Remember the Russian cult that venerated Gadget Hackwrench as a goddess? (I want all my cults to be that benign.) Worshipers or no worshipers, she had a good run -- nothing like twenty-odd years of internet fan fiction and art to keep a character's flame burning.

But things change. Some of the younger members of our community have no idea who Gadget is, or why so many annoying, middle-aged furs are, or were, so obsessed with her. Each furry generation has its cartoon lodestar, and it's clear that Judy Hopps is the new Gadget: the reigning queen of Rule 34.

Not that I'm kvetching; my days of drawing Rule 34 stuff are long over (as are my days of reading most fanfic). Judy is inspiring a lot of artists to do some of their best work, and that's always a pleasure to see.

I guess the point I'm making is that change is hard, but change can be good. Certainly, change is inevitable. So, my cartoon girls -- l'chaim!

"It's kind of unusual," he said. "A Wordsworth scholar buying an autographed Francois Truffaut autobiography?"

"What's so unusual?" I replied. I couldn't resist. "The world is too much with Antoine Doinel. Getting and spending and chasing skirts, he lays waste his powers."

I love having friends and co-workers who get my jokes.

BARTENDER (Shout! Factory Blu-ray, 2021)
https://www.amazon.com/Bartender-Blu-ray-Takahiro-Mizushima/dp/B07GNTRTBK/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3AZ0QMS4CRMYO&dchild=1&keywords=bartender+anime&qid=1613366497&s=movies-tv&sprefix=bartender%2Caps%2C223&sr=1-1

BARTENDER (2006) belongs to "the great good place" drama, "magical saloon" division. It's what we like to imagine about cocktail culture: the intimate faux-speakeasy as an oasis of sanity, civility, calm, and clarity where we can be our best selves while imbibing the best booze. Ryu Sasakura, soft-spoken virtuoso bartender, is the face of Eden Hall, a Ginza hideaway. He's part Sherlock Holmes, part Dr. Phil, a cocktail wizard who knows exactly what you need to feel whole again.

It's an anthology series about troubled people solving their problems with the help of a good drink and a sympathetic ear. Not that alcohol makes our troubles disappear, however much I wish that was the case, but that we all need a little help now and then. The characters on this show have a habit of breaking the fourth wall to address the viewer directly, a device that could quickly wear out its welcome anywhere else. Here it's used more as a satori-like insight that simply must be shared with the viewer: "It's all so clear now! Why didn't I see it before?"

Shout Factory's Blu-ray packaging is both deluxe and bare bones: you get a slipcase, four cardboard coasters, and nine color cocktail recipe cards, but no episode listing (the whole series is just eleven episodes) and no technical information on the discs themselves (they're 1:78:1, region A, and there's no English dub, just subtitled Japanese). The only extras are the usual clean opening and closing credits, and clean bumpers (Art Nouveau-style booze illustrations).

https://www.amazon.com/OISHINBO-JAPANESE-CUISINE-Tetsu-Kariya/dp/1421521393/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2E0AB0M3MCL6J&dchild=1&keywords=oishinbo&qid=1612760243&s=books&sprefix=oishinbo%2Caps%2C227&sr=1-1

https://www.amazon.com/What-Did-You-Yesterday-Vol-ebook/dp/B08547QSYM/ref=sr_1_1?crid=2UNVZVYN46ACS&dchild=1&keywords=what+did+you+eat+yesterday&qid=1612760285&s=books&sprefix=what+did+you+%2Cstripbooks%2C206&sr=1-1

Can you love food without fetishizing it? Of two manga series I'm now enjoying, one smiles and gently sidesteps my question; the other finds me unworthy of an answer.

The latter series, OISHINBO, is a well-intentioned, didactic manga utterly convinced that the soul of a people is expressed as much through its cuisine as its fine arts -- a view both cosmopolitan and nationalistic. An ongoing series since 1983, OISHINBO's simplistically-rendered human characters and photorealistic drawings of food, drink, and architecture reflect the strip's elevation of aesthetics above all else. This manga is obsessed with the philosophical question, "What is Japanese cuisine?" (and with the deeper question, "What is Japan?"); its characters are plot functions who don't grow, change, or evolve, though the strip has run for decades. Journalists Yamaoka and Kurita, the Holmes and Watson of haute cuisine, exist to show the background characters -- their stooges -- how learning to properly prepare and appreciate Japanese cuisine can heal their souls; their Moriarty, Yamaoka's impossibly demanding father Kaibara, exists to humiliate his son at every opportunity.

But as I said, I'm enjoying this series. The English translation consists of seven volumes of highlights from the 111-volume series, which is probably as much of OISHINBO as any non-Japanese reader needs. I've never seen a bowl of ramen, a slice of sashimi, or a cup of sake look so enticing in the comics as they do here. This manga won't teach you how to cook, but it'll renew your appreciation for the appearance, aroma, and taste of good food and drink.

The series I'm enjoying even more (well, a lot more) is Fumi Yoshinaga's WHAT DID YOU EAT YESTERDAY? (2007 - ongoing), a recipe manga free of any highfalutin' notions of culinary idealism. Food in this series is what brings people together -- specifically, a middle-aged gay couple, Kenji and Shiro, and their circle of friends, co-workers, and parents, characters who make up this manga's small but richly observed world.

Each character has a distinct personality, and one of the two great pleasures of this series is that we get to know them so well over the course of a series in which nothing remotely melodramatic happens, that an awkward dinner for four friends talking at cross-purposes results in a panel of exquisitely painful high comedy, and decisions made in one chapter can have an emotionally devastating payoff several volumes later. The other great pleasure is the centerpiece of each chapter, the preparation of a delicious, healthy, and fairly elaborate gourmet meal, using only cheap, commonplace ingredients (commonplace in the Japanese kitchen, that is). The reader learns to appreciate the stimulating variety of flavors in a well-balanced meal and the astonishing versatility of miso soups and veggie sides, as well as how to synchronize the prep and cooking times of three or four different dishes in a small kitchen.

Everyone in WDYEY ages in more-or-less real time, making us more aware of how our dietary needs change as we get older; not something that OISHINBO really cares about. The drawings are functional rather than eyecatching, but that's fine. Two manga that I like, then: one the epitome of the fine dining experience, one pure comfort food. Only one of them needs a reminder that food is part of life, not its purpose.

What've you been enjoying lately?

....said commentator David Brooks, looking and sounding healthier than he has in the last three years.

I agree. Not having reactionary populism, Second Amendment fundamentalism, and belief in conspiracy theories as official government policy is a nice change of pace.

"Carry yourself with the confidence of a mediocre white man!"

You'll be glad you did.

PARANOIA AGENT directed by Satoshi Kon (Funimation Blu-ray)

https://www.amazon.com/Paranoia-Agent-Blu-ray-Michael-McConnohie/dp/B08JF5FHJN/ref=sr_1_1?crid=3HZ08NSOHKC1U&dchild=1&keywords=paranoia+agent&qid=1609042761&s=movies-tv&sprefix=parano%2Caps%2C219&sr=1-1

Satoshi Kon (1963-2010) is not an easy filmmaker to pigeonhole. The adult mystery/thriller PERFECT BLUE (1997), the hallucinatory romance MILLENIUM ACTRESS (2001), the Christmas comedy TOKYO GODFATHERS (2003) -- Kon was not an artist who liked to repeat himself. The TV series PARANOIA AGENT (2004) at first seems like a return to the mystery/thriller genre, but as the story wades deeper into science fiction/horror territory, with an ensemble cast whose members are neither completely reliable nor completely sympathetic, there's something going on here that's not easy to grasp.

I'm sure PARANOIA AGENT is more than just a compulsively watchable puzzle that Kon gave his audience to solve, but what's it really about? Everyone's guilty of something, and acting out of necessity, but at a terrible moral and psychological cost. Ordinary people, from all walks of life, do appalling things, and convince themselves they're not to blame, and slowly, blamelessly, usher in their own destruction...but what about that grinning, homicidal kid with the baseball bat?

The violence is more stylized and less graphic than that in PERFECT BLUE, but PARANOIA AGENT does have some nudity and a brief sex scene between an ugly man and a prostitute. The ending, while powerful, raises as many questions as it answers, and the whole series depicts urban Japan as a time bomb on the verge of exploding, which it does in the apocalyptic climax. Please don't "understand" it too quickly.

I haven't seen the Animaniacs reboot; I refuse to get my hopes up. If you're wondering why, it's because I remember the 1990s series. This is a reply I posted in a previous journal, but it's better off in a journal entry of its own.

Early '90s cartoons had a lot going against them, most notably that the writers (who couldn't draw) were privileged over the animators (who were considered field hands). The result: illustrated radio. Further results: "clever" scripts (translation: not funny); "adult" humor (translation: over the heads of the kids who were supposed to be the show's audience); boring characters (anybody remember Rita and Runt, Mindy and Buttons, Katie Ka-Boom, and the Goodfeathers? Didn't think so).

Yakko, Wakko, and Dot were a hive-mind version of Daffy Duck before Daffy developed a personality. Random lunacy isn't that interesting.

Minerva Mink is the incarnation of Rule 34, so of course she was jettisoned almost immediately.

Pinky and the Brain was the one segment of the show in which the writers were allowed to use their imagination, so of course they were spun off into their own show. Which was ruined by the addition of Elmyra.

Do I sound bitter?

[EDIT: As long as we're on the subject, will it surprise anyone that I find the 1990-92 Tiny Toon Adventures unwatchable? As the animated teen sex comedy of our feverish furry imaginations, it's brilliant. As a TV series, it's depressingly dull -- recycled characters doing recycled gags.]

A BRIEF HISTORY OF ALBUM COVERS by Jason Draper (2008 edition)

173 album covers, reproduced in a handy 6.5" x 6.5" format -- better than a 5" x 5" CD booklet, and doing what justice it can to a 12" x 12" LP sleeve. Author Jason Draper sees album covers (the better-designed ones, anyway) as "cultural statements, on which fantasies were projected and unorthodox cigarettes were rolled." In other words, he's searching some of the ultimate objects of consumer capitalism for moments of imagination and transcendence. Sounds good to me.

Weirdly, Draper declines to identify many of the photographers, designers, and artists who created the covers, giving us only his one-paragraph interpretations of the images, along with a list of songwriters for that album. Although there were plenty of talented graphic designers in the era of the 10" disc (Axel Steinweiss, Jim Flora, and Robert Jones come to mind), Draper's survey begins well into the LP era, with a selection of 'fifties jazz (the biggest-selling format for rock 'n roll was the 45 rpm single, not the album). The 'sixties, for Draper, don't begin until 1965, with Bob Dylan's baroquely symbolic cover for BRINGING IT ALL BACK HOME. From there on, it's the usual suspects, with a few surprises (Scott Walker, Soft Machine, It's a Beautiful Day, Plastic Ono Band).

Rather than concentrate on the elaborate airbrush paintings that seemed to define 'seventies album covers, Draper casts a wider net and drags in absolutely everything: Pink Floyd's cow portrait, Sly Stone's "improved" American flag, Bob Marley & the Wailer's "Zippo" cover, Neon Park's cartoon paintings, Kraftwerk's Constructivist group portrait, Supertramp's NYC-as-a-breakfast-table skyline, a drunken Carly Simon on her knees in lingerie and knee-length boots. The 'eighties, the decade of new romanticism, synthpop, metal, dance music, and political protest rock, seems to have fallen back on more conservative imagery, aside from Prince's thong, the Dead Kennedys' burning police cars, Bow Wow Wow's nude, 15-year-old girl, and H.R. Giger's mutilated Debbie Harry.

The 'nineties: a decade of self-loathing slackers, hip hop thugs, and NPR listeners wondering what to make of it all. By this time, there were no consensus heroes in rock or pop, and the visual aesthetic on display here is a cool, distancing irony, occasionally leavened with deadpan humor: Ol' Dirty Bastard's welfare card, a porn star on the cover of Blink-182's ENEMA OF THE STATE, the unidentifiable thing captured in mid-leap on Beck's ODELAY.

Frankly, I don't know what to make of the album covers from 2000-2006, but some older and really distinctive covers are conspicuous by their absence: THE GILDED PALACE OF SIN (A&M, 1969); UNHALFBRICKING (Island, 1969); PINK MOON (Island, 1972); the original version of APPETITE FOR DESTRUCTION (Geffen, 1987); DANGEROUS (Epic, 1991); CONGREGATION (Sub Pop, 1992); GENTLEMEN (Elektra/Blast First, 1993); LIVE THROUGH THIS (DGC, 1994). Your list will differ from mine.

More of my musings on hits from the 33-1/3 series:

AC/DC'S HIGHWAY TO HELL by Joe Bonomo

Australia's Game-Changing "Punk" Band

Reading this as an interested outsider rather than a committed AC/DC fan, I wanted an answer to the question on the back cover blurb: "Why does HIGHWAY TO HELL matter to anyone beyond non-ironic teenagers?"

I'm not sure that question can really be answered. A classic album of loud, headbanging songs about rough sex and the pursuit of more of the same doesn't stand up to deep analysis, and why should it? It's music for the body, not the mind, and it can be performed and recorded well or badly. The energy and sincerity of this music was caught live in the studio by an engineer and producer who knew enough to get out of the band's way and let them rock out, and that it turned out to be singer Bon Scott's drunken last will and testament is one of the ironies of pop art.

Writer Joe Bonomo does an excellent job of analyzing these tracks, arguing for what works (or doesn't) for him, and goes on to muse on some telling photographs of the band in their up-and-coming years, and to ask for his high school friends' recollections of this music, and what it means to them now. He has little use for AC/DC's records with Brian Johnson as the frontman; Bon Scott's perpetual adolescence, however damaging, was both genuine and irreplaceable.

[Note: AC/DC has just released POWER UP, their first new album since the death of rhythm guitarist/co-founder Malcolm Young in 2017.]


MILES DAVIS'S BITCHES BREW by George Grella

So Who Needs Swing?

BITCHES BREW is called a fusion record, but a fusion of what? It's played by top-drawer jazz musicians who aren't even trying to swing; it's full of electric instruments, but without anything resembling a rock beat. Author George Grella calls it a funk record, albeit a funk record informed by the avant-garde music of such European composers as Edgard Varèse and Krzysztof Penderecki. It's deep, danceable grooves layered with ear-stretching improvisations, an in-the-moment ritual music blatantly subjected to studio manipulation like any other pop record. No wonder so many listeners just didn't get it; there was no shortage of reactionaries content to label it anti-jazz and call it a day.

Grella asserts that the album's influence is "everywhere and nowhere," a hazy nod at the John Zorn-Talking Heads-Sonic Youth Downtown art scene, but what can you say about an album that doesn't sound like any other musical recording, and was a clear and unambiguous influence on only one band, Weather Report? This is an outstanding book in the 33 1/3 series: Grella packs an amazing amount of cultural, historical, and technical analysis into a little over a hundred pages, and will make you eager to listen to these six demanding, unsettling, and deeply funky musical collages all over again.


BOBBIE GENTRY'S ODE TO BILLIE JOE by Tara Murtha

"If you can't be free, be a mystery"

Bobbie Gentry tried on a lot of musical styles in her two-decade career, from Tiki lounge novelty act to sultry swamp rocker, from MOR duets with Glen Campbell to the musical theater-style production numbers of her final Capitol album. What it comes down to, though, is a four-and-a-half minute voice and guitar demo recording, sweetened with strings, that became the monster pop hit of the summer of 1967: "Ode to Billie Joe," the most mysterious of all teen suicide songs.

Gentry herself has remained a mystery since quietly fading from public life in the early 1980s. Journalist Tara Murtha certainly hasn't solved THAT puzzle -- that of a pop artist who now seems to care for little besides her privacy -- but she does give us the definitive book about the genesis, reception, and meanings of Bobbie Gentry's great story-song. The singer herself is a prismatic figure: a talented writer and performer, a hard-headed businesswoman, a pragmatic feminist who exploited her good looks, a Vegas headliner who could've earned the title "the hardest working woman in show business," if anyone had thought to give it to her. (Elvis was an enthusiastic fan of Gentry's rock 'em, sock 'em tribute shows to himself.)

Murtha grapples with the long-forgotten 1975 movie, "Ode to Billy Joe," whose frustrated screenwriter added a whole new layer to the story ("Now that I know why Billy Joe McAllister jumped off the Tallahatchie Bridge," began Roger Ebert's review, "I almost wish I didn't."). A fascinating book about a fascinating song, and in both of them, solving the mystery isn't really the point after all.

I love the 33-1/3 series from Continuum/Bloomsbury. They're rock album monographs by a revolving cast of writers (underemployed academics, mostly) who get to geek out on one "classic" album for +/-130 pages.

The writing runs the gamut from the insightful to the insufferable, and I'll gladly read about albums I haven't even heard 'cause I'm interested in what the writer has to say ('til they convince me that they have nothing to say, which sometimes happens). Here are my takes on three of the books in this hit-or-miss series:

BEAT HAPPENING by Bryan C. Parker

Stretching the boundaries of punk, or just crappy amateurs?

Punk rock was supposed to be sloppy and amateurish, right? So far, so good -- but instead of angry guys with guitars, Beat Happening had whimsy, and a playful, deconstructive, and gender-inclusive -- one might call it aggressively fey -- approach to punk that earned lead singer Calvin Johnson a broken nose from a hurled ashtray at a Fugazi gig, and some angry heckling and an onstage groping by Henry Rollins at a Black Flag show.

Not your typical punks, Beat Happening's otherworldly DIYers seem more like characters from a PORTLANDIA sketch than a noteworthy band, but it's author Bryan Parker's contention that by challenging and expanding the definitions of punk, these godparents of twee are important, and that while their music is hard to take, it doesn't suck. Really. This book goes into considerable detail about the early '80s alternative music scene in Olympia, Washington; about the unconventional educations of band members Calvin, Heather, and Bret; and about the dissemination of Beat Happening's self-titled debut in the pre-internet wilderness of Reagan's America.

Parker considers his book not just the story of a band but a self-help manual for aspiring artists, encouraging his readers to take their cues from BH's fearless, just-jump-in-and-do-it ethos. Of course, I'm still divided on whether unskilled musicians playing in public demonstrate admirable self-confidence, or an utter contempt for their audience.


LIZ PHAIR'S EXILE IN GUYVILLE by Gina Arnold

Rock (and rock criticism) vs. the patriarchy

Gina Arnold isn't dancing on rock criticism's grave, not exactly. She's just happy to see the indie rock boys' club that punished Liz Phair for not knowing her place wither into irrelevance, and she's embarrassed at her belated realization that her own youthful rock writing didn't help the bands she cared about: it helped the music industry to move product. It didn't matter which product.

Arnold's 33 1/3 entry isn't a book-length record review of EXILE IN GUYVILLE, but a short critique of (socially constructed) gender roles in the indie rock world -- a scene that turned out to be no more progressive than the classic rock or punk rock worlds. Male artists were more "authentic," male critics were more discerning, and the idea of a woman stepping up and riffing on the Stones' beloved EXILE ON MAIN STREET wasn't just lame: it was a personal insult to rock fans. Arnold's argument that GUYVILLE was a life-changing record (if you were a female listener in the thick of the '90s indie rock scene, anyway) is that Liz Phair pitted her music against a sexism so normative in the industry that few male songwriters or critics were conscious of it even as they were writing it.

If you've never heard GUYVILLE, Arnold isn't going to make you excited about hearing it. "Despite my dislike of [the Rolling Stones]," she writes, "deep down I don't actually think that GUYVILLE is a better record than MAIN STREET. I just think I like it a lot better." It's the gender politics, not the singing or the guitar playing, that's most exciting about this album. Is that such a bad thing?


STEELY DAN'S AJA by Don Breithaupt

This One's for Real

"I was not going to be able to write convincingly about AJA without delving into its musical and technical underpinnings," warns Don Breithaupt in his preface. "Steely Dan aren't a garage band." For those of us curious about what makes this album stand out from other 'seventies pop records -- its gorgeous melodies, its jazzlike half-step, downward chord progressions, its memorable sax solos by Wayne Shorter and Pete Christlieb, its riot of assonance, alliteration, and enjambment in the lyrics, its bleak but sophisticated worldview -- it's a first-rate critical guide to an album that some of us just can't get out of our heads.

In a passage that now feels more like science fiction than historical reality, Breithaupt reminds us that 'seventies Top 40 radio was a pan-categorical playground where Steely Dan shared the airwaves with bands playing "mainstream pop, disco, punk, funk, singer-songwriter fare, bubblegum, blue-eyed soul, Britpop, country, folk, MOR, orchestral music, smooth jazz, hard rock, soft rock, corporate rock, glam rock, roots rock, southern rock, and progressive rock," and that it wasn't really relevant whether or not listeners liked all of it; at least they had the chance to hear all of it. Ideal conditions for a beyond-category band like Steely Dan, even with their refusal to write love songs (unless you count GAUCHO's "Time Out of Mind," a love song to black tar heroin).

"There are innumerable instances of things which attach themselves to something else, then waste and destroy it. The body has lice; a house has mice; a country has robbers; inferior men have riches; superior men have benevolence and righteousness; priests have the Buddhist law."

-Kenkō, Essays in Idleness (Tsurezuregusa), c. 1330-32

This is Daoist as fuck.

Talking with a friend recently and it occurred to me that maybe I should share this with y'all.

I'm hard to get in touch with. Email and FA messaging aren't how people communicate now; in fact, they're kind of a pain in the ass for everyone who ain't me. During the lockdown, I briefly considered signing up for Telegram after a friend was kind enough to invite me; problem is, a) I don't carry a smartphone, and b) I really don't want to create another social media account. I'm sorry, but as the man said, include me out.

Artwise, I used to joke that I did my best drawing when I was unemployed; now it seems I do my ONLY drawing when I'm unemployed. Twenty years ago I used to enjoy sitting down at the drafting table after work; now I only look forward to cooking, wine, cocktails, 'Rat's company, and an increasingly elusive good night's sleep. The rest is gravy.

Getting old sucks -- but not that much, really.

HENCH by Natalie Zina Walschots (Wm. Morrow, 2020, 978-006-2978578)

https://www.amazon.com/Hench-Novel-Natalie-Zina-Walschots/dp/0062978578/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=1602188776&sr=1-1

What if it was up to the villains to save the world from the heroes? Call it a satirical impulse if you like, but what the author of this amazing debut novel is arguing is that we live in a world so far beyond satire that even our fantasies have become meaner and more desperate.

Anna, our narrator and millenial Everywoman, is living hand to mouth as a temp worker; her latest assignment, as an assistant to a second-rate supervillain, ends when the World's Greatest Hero steps in, leaving several people dead and Anna disabled, unemployed, and effectively homeless. With nothing to do except the math, she logs on, crunches the numbers for days, and asks: Aren't superheroes more like natural disasters than persons? Don't their actions literally create more problems than they solve?

The novel charts Anna's evolution from crackpot conspiracy theorist to arch-nemesis, and the quiet miracle of Hench is that it manages to make the choice of embracing the dark side seem perfectly reasonable (organized evil sure does have good medical benefits). Note, too, how Anna's supervillain name, first hurled at her as a sexist insult, then taken up as an office joke, eventually becomes a name even her enemies respect. You gotta love that.

There's a lot to enjoy here, not least the novel's diversity -- the cast is full of nonwhite, queer, and nonbinary characters -- but also the way the story is built on a philosophical foundation of the problem of evil. That's a problem (liberated from its theological context) of value judgments, free will, and right and wrong actions. Objectively: how many lives (innocent or not) and livelihoods do superheroes cost? Subjectively: what if the line between good and evil is a matter of marketing?

The geeky comic book fans of forty and fifty years ago now run the entertainment industry, and I'm surprised only at how few prose novels about the superhero milieu ever get noticed outside of an SF niche. The last one to get mainstream exposure that I remember, Austin Grossman's Soon I Will Be Invincible (2007), still follows what you might call "the unwritten rules," in which superbeings can bust up a city block in a fight without inflicting a single civilian casualty, and there's certainly no one tallying up that story's property damage and job losses. Grossman's novel was probably supposed to be seen as a satire, but as I said, we live in a world beyond satire. Graphic novels like Watchmen, The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, and Wanted (I don't mean the insipid movies that went by those titles) demonstrate that when you do add up the civilian casualties, your superhero satire turns into a horror story.

Maybe the lesson of Hench is that nothing beats the power of rage, except rage coupled with brains. Or is it that nothing damns us more deeply than the longing for a better world? It's a grim little fantasy, perfect for our grim little times.

Love Song: I and Thou
by Alan Dugan

Nothing is plumb, level, or square:
the studs are bowed, the joists
are shaky by nature, no piece fits
any other piece without a gap
or pinch, and bent nails
dance all over the surfacing
like maggots. By Christ
I am no carpenter. I built
the roof for myself, the walls
for myself, the floors
for myself, and got
hung up in it myself. I
danced with a purple thumb
at this house-warming, drunk
with my prime whiskey: rage.
Oh I spat rage’s nails
into the frame-up of my work:
it held. It settled plumb,
level, solid, square and true
for that great moment. Then
it screamed and went on through,
skewing as wrong the other way.
God damned it. This is hell,
but I planned it. I sawed it,
I nailed it, and I
will live in it until it kills me.
I can nail my left palm
to the left-hand crosspiece but
I can’t do everything myself.
I need a hand to nail the right,
a help, a love, a you, a wife.

I will avoid wading into the toxic sludge of politics for as long as I can resist it. Something useful, then: a poem I've lived with since I was an adolescent; a poem that helped me learn how to think:

Wall, Cave and Pillar Statements, After Asôka
by Alan Dugan

In order to perfect all readers
the statements should be carved
on rock walls, on cave walls,
and on the side of pillars so
the charm of their instruction can
affect the mountain climbers near
the cliffs, the plainsmen near
the pillars, and the city people near
the caves they go to on vacations.

The statements should, and in a fair
script, spell out the right text and gloss
of the Philosopher’s jocular remark. Text:
“Honesty is the best policy.” Gloss:
“He means not ‘best’ but ‘policy,’
(this is the joke of it) whereas in fact
Honesty is Honesty, Best
is Best, and Policy is Policy,
the three terms being not
related, but here loosely allied.
What is more important is that ‘is’
is, but the rocklike truth of the text
resides in the ‘the’. The ‘the’ is The.
By this means the amusing sage
has raised or caused to be raised
the triple standard in stone:
the single is too simple for life,
the double is mere degrading hypocrisy,
but the third combines the first two
in a possible way, and contributes
something unsayable of its own:
this is the pit, nut, seed, or stone
of the fruit when the fruit has been
digested:
It is good to do good for the wrong
reason, better to do good for the good
reason, and best of all to do good
good: i.e. when the doer and doee
and whatever passes between them
are beyond all words like ‘grace’
or ‘anagogic insight,’ or definitions like
‘particular instance of a hoped-at-law,’
and which the rocks alone can convey.
This is the real reason for the rock walls,
the cave walls and pillars, and not the base
desires for permanence and display
that the teacher’s conceit suggests.”

That is the end of the statements, but,
in order to go on a way after the end
so as to make up for having begun
after the beginning, and thus to come around
to it in order to include the whole thing,
add: “In some places the poignant slogan,
‘Morality is a bad joke like everything else,’
may be written or not, granted that space
exists for the vulgar remarks, the dates,
initials and hearts of lovers, and all
other graffiti of the prisoners of this world.”


(I'll only add that "particular instance of a hoped-at law" makes more sense, but sadly, that's not what's on the page.)

It was bigger and harder to take than I expected, but I sure can't back out now. What a problem! How am I gonna make more time for drawing when I've already got a full-time job AND a husband I hardly ever get to spend time with?

Yeah, my five year "retirement" from furrydom has cost me time away from the drawing table that I'll never get back. That's a few volumes short of a tragedy, but it's still a damn shame, 'cause now I've got new characters (just created one this weekend), fresh ideas, and a recaptured sense of fun in cartooning that I haven't felt in years. And so little time to get it out of my head and into a world that couldn't care less 'cause it has its own problems! What's a poor pornographer to do, besides indulge in the occasional fit of venting?

Oh yeah. Draw faster.

Okay, so I'm a pornographer and sexually objectifying people is basically my job description, right? So why am I only just starting to notice how many devastatingly attractive young trans people there are in this world? I feel like an idiot.

I want to thank everyone who responded to my previous journal. You took the time to write thoughtful replies, and that in turn helped me to think things through.

The replies were overwhelmingly from purchasers (or potential purchasers) of art, and while folks are ready to acknowledge the shortcomings and pitfalls of YCH art, the majority of you still appreciate the convenience of seeing a predetermined pose, as well as the relatively low cost (usually) of the finished artwork. So there's clearly a market for this kind of work, and an overabundance of artists ready and willing to cater to it.

As I've said, I won't be offering any YCH poses myself, but this little journal has been instructive. So thank you.

Are YCH poses working out for you?

I'm genuinely curious, and not because I'm thinking of drawing them myself -- I'm not. Artists, you're offering to sell a generic pose to literally anybody; fans, you're buying a pose that's rooted in the idea that all furry characters are basically interchangeable. I find this odd.

Is it that fans are asking for poses so similar that one might as well use a template to draw them? Or is it that artists just don't want to stray outside their pet obsessions? I can't get a handle on this. A mannequin is posed in a predetermined setting, then a client's features are painted on that mannequin, almost as an afterthought. Saves time for the artist, clearly, but then isn't that, well, hackwork?

Now I stand by my opinion, expressed in an earlier journal, that doing hackwork is a better use of one's time than doing criticism -- and yet we born critics insist on trying to make sense of everything. If fans are happy to get a YCH pose from an artist that they like, and the artist can earn some quick cash with a much reduced investment of time and effort, everybody wins, right? Especially if the same YCH template can be sold over and over again, for X's character, Y's character, Z's character...

Digital drawing and painting tools have made production line commissions more efficient to create than they used to be, and a quick turnaround on a finished picture, even if the pose is generic, benefits artist and client, so what's the problem? Why have I gone to the trouble of purging so many YCH generators from my watchlist? Was it too much trouble to keep watching them, or merely too much trouble to keep deleting ads for a service I don't need?

Yet this YCH business must be working for some folks, because there's no shortage of these ads -- no shortage at all. Artists, satisfied clients: care to weigh in on why this particular business model seems to be working so well, at least for you?

1. Your first furry crush led you here. They made you promises they couldn't keep, but you don't mind. You're still home.

2. Fantasy lovers are perfect. IRL you don't get perfect, but most of the time you get the genuine, and the genuine is precious.

3. Everyone has their kinks, just as everyone has their boundaries.

3a. Your kinks are that far out? Cool, but that's not my department.

4. Even if all you're really into is vanilla sex, vanilla is a very rich flavor.

5. Sexual innuendo is a lost art, having flourished in an era of repression, conformity, and gender stereotypes. (I'm thinking more of Bette Davis's and Paul Henreid's concupiscent cigarette smoking in Now, Voyager, not of some management slob putting the moves on a subordinate.) One might think that in order to express ourselves freely, to speak truth, to be woke, all we had to sacrifice was any pretense at being classy.

6. A picture is worth a thousand downloads.

6a. And that picture looks an awful lot like your first furry crush.

7. Cis-gender, nonbinary, trans? Yes.

8. Bugs Bunny: sexier in drag, or out of it?

9. Erotica does a drop dead sexy strut on the knife edge of boredom and hilarity.

10. Erotica doesn't take itself too seriously and neither should you, even if you're a born analyst.

1. Learning to draw isn't that hard: it only takes a few thousand hours of practice.

2. The most wretched piece of hackwork is worth more than the most incisive piece of criticism, but there's always room for improvement.

3. Creating and drawing your own characters is one hell of a rush, but messing with other people's characters is fun, too.

4. Creating cartoon pornography calls for a degree of shamelessness that one could easily mistake for courage.

5. What we desire is rarely politically correct.

6. The creative process is rooted in desire, wish fulfillment, anger, ambition, loneliness -- everything but satisfaction with one's life.

7. Turning weaknesses into strengths is the story of art.

8. You'll never know anyone's fantasies better than your own.

9. A blank page is a world that you get to create.

10. When you have nothing left to get off your chest, stop drawing.

So a topical piece of art was posted here, and the scent attracted one of FA's devoted conspiracy theorists, who began posting comments on it. Why did this make me feel particularly irritated, given everything else going on?

Sorry I can't reiterate the comments, or even provide a link to the artwork, but that would only give more oxygen to the conspiracy theory, wouldn't it? So let's just say that the poster of the comments, whose existence I hadn't been aware of 'til recently, piqued my interest. I did a little digging, read their old journals, looked at their comments on other people's submissions...Turns out they're one of FA's village explainers, someone with little to contribute besides a habit of "correcting" everyone else.

Now, you might say, "So what? If they want to believe crackpot theories, that's their business. Who are they supposed to be harming by speaking their minds?" I wish I could shrug off the promulgation of nonsense that easily, but I do seem to take intellectual fraud rather personally. If the owner of the artwork hadn't belatedly disabled comments on it, I could've told the conspiracy theorist that they had committed a logical fallacy which philosophical folk call "the appeal to ignorance" -- that in the absence of proof that a proposition is false, then it must be true. (Never mind that things generally work the opposite way.)

Would I have changed anyone's mind? I can understand some of the appeal of conspiracy theories: the aura of mystery, the righteous pursuit of Truth, the absolute dedication to exposing the facts that They Don't Want You to Know...it's like religious faith, only really dumb. *

(I'm assuming, of course, that this theorist really believes their own bullshit and isn't cynically sowing doubt and confusion to make themselves seem smarter than they are.)

But again, so what? What's my problem with letting other folks express their opinions? Well, I keep wondering, how much damage has this person done over the years by muddying the intellectual waters? Even fools can be influential: just look at YouTube.

Believing in conspiracy theories is certainly easier and more appealing than putting one's mind on a diet of philosophy, logic, and critical analysis, but even without all that, isn't the simplest explanation usually the most accurate one?

---

* I'm not knocking people in the religious community. Logical analysis doesn't apply to religious faith; if it did, faith would be meaningless. This doesn't mean that religious people are illogical.

https://www.theatlantic.com/magazin.....erican/309021/

So I wanted an intelligent answer to that question, and I came very close to finding one in an essay for The Atlantic. It was written by Raoul de Roussy de Sales, a French expatriate journalist, and I was so startled by its relevance that only the references to President Roosevelt and Pullman cars were there to remind me that the piece was published in 1939, not 2019. (Well, typical of the time and the intended audience, the essay is unaware of the concept of structural racism, yet it's there in the margins, gnawing at the edges of the piece like a bad conscience.)

It really is a superb analytical essay on the soul of Americanism, a particularly American form of nationalism, and it left me certain of two things: that I'm an American, but I'm no patriot.