So the reason I was thinking about Batman and Catwoman was I’ve been playing the new Arkham Knight game. It’s good! After just going off on how the Arkham games have an edge up on GTA by not having any of the (out of style) driving genre in them, the third-to-last thing I expected was for the new one to have Burnout-style driving in it, the second-to-last thing was for it to have Japanese arcade-style tactical tank combat, and the absolute last thing I expected was for them both to work so well.

Also I’m really just appreciating how well the property works for open-world gaming because unlike other games it can easily make an in-universe explanation for all sorts of stuff that’s really a function of games-as-commercial-objects with “Because Batman”. Why is the same protagonist engaging in (and skilled at) melee combat, tool-based puzzles, car combat, aerial maneuvers, and mystery-solving? Because Batman. How do you expect us to buy a plot making all sorts of bounces and turnabouts to justify a bunch of different boss battles? Because Batman. Why are we still supposed to think of this guy as good when he spends the game taking out thousands of faceless mooks? Because Batman. Why are we taking time out to track down all sorts of hidden collectables? Because the Riddler, because Batman.

The one thing though, after 4 of these they’re scraping the bottom of the barrel as far as enemies goes. Consensus is that Batman has the best rogues’ gallery in comics, and further that that’s because so many of them work as twisted reflections of Batman.

To wit, Catwoman’s thing is dressing up in sexy black leather and going off on outside-the-law missions on the rooftops of Gotham; Penguin’s an orphan with a taste for high society; Joker (and to an extent Anarky) is as obsessive about creating chaos as Batman is with order; (Joker and Penguin are also hella fond of themed gadgets;) Scarecrow uses fear as a tool and a weapon; Two-Face has a split personality; Riddler is constantly showing off his supergenius; Mr. Freeze is driven by the memory of personal loss; Man-Bat is, uh.

(Harley Quinn is really a Robin - a sidekick who maintains absolute personal and professional loyalty in the face of how much suffering the role brings. That’s a big theme of this game and I’m surprised they didn’t use her more in it.)

Even the ones that don’t have such thematic resilience make a particular kind of sense for Batman - his “no guns” thing contrasts with Deadshot’s “only guns”; his combination of fighting skill and resilience are matched by Ra’s al Ghul, Bane, and Solomon Grundy. Poison Ivy is odd - plants and poison aren’t really meaningful to Batman, and actual superpowers are kind of peripheral to the Batverse, but what she is really, deadly kiss and all, is a distillation of the femme fatale figure. Recall that Batman is heir to the pulp tradition from which that archetype comes, and that poison is a traditionally female weapon.

But when you’re getting down to Deacon Blackfire and Firefly… well, I guess bats are the natural predators of insects, but “a pyromaniac with a jetpack” is kind of a stretch. I suppose the series has used Killer Croc and Calendar Man (and Mad Hatter, who I give a pass though on what principles I can’t tell) before. At least it’s not Condiment King, I suppose.

How the hell do you write this whole damn article and not once take the opportunity to call the guy a zealot?

softandanxious:

I gave this dude off tinder my number and all he’s done is send me pictures of his rock collection and it’s the best thing that’s ever come out of tinder tbh

In high school I was the go-to guy for all the kids to ask questions about drugs, not because I had much experience (I don’t think I even smoked tobacco or drank alcohol until 11th grade) but because I read a lot about them. Anyway, at some point I realized that people thought they put drugs up their nose so as to breathe them, so I worked up a snappy rhyme to correct them:

Insufflation
(to the tune of Frère Jacques)

Insufflation!
Insufflation!
Up the nose!
Up the nose!
Through the mucous membrane
Through the mucous membrane
There it goes
There it goes

Girl from high school in my Facebook feed, half the time I see her posts I’m like “ugh, I can’t believe I used to have a crush on you”. But today she posted some #tbt photos and I’m like “oh, okay” and felt better about myself.

In a bar on Alberta, forgot it had been Last Thursday. Highlights:

Guy who looks like a buff Vanilla Ice, is clearly on some good drugs comes out of the bathroom looking like he just returned from an adventure, bursts out laughing. “I thought it had been coming into *me*,” he explains.

Tie-dye hippies out front playing the wood flute and pan pipes… acceptably.

Two cigarette promo girls. Realize it was the first time I’d seen black girls doing it. Start to think, “I wonder what the racial breakdown is, and in similar roles like pharmaceutical company represe…”, realize the brand they’re promoting is Swisher Sweets.

Just had a dream where I met Uncle Sam, on the book tour for his autobiography.

It was called “Give Me A Gun, I’ll Solve It”, which was a) apparently a quote from a particularly memorable episode in his life and b) a little too on-the-nose, don’t you think?

lov-eswift:

Same

kontextmaschine:

DJ Spree - Summer Anthems 2009

DJ Spree did a “Summer Anthems” mix every year 2001-09 except ‘06 (I think). They’re some of my favorite mixes. This is ‘09, I guess the last one. Sniff.

Oh hey, I found a tracklist.

1) Recon - Open G-ds Eyes*
2) Brisk & Vagabond feat. DMO - Never Be Alone
3) Ultrabeat - I Wanna Touch You (Squad E Remix)
4) Dab Hands - Super Good (Sy & Unknown Remix)
5) Hixxy feat. Taya - Take Me To Heaven
6) Hypersonic v. Jorg Schmid - Doesn’t Matter (Reacon & Squad E Remix)
7) Anon. - No-One Else
8) Clubraiders - Move Your Hands Up (Al Storm Remix)
9) Druid & Stormtrooper - Electrified (DJ Kurt Remix)
10) Breeze Vs. Lost Witness feat. Louanne Feeney - Rise Again (Sy & Unknown Remix)
11) Brisk & Vagabond feat. Tess - Shouting Out
12) Eufeion - Ravers Groovin’ (S3RL Remix)
13) Slipper Disco - Feeling High (Kevin Energy Purist Remix)
14) Billy Daniel Bunter & Jon Doe - Round & Round (Sy & Unknown Remix)
15) Inverse & Orbit1 feat. Sunrise - Don’t U Know
16) DJ Stormtrooper feat. Kristy - On The Run
17) Hixxy - Deep In The Night
18) DJ Seduction feat. Alison Wade - Open Up (DJ Chaos Remix)
19) UFO & Supreme feat. Shelly Clifford - Best Days
20) Anon. - Show You The Way
21) Impact & Resist feat. Lisa Abbott - All I Want





*Jesus Christ, how many versions of Eyeopener are there?

This reminds me of a another one of my favorite little triumphs, up there with wielding a bully and a jerk against each other in high school gym class, this one coming in college. It was at a cafeteria table - this was the dining hall in Risley, which is quite nice - anyway, some folks I know were arguing about whether something I didn’t know the first thing about should be considered a shibboleth.

Eventually there was a break in the conversation. I looked up, drawing attention, and spoke.

“Actually,” I said, “it’s pronounced shibbolet.”

Now that’s cute enough but the thing that really makes this is that by saying that, and watching to see who chuckled and who looked confused, I was able to distinguish and sort the people who knew what they were talking about from the people who didn’t.

March 11: The Tiger has shown himself at Gap. The Troops are advancing on all sides to arrest his progress. He will conclude his miserable adventure by becoming a wanderer among the mountains.

I honestly think Trump has the best chance of being the next POTUS. (I peg him at 35%, Hillary at 30%, Jeb at 20%)

It’d be a realignment election that pivots the Republicans to a nativist welfarism, which is a realignment they’ll have to make sooner or later - it’s where their base is at already. If he can pull it off - “it” basically being the Sailer Strategy - and swing the Rust Belt red that’d give the GOP an electoral lock until and unless Texas flips (and the threatened Republicans’ inevitable divisionist gambit fails) and/or the next realignment comes. You’d cede bankers, blacks, and professionals with postgraduate degrees, but if you’ll recall so did the New Deal coalition.

Trump and Sanders are both burning up the floor and giving their party establishments heartburn pitching Scando-German native-producerist welfarism to a white audience, whoever can grab that ring first hoo boy. And as that recent Netroots Nation demonstrated, I think any pivot attempt’s going to face more resistance from the Dem base.

(If you look at the aftermath, you realize a lot of white progressives didn’t realize it would even be a pivot, they thought that’s where they’ve been since FDR and don’t seem to have recognized the Great Society/New Democrat thing as a realignment in the first place, largely because it didn’t work for them. Remember, “we will build an invincible coalition by adding minorities, feminists, the young, and the well-educated to our established lock on white producerists” was the Democratic plan in the 1970s. Admittedly, the numbers are better now on the left side of the formula, but the right… and I don’t think anyone has a coalition lined up right to win the actual shooting war they’d have to in order to make a realignment where no one was repping whiteness-as-such.)

Historically, there are two forces in American politics that can only be matched by each other - big capital and nationalism. Nationalism being white nationalism, as “white” is the national identity America constructed to legitimate and unify itself, much as “French” was deployed as France centralized in the early modern period.

The Republicans were doing pretty well since the 1970s because they managed to get both on the same side, but the Democrats have managed to sneak a lot of capital out from under them - notice all the religious freedom opposition, all the Wall Street money, Schumer and Cuomo basically being Rockefeller Democrats.

And some of the most well-known and respected Presidents have come to power in realignments that basically mobilized (white) nationalism against money power - Jackson, Lincoln*, and both Roosevelts. (Money usually comes back through steadier erosion and cooption.)

Everyone realizes that the subtext of Obama’s 2008 electoral appeal was that his victory would represent the integration of black and white as political subjects and finally after all this time relegate racial divides to the history books. And man, isn’t that fucking ironic.

Honestly, I think he tried, I don’t at all see him coming in with the plan for racial rabble-rousing the more ridiculous rightists attribute to him. I think early in his presidency he did the minimum lip service (and little more) necessary to service his coalition and hold it together, and the stuff after the ’14 midterms was him realizing it wasn’t going to work and doing what he could to leave the forces he actually had in the best position going forward.

And if he couldn’t make it work, fuck, man. Fuck.

(What it would really take is a culture hero figure like him coming in just in time to face and triumph over a massive external force - total war, basically - that would essentially allow them to refound the nation on a new mythos.)

* Abraham Lincoln, agent of white nationalism? Yep. Remember first that plantation agriculture was the economic engine of America - slaveholders were Big Business; and second that while people today remember the Republican anti-slavery coalition as driven by New England moralists, a huge component of it was actually midwestern (remember, Lincoln was from Illinois) smallholders (read: petit bourgeois) and mechanics (read: skilled industrial workers) following a “Free Soil/Free Labor” ideology, who hated slavery in the same sense and for the same reasons as their heirs hate illegal immigration.

Study the past, if you would divine the future.

grawly:

exeggcute:

beesmygod:

we live in the absolute worst cyberpunk future

this is the fucking weirdest sentence you could possibly construct

antoine-roquentin:

if you look outside at the full moon tonight, July 31, it’s the same one from Neon Genesis Evangelion episode 6, which takes place today.

gillie-92:

The Berkeley Library

I mean, you kinda just did, though I’m a little curious how - as in putting together a campaign infrastructure that’s not built on any party elites?

(One of the, if not THE thing about an elite education is you end up with connections all over the place, and I’ve been able to get a bit of a glimpse behind the curtain - I get the vibe that a lot of professional campaign staff signed on in the expectation of 2 or 3 months of paychecks and resume-polishing and are a little shocked to be where they are, but that in any case a lot of stuff that would normally be handled by career political staffers is done by the candidate himself or his personal/business staff.)

[Don’t underestimate the political experience of NYC land developers.]

Off the top of my head I’d say the best comparisons for Jackson’s ‘88 primary campaign would be Reagan ‘80 or Obama ‘08. Maybe McGovern ‘72? There might be a better comparison, but unsuccessful primary campaigns don’t leave much of a mark on history tbh.