I mean, seriously, ladies love funny guys, right? And nothing beats a little scratch. Like, right between the shoulder blades. Well, as long as we're talking about what a great idea it is

Brainstorming

When you're looking for something to write about, high school English teachers, laid-back college professors, and Robert Brockway all recommend the same thing. Write what you know. Find something you know a lot about, that you care about, and write the shit out of it. That's great, and ordinarily I'd agree, but writing is a lot of work. Do you really want to taint something you love, something that fills the dreary hours on your endless slog towards your inevitable death, by associating it with the self-loathing all forms of employment create? By turning this beautiful, pure thing into a job? No way, man, fuck no. So you have to write about something you hate. That's the only way to ensure you never associate the pleasure of thinking about Pokemon with the agony of your editor burning you with cigars for not handing in your article on the mating habits of Pikachu on time. Unless you're into that, I guess, but I don't think that guy is going to appreciate you getting off on his cigar burns. Plus, if you want somebody to listen to you on the Internet, hating everything they love is probably the best way, and any press is good press, right?

Research

Why do you have to do research, again? I thought I told you to write about something you hate. How can you hate something if you haven't already researched it properly? To truly hate something, you should know everything about it, so you can properly appreciate how it's terrible and inferior to whatever it is you love. Well, I suppose if you really have to write about something, and you think research is absolutely necessary, I would recommend a library, I guess? You might remember them from grade school, those fear-scented places where elderly women would extort your allowance because you supposedly didn't return your books on time, even though they said they were "Free, to take home and everything." Don't go to your grade school library, though. You're writing Internet Comedy and I'm pretty sure it's illegal to smell like a brewery on school grounds. No, you'll have to go to the public library. If you don't know where it is, I'd recommend following a homeless guy that looks like he needs to go to the bathroom.

Libraries: They're like if Wikipedia and a music festival port-a-potty had a baby.

Haha, holy shit, you actually followed a homeless man? He probably went down to the trainyard to eat beans over a burning oil barrel or something, right? I'm pretty sure that's what homeless guys do. Wait, do they even have trainyards still? Is that a thing? Just a sec, lemme Google the nearest trainyard.

Oh! Shit, right, Google. If you want to do research, Google is your guy. They have everything on there. You probably could have just gone on there right away, instead of following a penniless indigent down to his bean-eatin' hole.

Boners
You knew it was coming to this. You're writing a comedy article, not an article for National Geographic. Boners are the wellspring of comedy, and any aspiring comedy author should be able to appreciate them and manipulate any paragraph to accommodate at least one reference to them. In fact, truly talented writers will spend anywhere between three and six hours just manipulating paragraphs every day. Talk about dedication. Also, balls. My sources tell me there is nothing funnier than describing something with an apt testicle metaphor, so try to work them in too. For maximum effect, I find that describing them as being dangerously swollen and also made from some sort of industrial metal works nicely.

Writing

This is easily the least important part of writing a comedy article. Having selected a topic you hate, and learned all the possible reasons to hate it, draft up an outline. It doesn't have to be complex. Mine was just a drawing of a writer I made with some spilled scotch on the back of my riding lawnmower. Once your outline is finished, work from it directly and don't ever change it, whatever you do. This is your baby, and changing it is a sign of weakness and also possibly sobriety, and you didn't write this article while drinking scotch on the back of a riding lawnmower to look like a sober weakling, did you? Plus, changing things is a lot of work, and I don't think anybody got into writing to do a lot of work.
Next, you bring living, breathing sentences into the world. Every single word is like a baby. No, wait, I said "sentence", so I guess a word is like... an arm or something? Anyway, it's a part of a baby, that you're birthing. It's your art. Your art-baby. Remember to read your outline while you're doing it, so you know what to do next. You better do it fast because scotch evaporates really fast and you're going to be thirsty before you finish.

Editing and Spellchecking

It took about six hours of repeating "editing and spellchecking" while rubbing my chin pensively in the doorway at Bookworld, but eventually I learned that this is "the process of correcting and revising a text", and that it is possible to pensively rub a beard right off. Also, that clerks at Bookworld will do anything to get someone with a bleeding chin-wound out of their doorway. And I mean anything. Anyway, I'm pretty sure they have people for this. People whose entire job, in fact, is to edit things. So make sure to make a ton of spelling mistakes and stuff. These people depend on writers like us to make mistakes for them to correct. Now that I know about this, I've gone back and peppered my article with spelling and grammar errors, just to let them know I care. A couple well-plaecd spelling errors should ingratiate you with these editor guys, and they'll be so grateful they'll definitely ensure that your work gets published.

Enjoying your Internet Fame

Now that you've been published by a reputable vendor of Internet Comedy, it's your job to take that check for $50 and turn it into more comedy. Many creators may recommend that the surest paths to Internet comedy are alcohol and unique pornography, but that's too passe. Some fringe guys might recommend upping the ante with hard drugs and anonymous sex, but anyone can do those. You want to be a unique, shining star, right? I would recommend upright sobriety and clean living. Shave every day, and only have sex in the missionary position. Trust me.

Terrorists

Recently I watched an episode of a teevee show where a military operative is gathering intel in Yemen. He is targeted by a terrorist and his wife and young daughter die in the attack. Fueled by rage, he spends the next decade desperately hunting the terrorist down. Finally, he's about to exact his revenge when his plan goes awry and he's captured. In a terrorist... prison thingy, he discusses the difference between what he's doing (in order to get revenge for his family) and what the terrorist is doing (fighting for God's will). Of course, the terrorist quotes the Quran and is corrected by our hero. Finally, he's freed by an ally, and desperate to exact his revenge he concocts a suicide mission that involves stabbing his target to death in an airport (an act that will definitely get him killed by airport security).

His plan is foiled at the last minute, and I assume the ironic notes in his path for vengeance were intentional. I mean, entering a foreign country in order to kill a citizen, being waterboarded, and then attempting a suicide mission? No, that has to be a move to deliberately reverse the characters arc, and get us sympathizing with someone who is, for every single intent and purpose, a terrorist.

I should clarify that. He's going to stab someone to death on a plane, and clearly his goal isn't "terror", but revenge. However! Imagine if the situation were reversed. An Arab's family is collateral damage. He spends years tracking down the American officer who ordered the attack, and when he's just about to take his revenge, he's foiled and waterboarded. He escapes and returns to his mission, eager to do whatever it takes, even die, to get revenge. He goes onto a plane, and he murders someone. Honestly, I find it hard to believe that they could make him a sympathetic character in the States. After thinking about that, I found myself thinking about every scenario where terrorists are used as stock villains.

The scene in Iron Man where terrorists kidnap Tony Stark and force him to build a bomb for them, bearing in mind that Tony develops weapons. Now imagine he's a wealthy Saudi blasting his way out of an American prison. The irony is that I couldn't even bring myself to give him ties to a terrorist organization (to match Tony's role as an arms dealer), because even as I was thinking it I realized he wouldn't be sympathetic. He almost couldn't be.

It would be interesting, though, to see how it played out. I think it's understandable that we don't necessarily appreciate the goals and motives of people with outlooks so alien from our own (especially when we are personally singled out for victimization). Still, though, I'm reasonably confident that transplanting goals that American moviegoers have identified as profoundly sympathetic (the grieving father exacting revenge) into a non-American and then using Americans as the Big Bad would not be well-met. Especially if the avenging character exacted the same merciless, pitiless tactics that are so favored by our imaginary elite agents.

Sinners Repent! The End is Nigh!

After hearing about e-Readers, I've been trying to decide how badly I want one. The reading habits that spurred me towards librarianship in high school gradually evaporated as I began to turn towards graphic novels in 2004, and after four and half years of associating reading with school work and carrying my customary hatred of schoolwork over into my life, I'm criminally underread.

The biggest obstacle to returning to the literate fold is getting books. My apartment is tiny and I have almost no room for book storage. So getting an e-reader seems like a good idea. The logical next step, right? On the other hand, it's difficult to read things like the comic above and not find yourself smirking meaningfully. There is an assumed holiness about the codex, the book, that makes replacing it feel strange. It doesn't help that as an owner of books there is a lot to be said about the parallel economy one uses to move them back and forth long after they've fallen out of print, or that I distinctly remember passages from dystopian novels where characters would cradle computer screens and pine meaningfully for the days of paper books.

Even aside from any psychological or superstitious reasons to value books over e-readers (which are especially ridiculous from someone who claims that Content is king), the e-readers have the same practical problems that make me wary when it comes to other electronics. If I drop my book at the beach, I'm a little disappointed because my book is soggy. At worst, I have to replace it with another copy. If I drop my e-reader in the water, my whole library is obliterated. To paraphrase Jerry Holkins: "It's as if you murdered all your favorite authors." Obviously it's recoverable in theory, but that's what they said about my iTunes music before my laptop caught fire. My house is significantly less prone to catching fire and falling to ruin than any electronic device I've ever seen, and I've never accidentally mislaid my entire collection of A Series of Unfortunate Events while changing terminals at LAX.

My point is that all the convenience of an e-book, well sold to me by the group discussing it, vanishes with my proclivity for losing such an device. And the cost benefit isn't there--even if books were significantly cheaper with a Kindle, I simply don't deal frequently enough in them to justify the purchase of a $140 device. Ignoring textbooks, I have purchased approximately forty books for my reading pleasure in the last four years. Most of them were graphic novels, but all of them were purchased to be shared. Hell, when I was in High School I ran a small psuedo-library loaning graphic novels to friends.

So I think I'll stick to my codex for a while, thank you kindly.

Ruth Brown

McCarthyism is a weird thing to think about because the paranoia that's inherent in it seems so frivolous now, but only because we've seen it, experienced it. However, the belief that we've beaten it is pervasive and should be ignored--after all, with the Patriot Act I think we're still fighting Ruth Brown's fight.

I enjoy reading about spunky librarians that stand up for the freedom of their patrons and protect the information in their libraries, but hearing about it and the pervasiveness of anti-Communist actions in the States (and considering the ways that the Red Scare continues to influence public policy), I guess I'm a little curious about people who wouldn't get (and perhaps don't deserve) their own book.

The librarians who gave in and let their libraries open to the jackals. They definitely existed--after all, Ruth's story wouldn't be half as interesting if it was just a description of the behavior of librarians during the middle of the century. So what was going through these people's heads as they sacrificed their libraries to sickle-hungry jackal? Who were they? What did we lose as a result of their actions?

This warrants some investigation.

Better Homes and Libraries

I'm a Terry Pratchett fan. Not a big fan; although I've been familiar with his works for years I'd been exposed to several of his books unawares and I'm just now becoming familiar with the effect one of his books had on my developing sense of aesthetic. In the book--I don't remember which one--an early scene takes place in a library, with rows of books stacked across shelves so innumerable they may be quantum entangled with every other row of stacks everywhere in the multiverse. The power the books have is so strong it must be contained, and whispers along bronze chains. Libraries are described as places of supreme power, and this particular library has a collection whose knowledge generates tidal forces that shift reality unpredictably and have turned the local librarian into an orangutan. Undaunted by his transmogrification, he continues to traverse the vastness of his arcane pocket universe.

This was the image that rollicked through my brain when I first entered Memorial Library, and it's the reason that in my mind the musty book dungeon is the only proper library I've ever encountered. I swear the shelving rearranges itself while you're not looking, and the stairs don't always lead to the same floors. A narrow hallway becomes that much more vast when the walls are bookshelves.

The book fetish is understandable amongst a group of people whose profession has long been guardians of those books, from a time when the book and its content were analogous. As that becomes less true, we see a shift towards digital content. Digital content means more freedom as works can iterate faster, can wheel more freely. In a profession obsessed with making information accessible, it seem strange that instantly searchable, broadly available digital documents wouldn't be welcomed. I'd expect them to be met as old friends, or likeminded allies, lionized and glorified in verse and song.

It can't merely be the aesthetic pleasure of creeping through a hallway densely packed with the desecrated corpses of trees, but still, the thought of libraries turning into rec rooms with goofy little furniture and "futuristic" decor that will look hopelessly dated in ten years feels adequately bleak, even as their ability to serve that patron increases.

Maybe my thinly veiled contempt for the masses who become patrons is coloring my vision a little.