Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: PSA — Fire in the disco

It’s all like, “Wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa wa.”

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Smiley face

That explains the smilling faces.

Concerned that drugs from Medicap Rx are too corporate? Consult your neighborhood unlicensed pharmaceutical representative about 100% organic, area-sustainable alternatives. Shop local, kids.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: PSA, No one wants to fuck you

PSA: No one wants to fuck you. Sorry it had to come to graffiti on plywood but you just weren’t getting the message.

via. It looks as though someone tried to cross it out to make it read, “EVERYONE” but the original artist returned to merely underscore “no” in reply.

Why This Is Relevant: a daring and austere one-act ripped from the headlines.

Scene: Gas station.

Dramatis personae: Good ol’ E., pluckily on line to pick up smokes for panda on another Manic Monday; dark hair, blue dress with white polka dots, determined expression — let’s have a quick trip.
Man in inside-out shirt, black-on-black Pittsburgh Pirates hat, leaning heavily on walker with a basket attached: the basket is filled with an 18-pack of beer stood tall, buffeted by two 40 oz. bottles of beer. The man is visibly swaying from drinking already. He has meth face and flicky eyes. The overall effect is not pitiable but emphatically creepy.
Cashier, not important but an ugly person should play her because she is absolutely not good at keeping her customers from getting in to weird situations.

MAN: I like your dress.
E: Thank you.
MAN: It looks good on you.
E: Thanks.
MAN: I like … how it looks.
E: …
MAN: I’ve got a cab. I’m not driving.
E: Cool — you a big Pirates fan?
MAN: What?
E: Your hat.
MAN: I have this hat.
E: Right.
MAN: For the Pirates?
E: Yeah, the Phillies are doing so well this year, it must kind of be tough for Pirates fans to take. Rivalries and all, right?
MAN: I think … I like … the A’s.
E: Okay.
MAN: You’re pretty. You’re the prettiest girl I’ve seen … (long pause) today.
E: Well — thanks.
MAN: Can I call you?
E: I need to think about that.
CASHIER: I can help who’s next.
MAN: You want to go in front of me?
E: VERY MUCH.

Scene.

To quote Liz Lemon, “Another successful interaction with a male!”

PSA: Gotta keep ’em separated — “Keming” edition

PSA: I would like to impart some valuable knowledge about kerning and keming. Kerning is a typography term used to describe the process of spacing out a font to make it visually pleasing and easy to read.

fig. 1: “keming,” illustrated by me.

When type becomes too narrow, it can be difficult to read and even unintentionally misleading. Sometimes disastrously. This is called “Keming.” The name is damn clever and originated with this guy. See how the ‘r’ and ‘n’ of Kerning might, if crowded, look like “keming”? There you go. Clever.

fig. 2: “keming,” inadvertently illustrated via yimmyyayo.

Do you understand why I am bringing this up?

Keming: Don’t let it happen to you.

Talk nerdy to me: You and me and everyone we’ve ever fucked is a Tusken Raider

via.

Stumbled over this picture and it really tickled me. “I don’t care what you say, Daddy! I love my Tusken Raider!” [Cue: “He’s A Rebel (And he’ll never, ever be any good)”.] It inspired me to share a little sad personal Funny Business.

I have a lengthy sketch I’ve written about a woman who’s dating a Tusken Raider. She’s not dating him because she’s a sand-person-perv or because she’s particularly desperate, per se. She just is. Everyone with whom she interacts stands in as the audience’s interlocutor, recognizing the bizarre fruitlessness of what she’s doing in various situations involving her dating a Tusken Raider, but to her this is all perfectly normal.

In developing this idea, I had to ask myself some questions along the way, which is the way I prefer to work — I think of something I think is funny and then ask myself questions that will help me expand on the kernel of (usually weird) humor. In this case the one question that truly lit the lamp which shed light over the whole bit was, “Can they talk to each other?” It shed light because of this:

First, I tried to picture them sitting in the Olive Garden and her saying, “This is nice. I’m glad we came, I haven’t been here for awhile.” And him hooting and waving his walking/beatdown staff around (yes, he always has the gaderffii, including at his job as an accounts payable clerk for a cafeteria supplies vendor), his bellows unintelligible.

Would she then nod and say, “Of course, they’ve changed the decor. New sconces! You’re right”? Mm. No. Not funny enough. Not right.

How about he hoots and waves the gaderffii and she pretends to understand him? “Wawawarr! Baahh! Garghh!” “My day? How sweet of you to ask. Pretty good. How about yours?” Deluded and a little funnier, but no. Still not right.

“I can’t believe you let me get two desserts! I have to go to the gym.”

Finally, I made a writing choice: No, they absolutely cannot talk to each other. At all. Their words are totally meaningless to one another’s ears. Everything they do together is a case of tandem solitude, parallel behavior uncouched in any deeper meaning, more like comfortable coincidence than love.

“This is nice. I’m glad we came, I haven’t been to the Olive Garden for awhile.” “Bluloodoomarr! Grah! Waahh!” “Do you want to split an appetizer?” “Barrgh. [stamps gaderffii] Aroo!”

You know why that was just right on my funny meter? Because it demonstrates the frustrating absurdity of attempts at human connection. In the same place at the same time and full of totally different thoughts, dreams, and ideas of what it means? Just noising at each other in context but taking no notice of the content? That’s dating.*

You and me and everyone we’ve ever fucked is a Tusken Raider.

Unpleasant truths: now that’s Funny Business. Barrgh. Aroo.

*Unless you find that special someone, blah blah blah. Not knocking those who’ve made, or think they’ve made, it work. Just observing.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Gas wars

PSA: No kung fu, no exceptions.

Aw, man. My katana totally matches my purse.

Flashback Friday — Movie Moment: A story in stills, Inaugural edition, Flesh and the Devil (1926)

This post originally appeared on Dec 29, 2009, at 2:02 p.m.

Garbo vamps.

Flesh and the Devil, 1926. Directed by Clarence Brown, based on the play The Undying Past, a translation by Beatrice Marshall of the 1894 German play Es War (“It Was”) by Hermann Sudermann.

Starring Greta Garbo as Countess Felicitas von Rhaden, later Mrs. von Eltz; John Gilbert, her real-life lover and one-time fiance as mistreated hero Leo von Harden; and Lars Hanson as Ulrich von Eltz. Gonna relay the brief plot via some killer screencaps. Enjoy.

At the crux of this silent melodrama is a love triangle aggravated by protagonist Leo’s continued desire for Felicitas, the adulterous wife of his best friend Ulrich — who married Felicitas after Leo’s duel with her first husband resulted in Leo’s being stationed in South Africa for five years — and author of his misery.

Supporting players are Barbara Kent and George Fawcett as Ulrich’s younger sister, who begs Felicitas to stop trying to have both her brother and his friend, as it can only result in yet another duel, and sage Pastor Voss, who has known both men all their lives. But the real star, of course, is Garbo and her face. Everyone else kind of fades in to the background.

The action begins with a ball where recently-trained soldier Leo first meets Felicitas von Rhaden, who he’d glimpsed briefly leaving the railway when he arrived in town. Felicitas also remembers the eye contact and throws him some more smoky glances. Stealing away from the ball with Leo, she conveniently does not mention she has a husband, so when Count von Rhaden catches them getting up to sexytimes in her bedroom, Leo has no choice but to accept the Count’s challenge to duel him.

Question for discussion: Would you seriously die for some chick you met at the train station even when you just had empirical evidence thrown in your face that she was lying by omission about being freaking married, so you knew there was a pretty good chance she was a skank? I mean, is her honor really more important than your life? What is wrong with boys? Anyway, Leo wins the duel and kills the Count.

For his trouble, Leo is sent to a remote army post in South Africa, but Felicitas stays in his thoughts, as evinced by these two, above and below, gorgeous pre-fancy FX stills. For me, simple cinematographic tricks of the early films are far more beautiful, haunting, and multi-dimensionally resonant than a thousand unnecessary CGI lensflares. (Dreamworks, write that down.)

Leo arrives home to find that, in his absence, Felicitas has married Ulrich, his best friend since childhood, who once became Leo’s blood brother with his little sister Hertha as a witness, and who was supposed to be keeping an eye on Felicitas for Leo while Leo was “out of town.” In Ulrich’s defense, having sex with a woman is a really good way to keep an eye on her while also taking time for fun. I mean, you can’t be all work and no play.

Felicitas is still all-up-ons, which obviously causes great conflict for Leo, who is still no great shakes at hiding his feelings. (He also continues to suck at not fooling around with married chicks.) Meanwhile, Ulrich’s little sister Hertha has caught on to her sister-in-law’s game and tries to intercede with Felicitas, seemingly to no avail. Leo goes to Pastor Voss for advice, who tries to counsel him against pursuing a relationship with Felicitas.

The pastor suggests that Felicitas is not the innocent pawn that love-goggled Leo perceives her to be, but instead is an active agent of temptation, perhaps even a metaphorical vehicle of Satan, a lying symbol of the falseness of a life lived away from a strong moral code.

Leo doesn’t totally cotton to the idea that the love of his life is just a jezebel who enjoys hurting men for sport, but Pastor Voss reminds him of the ruin she has wrought in his life already, forcing him to kill a man, sending him in to exile, and coming between Leo and Ulrich, his friend since boyhood. The pastor says, “I christened you separately, but I’ve scarcely seen you apart since.”

Mulling over the idea that Felicitas is not-so-blameless in this game of love, Leo flashes back on some particularly creepy and un-Christian moments in which he has caught sly-eyed Felicitas.

(It’s amazing the clarity that comes with celibacy.) This seems to actually get through to Leo, who it ends up has a capacity for outrage after all.

He goes and angrily confront Felicitas, taking her to task for the trouble she has caused him, seemingly for her own amusement, as she has specifically told him she will not leave Ulrich and that she wants to have her husband and Leo for a lover, too. When she doesn’t recant or apologize, Leo furiously goes for the throat.

Ulrich busts in to find Leo throttling his wife. Felicitas orders him to shoot Leo immediately — probably hoping that he will, and Leo won’t have the chance to explain why he was mad. Ulrich instead challenges Leo to a duel the next evening on a sort of sandbar-cum-island in the middle of their village’s lake called the Isle of Friendship, on which they used to play as boys.

Hertha, Ulrich’s sister, comes and begs Felicitas to stop the duel, but she will not. Finally, Hertha prays to God to soften her adulterous sister-in-law’s heart, and suddenly Felicitas looks guilt-stricken, gets all bundled up, and rushes out in to the freezing Winter night. This is cross-cut with scenes of the men preparing to duel, but finding themselves unable to even raise their guns and aim at one another because of their lifelong friendship. They realize this high-class hooker has basically wrecked them emotionally, and conclude that they would both be better off well-shot of her. They are friends again.

What’s been going on with the finally-redeemed Felicitas in the meanwhile, who’s been hurrying out across the ice to the Isle of Friendship as the men rekindle their love for one another and realize how worthlessly she has behaved? Mmm. Spoiler alert.

Bad girls finish last. Some releases further hammer this point home by showing a final scene in which the loving younger sister, Hertha, is on a carriage preparing to move to Munich, and Leo comes chasing after it to stop her. (Implying they will now hook up, because she is sweet and patient, and wants the best for everyone, instead of being kind of a whore, and now Leo and Ulrich will be brothers for real.)

Final thoughts: Boys, stop taking back your dreadful same old bitchface ex-girlfriends and tolerating their bullshit. Find a new bitchface and get embroiled in new bullshit!

Holly Jolly Christmas Day: Keep it clean

via.

Spend Christmas shaking hands with a baby from 1945, not in a hospital. I am All For It actually. Had enough of hospitals in 2010 to hold me over for a very long while. So keep it clean out there!

Daily Batman: A-caroling we shall go

It’s Christmas Eve, kids. Get out there and earn some figgy pudding today! Make a joyful noise.

Dickens December: Another Saturday night at the end of the world — Kick up your heels because why not?

“The Three Party” by Hugh Lippe.

Bring in the bottled lightning, a clean tumbler, and a corkscrew.

(Charles Dickens. Nicholas Nickleby, Chapter 49.)

PSA: It’s one of the last Saturday nights of 2010 — go scare up some fun.

Hot Man Bein’ Hot of the Day: Faceless internet drawing edition and skinny-jean PSA

via hhhelloalex on the tumblr.

If he is only in it for the pussy … it’s working. I am not deterred by today’s Hot Man’s facelessness nor non-existence. I can break down exactly why this sketch of a gentleman melts my cold, cold heart.

a) Girls Like A Boy Who Plays Music.
b) Dressed like Han Solo.
c) Dressed like Han Solo (counts at least twice).
d) Looks like he could not borrow my jeans.

Emo boys, I have given you warnings in the past, but I’m still seeing these skinny jeans and “jeggings” hanging off your narrow heinies all around the town. Let me phrase it to you less delicately than in the past.

PSA:

If you look like you could literally get in my pants, you are not getting in my pants.

/End PSA. Now please refer to the handsome faceless internet drawing of what a real man looks like, and eat some spaghetti, Slappy.

edit: The lyrics are from “Awake My Soul” by Mumford and Sons. Here is what I assume to be the inspiration for the drawing:

Nothing to complain about, but is it weird that I like the drawing better? It isn’t anything so explicable and logically psychological like that the facelessness implies more tantalizing possibility: I genuinely just prefer the drawing to the dude. Could be the camera angle making him look shorter and thinner. Don’t worry, guy, you are still okay. Maybe give the other one a Twinkie, though.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day and PSA: Tune in, turn on, and drop out of the faux holiday celebrations

Wales.

The hell there is a Black Friday. Refuse to be normal and do everything but shop today, please. Please! I’m really excited about a toy drive the kidlet and I are organizing and I feel pretty good about the fact that it is the pretty much polar opposite of drag-assing through dreadful commercial crowds in the name of sales for needless goods which are a million miles from the true spirit of giving. Smug critic, right here. Two thumbs and smug about not shopping? This guy.

PSA: Feat. very special guest star NSFW Asia Argento

PSA: Talked to Big Ben and we made an executive decision —

— It is now retro to have Commando Fridays. Tell a friend!

Daily Batman: Asphinctersayswhat?

“Draw Batgirl” meme result by Jennifer Wang, aka mao on the lj.

We must not allow ourselves to be deflected by the ‘feminists,’ who are anxious to force us to regard the two sexes as completely equal in position and worth.

(Sigmund Freud.)

Asphinctersayswhat? Yeah. Thanks for the warning, coke-addled misogynist.

via comicallyvintage on the tumblr.

Since Batgirl’s a superhero and librarians are perceived as being innocuous, there’s no way that any of the other characters are going to be able to make the connection, right? And if the opposite of Batgirl is a librarian, what does that say about librarians? That in order to be a bad ass, they must literally transform themselves?

via Bruna Künzler on the fotolog.

Regardless of whether or not Batgirl was reinforcing popular stereotypes about librarians, she was definitely empowering a whole lot of young girls. In 1998, Yvonne Craig talked about the role that her character played in young girl’s lives:

I meet young women who say Batgirl was their role model. They say it’s because it was the first time they ever felt girls could do the same things guys could do, and sometimes better. I think that’s lovely.

“batgirl” by Saint Julia 88 on the da.

In the 60s and onward, Batgirl became a symbol of women’s empowerment. In 1972, she appeared in a public service announcement for the United States Department of Labor, in which she advocated for equal pay for women.

(“From the Library: Batgirl!” McAllister, Ashley. Bitchmedia Community Learning Library, Bitch magazine website. August 15, 2010.)

And here is that PSA:

Dig Robin’s “Holy Discontent!” exclamation.

I am for accepting equality and undenigrated respect for all. But it is true that there have been men I’ve met who do not share my view and to whom I do not consider myself equal: in those cases, I consider myself infinitely their superior.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Breaking News — this time it’s personal, “Not gay” edition

He’s having surgery to get rid of the noise. What more do you want?

The man is clearly secure in his heterosexuality. Why do people even keep bringing it up?

I know I am a softie, but I do think this is another sad case. I even hope it is a joke. What if someone had That Much going on in their head? I hope not. I hope no one does.

Liberated Negative Space o’ the Day: Apaga la tele

via propaganda del odio on the fotolog.

Turn off/extinguish/erase your television.

Live your life.

Mean Girls Monday: You could try Sears

The sick thing is there was a store like that in my mall when I was a teenager but it was called “5,7,9.” Though I can attest it carried sizes lower than 5, as to the other end of the scale, if it carried over size 9, I was unaware of it. That’s bad enough but here’s the thing: I was lucky enough to be in kind of a Cindy Crawford, not Kate Moss, era.

I’m sure that if such a store still existed, changing ideal body types would dictate that it be called something like “1,3,5.” Well, what am I talking about; such things do exist of course: Forever 21 and the Bebe, yes? Blarg.

PSA: Collarbones are beautiful, but boobs are even better. Take it to the bank. SeaQuest out!

The flag is NOT a weapon

“USA 101” by amadteaparty on the flickr.

I was taking a break from yardwork to make lunch and my daughter was dancing around me swinging something little and slappy on a stick at me. This exchange followed:

Me: Dude! Quit hitting me with that.
Kidlet: (continues trying to hit me)
Me: What even is that?
Kidlet: (stills long enough for me to see it is a miniature U.S. flag on a thin wooden dowel)
Me: Oh, no. That is not — (starts hitting me again) — Hey! Not okay! The flag is NOT a weapon!
Kidlet: The flag IS a weapon! (holds up the dowel end and mimicks stabbing the air Psycho-style)

“American Headache” via the awesome broken spectre on the tumblr.

Tomorrow is Flag Day here in the United States and while I am wary of overdoing it in an oppressive way such as our founding fathers would not have favored and accidentally sewing the seeds of jingoism, I do expect informed respect for patriotic symbols, especially the flag. (See my vitriolic Memorial Day entry for expansion on the issue of this inner conflict and dislike of corporate co-optioning of patriotism) Guess I’ll use it as a jumping-off point to explain to her about flags and traditions, etc.

Steve McQueen.

I did a good, short unit on the National Anthem with the Scamps. Maybe I’ll dig that out of my current tutoree’s textbook when I see her this week, since her mom muscled the school library in to letting her take all her books home for the summer (I’ve said it before but the woman is literally a bulldozer in pumps; it is all I can do not to submissively pee when she enters a room). I remember some of it.

via hellobaltimore
Did You Know? The giant flag about which Francis Scott Key wrote seeing wave over Fort McHenry at the end of the Battle of Baltimore was made in just about six weeks by Mary Young Pickersgill, with the aid of her mother and her thirteen-year-old daughter, Caroline, along with her nieces and two freed African-American houesmaids. They were commissioned by Major George Armistead to make the largest flag ever to be flown over a fort up until that time — the apocryphal story goes that he told the women he wanted to make sure the British could see it. The flag is presently going through a restoration to the tune of 18 million dollars right now in preparation for its centrality to the new, redesigned Smithsonian National Museum of American History.

via leotarded on the tumblr.

A widow with a spine of steel, Mrs. Pickersgill was one of the first independent female business owners in America. She successfully negotiated contracts for her flagmaking business with the United States Army and the Navy. She was also a passionate humanitarian, being notable in town for “color-blind” hiring in her sewing shop, with a special bent for women’s issues: she founded the Impartial Female Humane Society, which provided school vouchers for young girl children of any race or religion to be educated, along with the provision of networking and employment to their single mothers.

The More You Know.

Flag kicks from Converse. Chux are cool, yes, but please remember they are owned by Nike. I’m just sayin’.

Guess I should have saved all these flag facts for tomorrow, but I figured I had better strike while the iron of my interest was hot — I know what a fickle creature I am, and by tomorrow the flame of my curiosity about flags, Mrs. Pickersgill, and the history of the women’s movement would have died down to embers at best.

Ghost World Half-Day: Josh? He’s just this guy.

Seymour: So, was that your boyfriend?
Enid: Josh? No, no — he’s nobody’s boyfriend, he’s just this guy that Becky and I like to torture.

Enid: Josh.
Rebecca: Josh.
Enid, Rebecca: Josh!
Enid: God, I’ll bet he’s in there jerking off.
Rebecca: I’ll bet he never jerks off.
Enid: Yeah, he’s beyond human, and stuff like that.
Rebecca: Should we leave him a note?
Enid: Sure. You got a pen?
[Rebecca pulls out a pen, Enid takes it]
Enid: [writing] Dear Josh, we came by to fuck you, but you were not home. Therefore you are gay. Signed, Tiffany and Amber.

Enid: I think one of us should fuck Josh.
Rebecca: Go ahead.
Enid: No, really.
Rebecca: God, you’re really obsessed.
Enid: No, I’m not. I just think it’d be funny. To see what he’d do.

Rebecca: I thought we decided that Josh was way too cool to be interested in sex, and that he’s the only decent person left in the world? and we would never want to bring him down to our level and all that.
Enid: Yeah, but maybe one of us should at least try.
Rebecca: No matter what happened it would be a big disaster. Let’s just try and keep everything the way it is.

Enid: Actually, I’ve got a total crush on this one guy right now, but it’s a really fucked-up situation…
Seymour: Oh yeah?
Enid: Oh wait, you met him… remember that guy Josh? I’m like practically obsessed with him, but I can’t do anything about it because Becky would freak out.
Seymour: Why?
Enid: Never mind … it’s way too complicated.

Of course, she is being angsty and late-teeny and melodramatic. Even when it’s terrifying and big and exciting, it is still not at all complicated. If you like someone — tell them. No friends imposing screwy rules on you and wanting things to stay the same forever ought slow you down. We make things so intricate and barricaded away and crippling in our lives, we construct entire fantasy worlds of why it is best not to talk or act on our feelings, mainly because of being afraid of those feelings and of being hurt or rejected. (Oh, just replace all those “we’s” with “I.” I’m embarassed by this self-audit so I brought everyone else in to the picture so’s as not to feel so dorky and alone. Super-sorry.)

RIP, Brad Renfro.

Here’s a little wisdom-bomb I used to drop on my buddies if we were out on the town and they were psyching themselves out of talking to a young woman who’d caught their interest. PSA: The best way to make sure that you will positively strike out with a person and never, never, ever have sexytimes and maybe spend your life with them is to NOT ASK. So roll the dice. I know it’s easier said then done, but we have to try or die alone.

All the screencaps for Ghost World Half-Day will come from a combination of sources: heartstopper, augustusgloop, and vodiak on the LJ; Movie Screenshots on the blogger; various imdb caps and old, unsourced still shots. Also I might scan some pictures from the graphic novel since I am right now looking at the spine of it in a pile of books on my desk.

PSA: Talking politics socially

PSA: It was actually once considered rude to hound people about political issues instead of letting them make private, independent, informed voter choices and not descend in to pointless partisan debate (which often eclipses the issues entirely, creating ever-greater time-and-breath-waste) even and especially with people you claim to call friends. A high level of closeness was required before sailing in to such conversational and public discursive waters, once upon a time. We did not post bulletins and douchey status updates about it, even. Did You Know? Oh, the bygone era of manners.

Via comicallyvintage on the tumblr.

Damn, gorilla! You ain’t got to get punchy. A simple “I disagree” would’ve probably sufficed. But that’s how it is today. Keep your elbows out and your powder dry, kids.