Top Ten Border Patrol Excuses For Tear Gassing Babies

Posted on November 26, 2018 by Ampersand

If you enjoy these cartoons, please support my Patreon. A $1 pledge really matters to me.

This is actually a many-years-old comic, originally drawn in response to a baby being peppersprayed by cops at a protest in Portland. (I think this was published in Willamette Week, a Portland weekly newspaper).

I never reprinted or reposted this cartoon, because what’s the point? That sort of thing certainly wouldn’t happen again, right?

Aaargh. I really would have preferred that this cartoon never be current again. (Full disclosure: I don’t know if any actual babies were tear gassed, but small children certainly were.)

I took the old cartoon, changed the uniforms from police blue to border patrol green, and relettered a few panels to make it about border patrol agents rather than cops. Frustratingly, most of the panels required no change at all, other than the colors.

Transcript of Cartoon

This cartoon has eleven panels, the first of which is a title panel.

PANEL 1
This panel shows A baby crying and a nearby Border Patrol Agent hitting a club into one palm, speaking sternly to the baby. A major portion of the panel is taken up by a caption.
CAPTION: TOP TEN BORDER PATROL EXCUSES FOR TEAR GASSING BABIES
BABY: Waaah!
AGENT: Stop being such a baby about it!

PANEL 2
An agent speaks directly to the reader, one hand raised in an “explaining” gesture.
CAPTION: TEN: Wanted to be fair.
AGENT: If I only brutalized adults, that would be discrimination!

PANEL 3
A baby in a polka dot onesie is standing, holding out its hands for balance, and smiling as it speaks.
CAPTION: NINE: Baby was giving agents lip.
BABY: Ga goo! Ga fascist pigs! Aa!

PANEL 4
A border patrol agent walks away from the viewer, hands behind his back, whistling.
CAPTION: EIGHT: Just following orders.

PANEL 5
A baby in a striped onsie is smiling, trying to balance on its feet, and holding a big black ball-shaped bomb with a fuse going “ssssss” in one hand.
CAPTION: SEVEN: It was a terrorist baby!
BABY: Baby wuvs Al Qaeda!

PANEL 6
A border patrol agent is holding one hand to his mouth, in a “whoops” gesture.
CAPTION: SIX: Agent mistook tear gas for a nice lollipop.
AGENT: Oopsie!

PANEL 7
A border patrol agent speaks directly to the readers, looking stern, shrugging.
CAPTION: FIVE: Just doesn’t like babies.
AGENT: They smell funny.

PANEL 8
A baby in a pink onesie is lying on a polka-dot blanket. The baby is wearing a shade visor with a paper that says “press” in it, and is holding a notebook in one hand and a pen in the other.
CAPTION: FOUR: Baby was a reporter.

PANEL 9
A border patrol agent poses, one hand’s fingers pressed to his chest, like a pretentious arteest.
CAPTION: THREE: Throwing kids in cells has grown stale.
AGENT: I need room for growth!

PANEL 10
A baby, scowling, points a gun aggressively.
CAPTION: TWO: Baby gave agents no choice!
BABY: Eat hot lead, fascists!

PANEL 11
A border agent, arms crossed, eyes covered by the bill of his cap, talks to the readers without deigning to look at us.
CAPTION: And the number one excuse is…
AGENT: What makes you think we NEED an excuse?

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Immigration, Migrant Rights, etc | 36 Comments  

Five Favorite Books

Posted on November 26, 2018 by Mandolin

It’s always hard to pick a few favorite books. For one thing, I think it’s easy to slip into listing only favorites from childhood, because those formative years are so vividly imprinted on us. For another, I know a lot of authors personally, and I don’t want to hurt any feelings, nor do I want my personal love for an author to bias me in favor of the book (we can call this my Ann Leckie rule).

I’m going to limit my favorites on this list to authors who are deceased, or who I’ve never met personally. …I’m also just going to let the childhood thing go, though, and list some books I’ve loved since I was young.

I’m also limiting this to books with speculative elements, just to make the volume a bit more manageable.

Biting the Sun by Tanith Lee — This was my favorite book through high school. Tanith Lee’s dreamlike, intricate prose reads like a string of jewels with dazzling clarity. I was enamored of the strange world–a merging of utopia and dystopia. In retrospect, I think its treatment of gender was a strong allure. People could design new bodies when they were bored with their existing ones, and switch to male or female and back with minimal fuss. Wouldn’t that be cool?

Beloved by Toni Morrison – I first read this in college. The raw, painful emotion is deeply affecting, and sensorily rendered. It’s beautiful, though also dark and unflinching in its dealings with its intense depiction of the psychological aftermath of slavery. (Also, the poetic passage in the middle is brilliant and weird, and I’m grateful that I was lucky enough to be reading the book in a class where the teacher was able to help us interpret it, because I’m not sure I’d have understood on my own.) Toni Morrison may be the greatest living writer, although of course that’s a silly thing to say, because there is never one “greatest” by an objective criteria. She’s clearly in the top tier of brilliance one way or another, and for my standards, is a strong contender for greatest.

Lilith’s Brood by Octavia Butler – I’m going to make another “greatest” claim, which is that Octavia Butler is the best and most important science fiction writer of the twentieth century. (Obviously, there are strong arguments that can be made for other people, too.) Lilith’s Brood is, I think, the height of her talent. It’s emotionally vivid, and takes place in a deeply strange world. Butler’s aliens really read like aliens. Like many of her books, Lilith’s Brood considers how humanity might evolve in the future, and whether it’s possible for us to shed our instincts toward violence and xenophobia.

And here are a couple of recent books I’m excited by, written by authors I’ve never met. I don’t know if they will stand in my pantheon forever, but they were books I’ve found impactful in the past few years.

The Walls Around Us by Nova Ren Suma – A dark horror novel that brilliantly weaves together multiple timelines. It’s told from the perspectives of two teenage girls — one imprisoned for allegedly murdering her stepfather, and the other a ballerina. The ballerina’s best friend has been convicted for murder, and now she’s the first girl’s cell mate. The rendering of the characters is sharp, interesting, and emotionally engaging, and the tightly woven plot of flashbacks and revelations, creates a magnetic, urgent force that draws you through the book.

Everybody Sees the Ants by A. S. King – It’s sort of random that I picked this book by A. S. King as opposed to one of the other books by A. S. King, almost all of which are excessively brilliant. (The others are merely quite good.) I picked this one because I remember the plot best, and because I argued for its inclusion on the Norton ballot when I was on the jury. This book has a spare, almost aggressive style, which helps illuminate the psychology of the main character. The teenaged main character is a boy who is bullied for seeming insufficiently masculine and socially adept, and I like it when books treat that subject matter seriously and well. I thought it did an excellent job of capturing that trauma, and the reactions it can create.

So, there’s five books, y’all! What are your favorites?

Posted in Recommended Reading, Stuff I like | 13 Comments  

Cartoon: Walter, The Guy Who Thinks Nothing’s Changed Since 1860

Posted on November 20, 2018 by Ampersand

If you like these cartoons, please help me make more by supporting my Patreon. A $1 pledge means a lot to me!

This is one of those cartoons that’s based on an annoying thing I’ve seen a bunch of right-wingers say, usually while making excuses for racist GOP policies – that the Democratic party is “the party of slavery.” This is usually said by mindless twitter trolls, but has also been said by President Trump. (Arguably a distinction without a difference.)

The logic is poor. First of all, that the Democratic party had, and almost certainly still has, a racism problem doesn’t exonerate the GOP’s racism problem. There can be more than one racist institution in society at a time.

But second of all – and this, obviously, is the cartoon’s focus – is that the Democrats of 1860 (who did defend slavery) simply aren’t the Democrats of today.

So the question for a cartoon like this one is, will enough of my readers have encountered this ridiculous argument to enjoy a comic strip making fun of it?

Artwise, I had fun drawing this one. There’s definitely something appealing about being able to draw these tiny body characters in full figure. It really gives me an opportunity to try to do expressive body language.  And it makes more room for backgrounds, as well. (The downside is that faces and expressions can’t be as detailed as they would be in strips with close-ups.)

Also, admittedly the car in panel two is really only the front third of a car – but nonetheless, I drew a cartoon car and I’m happy with how it looks! That almost never happens. Now I have to do is learn to draw the back 2/3rds.

TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON

This cartoon has four panels.

PANEL 1
This panel is mostly the title of the cartoon: “WALTER, THE GUY WHO THINKS NOTHING’S CHANGED SINCE 1860!”
The title is in large, cartoon-style lettering.
At the bottom of the panel we see Walter, a man with black sideburns and a black top hat, wearing an 1860s style suit.
WALTER: What’s a “phone”?

PANEL 2
Walter and a woman are on a sidewalk. The woman is walking towards a car that’s parked nearby. Walter is pointing at her and laughing as she looks back in annoyance.
WALTER: How will you move this carriage without any horses? HA!

PANEL 3
Walter is walking down a grassy hillside, talking at two women who are walking away from him and trying to ignore him. One of the women is rolling her eyes. Both women are wearing pants.
WALTER: A train that goes from coast to coast? HA! What a fairy tale!
WALTER: Kansas isn’t a state!
WALTER: Why are ladies wearing trousers?

PANEL 4
Walter, smiling, is inside a house (or some sort of building, anyway, talking to an annoyed-looking Black man with glasses and a goatee.
WALTER: You can’t call Republicans racist when it’s the Democrats who support slavery! HA!

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Race, racism and related issues | 10 Comments  

Haiku Round-up #1

Posted on November 20, 2018 by Mandolin

Lately I have been posting haiku to my Patreon.

While I was having trouble writing fiction, a friend of mine showed me a haiku they’d been working on. I couldn’t manage something like a whole story, but writing seventeen syllables of poetry came easily, and felt right.

These are only sort of traditional haiku. For one thing, I used English syllables instead of trying to adapt English words to Japanese morae which are similar to syllables, but not the same. I did use a seasonal reference in the first line of each, but they aren’t necessarily the kind of seasonal imagery that would have been used in a traditional poem. Also, I talked a lot more directly about what I was feeling, instead of using the metaphors to convey it.

However, I did try to convey the moments as I experienced them in that transient moment. I also tried not to revise, to just let them be in the moment they were. I think I cheated a couple of times, though.

I’m going to send out a haiku every few days for a while, at least until I run out of haiku. (I also wrote a couple of cinquains.) They aren’t necessarily in order, and they’re from a bit ago, so they won’t be a read on my direct emotional state, but I hope the words mean something to you

Here are the first nine:

Humid, intruding
hours that won’t shape into days,
heavy, unwelcome.

Night, that bit too hot.
He sweats and works and I don’t
know when night will cool.

Night is cooler now.
Restless nothings pace my mind,
private and anxious.

Bright green against blue.
Another day forthcoming.
I hope it stays bright.

Mimosa blooms fade.
I am content to watch them
this mild afternoon.

Berries dapple leaves.
They and I, windlessly still,
hope we are ripened.

White with slanted sun,
the too-bright sky is stolen
with painful glances.

Smoke taints blue-bellied sky.
All things contain their reverse.
No moment is pure.

School opens again.
I don’t know why I am sad.
Memories, perhaps.

Posted in Poetry, Rachel Swirsky's poetry | 1 Comment  

Q&A on Being a Jewish & Disabled Author

Posted on November 15, 2018 by Mandolin

A patron of mine asked me some questions recently about Jewish identity, and writing while Jewish and disabled.

I thought y’all might find the answers interesting. Hopefully, I’m correct!

Are secular Jews overrepresented in the media?

I am personally a secular Jew. I suppose my first question in wondering whether we’re over-represented is — what percentage of self-identified Jews in America are secular? (It also matters what the percentage of secular Jews in media work is, but that seems harder to find.)

I found this here: http://www.pewforum.org/2013/10/01/jewish-american-beliefs-attitudes-culture-survey/

“The changing nature of Jewish identity stands out sharply when the survey’s results are analyzed by generation. Fully 93% of Jews in the aging Greatest Generation identify as Jewish on the basis of religion (called “Jews by religion” in this report); just 7% describe themselves as having no religion (“Jews of no religion”). By contrast, among Jews in the youngest generation of U.S. adults – the Millennials – 68% identify as Jews by religion, while 32% describe themselves as having no religion and identify as Jewish on the basis of ancestry, ethnicity or culture. ”

It goes on to say:

“Secularism has a long tradition in Jewish life in America, and most U.S. Jews seem to recognize this: 62% say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, while just 15% say it is mainly a matter of religion. Even among Jews by religion, more than half (55%) say being Jewish is mainly a matter of ancestry and culture, and two-thirds say it is not necessary to believe in God to be Jewish. ”

I’m surprised that the percentage of people who think you have to believe in God to be Jewish is that high, actually. There’s a pretty lengthy historical tradition of Jews who participate in their communities without being personally religious. The article does say that Jews who identify as secular now are less likely to be tied into Jewish cultural organizations than other Jews, so I wonder whether there’s an increasing idea that being a secular Jew is the same as being an uninvolved Jew. (I should note that people who convert to being Jews are also definitely Jews whether or not they have the ancestry. Judaism is a desert topping and a floor wax.)

That said, I’m uninvolved in a lot of ways. My grandfather made a decision as a young man to sever himself from his Jewish past. I think this was his reaction to World War II. He never denied being Jewish, or changed his name, or anything like that – but he had no interest in his past as a Jew, or in any of the associated cultural traditions. Our family still exists in the shadow of that decision.

I could try to figure out more about the demographics involved — what percentage of great sci-fi writers, editor, etc, from Christian backgrounds are also secular? Is this a function of Jewishness, or a broader secular cultural trend among people in those industries?

But I feel like the more interesting questions are tangential. What could we gain from having more religiously Jewish creators?

Probably something. My friend Barry writes a series of graphic novels about Hassidic Jews. He himself is a secular Jew, but many Hassidic people have contacted him, grateful for representation of their community that is humanizing and generous. There are clearly religiously Jewish people who are not seeing themselves reflected, or are only seeing themselves reflected in ways that are inaccurate or unkind.

There can be pressure on secular Jews to put their Jewish heritage in the background, especially when antisemitism and white supremacy are on a resurgence. I’ve paid the price for being a Jewish female creator, and it’s a nasty one. So, there’s another point where I think there’s tension over secular Jewish representation in the media–in order to work in the industry, to some extent, we must blend in with Christian normativity.

I had a woman say to me, in all seriousness, in a critique group once, that she was annoyed I had included Jewish rituals in one of my stories. “If I want to read about that kind of thing,” she said, “I’ll just read fantasy.”

I’m not sure this resolves anything (in fact, I’m sure it doesn’t), but those are some of my thoughts.

What about your background and current ideas/beliefs/practices has contributed to your interest in Jewish sci fi?

Right now, I’m more interested in the theological questions of Judaism than I normally am because I have a good friend who is tipping over the border from secular to religious Jew, and his journey is very interesting to me. The way he talks and writes about his burgeoning belief (as opposed to the feeling of irresolution he’d had before) is fascinating; it helps that he’s a very good writer who is fascinating on many topics.

I think my interest in Jewish science fiction stems from my interest in Jewishness itself, which is probably related to my self-identification as Jewish. I’m not sure why I have a strong identification with Judaism — I didn’t have to. As the granddaughter of a secular Jew who tried to cut all connections, I could have just put it aside; my brothers have. Our father is from WASPy blood with deep roots in American history–we’re descended from one of the people who signed the Declaration of Independence–and I could have chosen to identify with that to the exclusion of my Jewish ancestry.

What are you writing about now?

I’m writing a lot about disability. As a disabled person, there’s a lot of rich material to mine–and I still have a lot of unreconciled thoughts about disability, and things I’m figuring out. I think a lot of good writing is produced when the author is still on the edge of revelations, instead of settled.

Many of my previous writing obsessions have been much more externally focused. Of course there’s a hideous amount of dehumanization and violence directed toward disabled people, but for some of us, there’s also an intense personal struggle of identity and self-knowledge that requires a deep investigation of the psyche. That’s where I am right now–fiction about selfhood and perception.

| 5 Comments  

Open Thread and Link Farm, Picture I Took Of My Cat Edition

Posted on November 15, 2018 by Ampersand

  1. “I’m not transphobic, but…”: A feminist case against the feminist case against trans inclusivity–Verso
  2. Jet Li says he rejected The Matrix because he didn’t want his kung fu moves digitally recorded | Abacus
    “They could own [my moves] as an intellectual property forever. So I said I couldn’t do that.” Li’s objection makes perfect sense. But it would be amazing, from an archival standpoint, for such a full record of Li’s moves to exist.
  3. ECHIDNE OF THE SNAKES: The Happy Hour For Birds?
    Birds who eat fermenting berries off the ground get drunk.
  4. Donald Trump, Brett Kavanaugh, and the rigging of American politics – Vox
    This has become a very central issue to my thinking – that the system is enormously rigged against Democrats, and Republicans are determined to use that advantage to increase that advantage.
  5. The Good Place: Watch the exact moment that the cast found out about the big Season One twist | EW.com
    Thanks to Mandolin for this link. And also for the happy hour for birds link.
  6. U.S. Law Enforcement Failed to See the Threat of White Nationalism. Now They Don’t Know How to Stop It. – The New York Times
    I was particularly struck by the way that Republican members of congress went to bat to protect right-wing domestic terrorists, forcing Homeland Security to withdraw a report on right-wing extremism. A similar report on domestic left-wing extremism was not objected to by anyone.
  7. Ideas Have Consequences: The Impact of Law and Economics on American Justice
    “After attending economics training [at George Mason University], participating judges use more economics language, render more conservative verdicts in economics cases, rule against regulatory agencies more often, and render longer criminal sentences.”
  8. Even janitors have noncompetes now. Nobody is safe. – The Washington Post
    In this particular case, the company dropped it’s lawsuit against its former janitor after it became a news story. Which is nice – but doesn’t alter the larger problem.
  9. The Mythical Whiteness of Trump Country | Boston Review
    A criticism of J.D. Vance’s book, and in particular it’s racial politics.
  10. Scientist in remote Antarctic outpost stabs colleague who told him endings of books he was reading – Daily Record
  11. Josh Hastings had a record of misconduct as a Little Rock police officer. Then he shot Bobby Moore. – The Washington Post
    This lengthy article by the amazing Radley Balko makes the point that police abuse and even murder isn’t about a few bad apples in the barrel; it’s about the barrel itself being bad.
  12. Charging ‘Dealers’ with Homicide: Explained – The Appeal
    “Caleb Smith ordered online what he thought was Adderall to help him study. His girlfriend asked to try it. She died from an overdose. It turned out the substance was fentanyl. Prosecutors charged Caleb with “drug-induced homicide.” Then he killed himself.”
  13. Opinion: It’s past time to repeal Oregon’s Jim Crow era jury law
    “But that deliberative process breaks down when a majority of jurors can merely ignore the dissenting views of their fellow jurors.” An issue I’ve never given any thought to before.
  14. Retweets Are Trash – The Atlantic – Medium
    “I made a small tweak to my Twitter account that has changed my experience of the platform. It’s calmer. It’s slower. It’s less repetitive, and a little less filled with outrage.” And, related: How to turn off retweets.
  15. Zinnia Jones on Dating and Transphobia | Noah Berlatsky on Patreon
  16. Millennials Have Caused U.S. Divorce Rate to Plummet: New Study | PEOPLE.com
    Basically, people that in the past would have been likely to marry young and eventually divorce, are now not getting married in the first place, which is predicted to mean a much lower divorce rate.
  17. FBI Data Shows Plenty Of Vandalism, Little Violence Against U.S. Jews
    – The Forward
  18. Lucy Lawless, In A Greenpeace Action, Belts Out Xena War Cries While Illegally Boarding Oil Ship – TMZ.com
    Really, do you need anything more than that headline?
  19. After a mass shooting: A survivor’s life | The Washington Post
    This is a long read, and a deeply unhappy read, but I still recommend it. It’s a portrait of a young woman, and of her mother, whose lives were drastically harmed by a mass shooter.
  20. Massachusetts has an answer to America’s gun problem – Vox
    The right mix of gun laws – particularly but not only the permit-to-purchase system – helps Massachusetts have the lowest rate of gun deaths in the US.
  21. Unprotected
    “An acclaimed American charity said it was saving some of the world’s most vulnerable girls from sexual exploitation. But from the very beginning, girls were being raped.”
    A long read, sad and infuriating, about what happened when an American woman started a school for girls in Liberia. A reminder that there’s good reason for people to be suspicious of the white savior mode of charity. (Via).

Posted in Link farms | 26 Comments  

Cartoon: What Racism Is(n’t) About

Posted on November 13, 2018 by Ampersand

If you like these cartoons, please help me make more by supporting my Patreon! A $1 pledge really helps.

This comic strip deals with the tendency of white people to argue that their personal purity of heart is the essential subject to focus on when the subject is racism.

And this is a tendency I entirely understand! I’m white; I know that emotional/denial place is so easy to jump to. Plus, we’re all humans, and being human tends to overlap a lot with being self-centered.

But it’s a knee-jerk reaction we should resist. And maybe cartoons like this one will help whites like me remember to resist.

****

A bit of trivia about the making of this cartoon: As I think I’ve mentioned, I recently turned fifty. And, technically, I have been working on this cartoon since my thirties.

You see, I write more cartoons than I complete. Very often, when I write a cartoon, I’ll decide that it’s not good enough to draw – but there’s still a seed of an idea there that I believe can work. In those cases, I’ll leave the cartoon lying around in a folder labeled “unfinished.” Every now and then, I browse old ideas in that folder, in case my brain comes up with a way to make any of them work.

So, in September of 2008 (so I was 39 and 11 months old), I made this layout for a cartoon. (I think I must have been in a hurry – you can see that I just cut and paste the same minimalistic lollypop-stickfigures from panel to panel).

I remember, when I wrote this strip, I thought “that” was a pretty devastating final line.

But when I looked at it again, a few days or weeks later, it just seemed too obscure to me, and might leave some readers scratching their heads. Would the theme – that the white character was entirely self-focused, ignoring what’s going on with the Black character – come through?

Plus, the comic strip was so static.

So it just sat in my “unfinished” file for an entire decade. I was too fond of the idea to throw it out, but never had an idea for fixing it.

Until I did.

The idea – “the comic strip starts out entirely focused on the white character, a metaphor for his self-involvement, and the view gradually widens until the reader can see what he’s ignoring” – is pretty simple. But I like it, and I’m pleased I waited a decade for it rather than drawing my original conception for the cartoon.

(Of course, now that I’ve said that, someone will tell me they think the original version was better. That’s always how it goes. :-p )

Transcript of Cartoon

This cartoon has four panels.

PANEL 1
A middle-aged white man, balding, with glasses, a van dyke beard and a v-neck long-sleeved tee, is speaking. He’s in a park, with trees and grass. He holds one palm out in an “explaining” gesture. This is a fairly close shot, mainly showing his head and shoulders.

He is facing towards the left. An unseen person off-panel, on the right, responds to him.

WHITE PERSON: When you say I’ve benefited from racism, it hurts my feelings.
OFF-PANEL PERSON: Racism isn’t about your feelings.

PANEL 2
The camera backs up a bit, but the other speaker is still off-panel. The white guy closes his eyes and puts one hand over his heart, as if he’s swearing a vow.

WHITE PERSON: In my heart, I don’t even see color!
OFF-PANEL PERSON: Racism isn’t about what’s in your heart.

PANEL 3
The camera has backed up enough so we’re seeing the white guy from his waist up. We can also see, just barely in panel, the head of the other speaker, who is a Black man. They seem to be walking The white man is holding up a forefinger to make a point, smiling, and looking ahead rather than looking at the Black man. The Black man looks stressed and is sweating.

WHITE PERSON: My intentions are good!
BLACK PERSON: Racism isn’t about your intentions.

PANEL 4
The camera has backed away enough so we can see both characters from head to toe. The white man, still looking ahead, is making another “explaining” gesture as he walks. The Black man is bent over double as he walks, due to the enormous boulder he’s straining to carry on his back.

WHITE PERSON: Well, if it’s not about my feelings, my heart, or my intentions, then what’s left?
BLACK PERSON: Do you even hear yourself?

Posted in Cartooning & comics, Race, racism and related issues | 3 Comments  

Cartoon: Centrists and Civility

Posted on November 3, 2018 by Ampersand

If you enjoy these cartoons, please help me make more by supporting my Patreon. A $1 pledge really helps.

The challenge in a cartoon like this – which really has to be ultra-simple to be effective – is to find ways to make the art worth looking at despite being so simple. So I worked on trying to make the figures seem active and alive, and to really vary their poses and costumes. Hopefully it worked!

Transcript of cartoon

This cartoon has three panels, plus a small additional “kicker” panel underneath the bottom of the cartoon.

PANEL 1
This panel shows three well-coiffed white people – they could be politicians, or pundits on TV – on the right side of the panel, facing towards the left side of the panel. They look angry and are speaking with hostile expressions. There is a large caption superimposed over the image.
CAPTION: RIGHT
WHITE GUY: Cattle don’t get to keep their kids. Why should immigrants?
WHITE GAL: Teh law should protect elections from Black vot- I mean, from illegal voters!
OTHER WHITE GUY: George Soros paid scientists to make up global warming!

PANEL 2
This panel shows two lefties, dressed like college students or protesters, on the left side of the panel, facing towards the right side of the panel. They look angry and are speaking with hostile expressions. The woman’s race and ethnicity is ambiguous, the man is Black. There is a large caption superimposed over the image.
CAPTION: LEFT
WOMAN: $#%*! those people!
MAN: They’re terrible hateful bigots!

PANEL 3
This panel shows a white man and an ethnically ambiguous woman, both facing towards the left with scornful expressions. The man is making a “stop that, get away” hand gesture towards the left; the woman has her arms on her hips. There is a large caption superimposed over the image.
CAPTION: CENTRISTS
MAN: Tsk! Why must the left be so uncivil?
WOMAN: Do they want Trump re-elected?

SMALL KICKER PANEL BELOW THE BOTTOM OF THE STRIP
This panel shows the leftists glaring at the centrists, while the centrists smile back.
CENTRIST WOMAN: We’re only saying, both sides are equally bad!

Posted in Cartooning & comics | 122 Comments  

Fake Funeral! Monday November 5th! Tell Your Friends!

Posted on November 1, 2018 by Ampersand

(This is sort of a sequel to a fake wedding done in 2008).

The date of the fake funeral has been set! It’s November 5th (by curious coincidence, just a week after my 50th birthday). You’re invited, so please come! And bring your friends! Or, really, bring anyone who is reasonably unlikely to violently attack me or the church building. I’m not fussy.

What’s a fake funeral? Just what it sounds like. We’re going to pretend to put on a funeral. It’s sort of a role-playing game; everyone plays a part, and together we’ll throw the worst funeral of all time. (You can make up your own character, or have one assigned to you.)

The funeral will take place in downtown Portland, at The Old Church (corner of SW 11th and Clay, Portland, OR), at 7:00pm. A brief and (I hope) disastrous reception to follow.

Post questions in the comments, and email me if you’re coming!

Continue reading →

Posted in Mind-blowing Miscellania and other Neat Stuff, Whatever | 13 Comments  

A Workshop I’m Leading and Two Reviews of “Words For What Those Men Have Done”

Posted on October 28, 2018 by Richard Jeffrey Newman

I’d like to share two things from my writing life that I am excited and happy about.

Writing About What You Are Afraid To Write About @ The Ollom Arts Festival

  • When: November 14th, from 6-8 PM
  • Where: One Art Space, 23 Warren Street, New York, NY 10007
  • How Much: $20 (buy tickets here)
  • More Info: info@ollomart.com

From November 10th through November 15th, Ollom Art will be holding its 2018 Festival, the theme of which is “The Hole Project: Mining Portals of Vulnerability.” This year’s festival explores the real and “metaphoric holes in our…bodies and our psychic selves through installations, artistic creations, workshops and panel discussions.” The festival opens with a gala fundraiser on November 10th from 6 to 8 PM, which you can learn more about and for which you can buy tickets here. The money we raise will help to fund Ollom Art’s “Art Heals” workshops. These workshops will be held “across the country [with the goal of reaching] out to communities…and collaborat[ing] with local artists to help demonstrate…how art can open channels” to healing from trauma.

I became involved with the Festival because, as a survivor of childhood sexual violence, I have experienced firsthand how making art can contribute to healing. My workshop, which is called Writing About What You Are Afraid To Write About and is for writers of all kinds and at all levels of experience, will explore strategies you can use to put the thing or things that scare you into words—even when you don’t want to say exactly what it is—and to see that kind of verbalization as an act of hope. I hope you will consider attending, or that you will pass this information on to someone you think would benefit from this kind of workshop. Here’s the full description:

Why write about something you fear? To name it and, in naming it, to gain control over it. To learn how not to be afraid. Or, perhaps, to learn how to live with fear. Why try to make poetry from your fear, to make it beautiful with words? Not the straightforward loveliness of surfaces, but the beauty that puts us in touch with the full depth of what it means to be human, that does not force us to choose between it and ugliness, but rather allows us to experience both beauty and ugliness as they always already exist within us, and in the world around us. Why? Because while a poem may pronounce judgment on what we fear, it does not judge us for fearing it. Poetry is not politics, and it is not therapy, but finding the words that will make your fear beautiful is an act of hope and, therefore, of a kind of healing. In this workshop, we will explore strategies for bringing that hope and that healing into our lives and our work, whether as poets and writers, or as people who simply want to find ways of saying what they haven’t, till now, been able to say.

If this interests you and you’re in the New York City area, I hope you’ll consider coming. If you’re not interested or able to attend, but you know people who might be, I hope you’ll consider passing this information along.

Two Reviews of Words For What Those Men Have Done Have Been Published

Two reviews of Words For What Those Men Have Done have been published since the spring of this year. The first, “Those Words, Those Men,” by Sarah White, was published in American Book Review. The second, by Pramila Venkateswaran, was published on The Enchanting Verses. Aside from the fact that both writers had nice things to say about my poems, what makes these reviews stand out for me is that they are the first ones, of either of my books, to speak plainly, more or less explicitly, and really thoughtfully about how I deal with the theme of sexual violence that runs through my work.

This makes me happy not just because I believe my work deserves that kind of attention, but also, and more importantly, because I hope it represents a small contribution to developing a full-throated critical vocabulary (because we certainly don’t have one now) with which to talk about literary depictions of sexual violence against men and about how the repercussions and consequences of that kind of violation in men’s lives are represented and understood within our culture.

I always appreciate when people respond to my work by thanking me for my vulnerability, or praising my courage, and I especially value those times when fellow survivors, both men and women, have come up to me after a reading and thanked me for giving voice to something they have not yet found their own words for; but I am also aware that those responses, sincere and valuable as they are, make me and not what I’ve written the focus of attention, and that this focus makes it easier not to deal with the issues that I think my work explores surrounding sexual violence against men and what I sometimes call male survivorship—issues with which our culture is still only in the very early stages of grappling.

The women who wrote these two reviews like my work. Even if you don’t, I hope you will consider reading what they wrote, because the conversation their reviews could help to start is an important one for all of us to have.

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