I'm sure most of you have heard about Disney buying Marvel. A big long summary can be found here at Deadline, and it's been updated every time more information has come out, so start from the bottom if you want the chronological developments. It's rather comprehensive and brings up a lot of good points.

An interview with Joe Quesada discussing the deal can be found here at Comic Book Resources, his only interview on the matter until it's all finalized. A lot of it seems like reassuring the fanboys it's all going to be ok. But a lot of people apparently need to hear that, no, everything Marvel produces will NOT have to suddenly adhere to a G rating.

That seems to be the big question: how will Marvel and Disney influence each other, if at all, regarding the portrayal of and marketing towards women? Will the effects reinforce the gender divide that already exists within them? A post on Bitch Magazine's blog, Princess Synergy: Disney’s Acquisition of Marvel is Good for Boys, But What About Girls?, has a good summary of the various points taken by a range of bloggers and journalists regarding the marketing-to-gender implications. The end of the post asks "What female character from the Marvel Universe would you like to see get a proper treatment in film or television?" and I think that's kind of a silly question here. I don't think Disney buying Marvel is going to result in a push to make movies based on female characters. If anything, the opposite. They're trying to appeal to male audiences; they think they've already got female audiences covered.

Newsarama makes too many good points on the gender implications for me to just pick one or two quotes, so go read the entire thing: Can Marvel-Disney Help Close the Comic Book Gender Gap? by Sarah Jaffe.

Going back a bit: for all its faults, Disney is fantastic at marketing to and developing products for the ladies. Sure, Disney’s the evil empire, but it’s gotten there by being very, very good at what it does. And, honestly, I doubt they can fuck it up much worse than Marvel has been. Spider-Man lip gloss, my ass.
Meet the New Boos by Rachel Edidin

What would be most unfortunate is if they split the superhero world into an archaic division between boys and girls. We've had enough of that over the years. Rather than "girl" heroes and "boy" heroes, each trying to serve the stereotypes of a particular set, we need well-written films that deal with all interests, regardless of the central focus.
Girls on Film: Princesses, Superheroines, Disney, and Marvel by Monika Bartyzel

The Women of Marvel have been a diverse and fascinating bunch since the beginning and no one can take that from them, not seasonal event, not new bold direction, not even 'modernizing' for the new era. What does hurt them is disuse and reinvention that takes them further and further away from the characters that caught our eye to begin with. There are a lot of strong archetypes, ethnicities, body types that can be found in anyone's imagination or real life. I know I think of myself as a She-hulk kinda gal,. so why don't I have book to read anymore or a t-shirt to declare myself with? Once people get to know the women of Marvel, they'll love them for their strength and originality and personal triumphs if only we got them all together for a big show of faith. Don't change a thing, don't invent some crazy reason for them all to be together other than a fond friendship and respect. It will sell like gangbusters.
The Fifth Color - Marvel Queens by Carla Hoffman

A science group on Long Island wants to turn the 16-acre site into a Tesla museum and education center, and hopes to get the land donated to that end. But the owner, the Agfa Corporation, says it must sell the property to raise money in hard economic times. The company’s real estate broker says the land, listed at $1.6 million, can “be delivered fully cleared and level,” a statement that has thrown the preservationists into action.

The ruins of Wardenclyffe include the tower’s foundation and the large brick laboratory, designed by Tesla’s friend Stanford White, the celebrated architect.

A Battle to Preserve a Visionary’s Bold Failure by William J. Broad: NY Times


Tesla Memorial Society of New York (some of the said preservationists)


Nikola Tesla Science & Technology Center and Museum aka Friends of Science East (where you can donate to the cause)

If you donate at least $20,zia_narratora will make you Tesla art!

This was moving.

Starkey claims: "One of the great problems has been that Henry, in a sense, has been absorbed by his wives. Which is bizarre. But it's what you expect from feminised history, the fact that so many of the writers who write about this are women and so much of their audience is a female audience. Unhappy marriages are big box office. We're trying to say, 'Hang on a minute, Henry is centre stage.' This is Henry – wives complicate the story of Henry. This is his development, his psychology and, above all, why he matters."
David Starkey's history boys: The argument that women turn history into a soap opera panders to a sexist notion of popular history by June Purvis

Don't explain your sexual identity to her via any form of instant electronic communication, even if you've turned off the notification that lets her know when you're typing and deleting and rephrasing and retyping again. (And if you haven't turned off that notification, believe me, you should.)
THE SEXUALLY FLUID PERSON'S GUIDE TO A SEAMLESSLY UNEVENTFUL COMING OUT. BY AMY YORK RUBIN

Twitter seems to be, first and foremost, an online haven where teenagers making drugs can telegraph secret code words to arrange gang fights and orgies.
TRULY GROUNDBREAKING MARKETING RESEARCH: UNDERSTANDING TWITTER. BY DAN KENNEDY

This makes me feel really sick.

A woman accused of animal cruelty for piercing the ears of kittens, cutting off their tails, and marketing them as gothic will face the charges in Luzerne County Court of Common Pleas.

The #3 most emailed article on The New York Times website is "You Try to Live on 500K in This Town." "This Town" refers to Manhattan. I wonder if people are emailing it to others because they empathize or out of schaudenfraude or just plain mocking. Obama has set the maximum salary for banking executives who accepted government bailout money at $500,000. More than generous, I think, considering. Apparently it's not enough to maintain the lifestyle these bankers have become accustomed to.

Sure, the solution may seem simple: move to Brooklyn or Hoboken, put the children in public schools and buy a MetroCard. But more than a few of the New York-based financial executives who would have their pay limited are men (and they are almost invariably men) whose identities are entwined with living a certain way in a certain neighborhood west of Third Avenue: a life of private schools, summer houses and charity galas that only a seven-figure income can stretch to cover.

The lifestyle expenses they list include:

Private school: $32,000 a year per student.
Mortgage: $96,000 a year.
Co-op maintenance fee: $96,000 a year.
Nanny: $45,000 a year.
Chauffeur: $75,000-$125,000 a year.
Personal trainer: $12,000 a year.
SAT tutoring: $3,750 for 30 weeks.
Groceries: $425 every 10 days.
Garage space for a car: $700 a month.
Dress for charity event: $10,000-$15,000.
Brooks Brothers Suit: $1,000.
Vacation: $8,000 every six months, approximately.

Living in Manhattan, particularly with a family, is expensive. Salkin points out that it takes $123,233 to maintain the same "middle class" lifestyle in Manhattan that one would get for $50,000 in Houston, Texas. What does "middle class" mean anyway? It's pretty much lost all meaning, hasn't it? Is the article implying that earning half a million dollars in Manhattan counts as middle class? To what extent do personal lifestyle expenses impact class status? If you can afford a chauffeur, you're rich. If you spend so much of your income on things like chauffeurs, status symbols, that you have nothing left to save, are you still rich? Is it more about appearances than realities?

Certainly, I loved novels and poems before I went to college. But only there was I struck by the lightening of how special it would be to devote myself, that literature was a cause, an end in itself, almost a blessing. That was communicated to me by the professors who taught. And what mattered was their attitude, not the particular curriculum of that moment. Weren’t most of us who are teaching today inspired like that? Well, I think few of us communicate any similar passion to students very well these days. We’d be far too embarrassed. We’d feel vulnerable to criticism and mockery. Isn’t that sad?

Literature vs. Literary Studies by David Lynn, in a response to:


The good news is that we've created a discipline: literary studies. The bad news is that we've made ourselves rulers of a realm that has separated itself almost completely from the rest of the world. In the process, we've lost many of the students — I'd say, many of them men — and even some of the professors. And yet still we teach literature as if to future versions of ourselves — not that there will be many jobs for them. The vast majority of students don't even want to be professors: They'd like to get something from a book they can use in their lives outside the classroom. What right have we to forget them?

WHAT AILS LITERARY STUDIES: Leaving Literature Behind by Bruce Fleming


The Unofficial Theory Of Sci-Fi Connectivity

The Inigo Montoya Guide to 27 Commonly Misused Words


Ultimately the campaign's biggest flaw is that it perpetuates the notion that consumers somehow "define themselves" with the technology they choose. If you truly believe you need to pick a mobile phone that "says something" about your personality, don't bother. You don't have a personality. A mental illness, maybe - but not a personality. Of course, that hasn't stopped me slagging off Mac owners, with a series of sweeping generalisations, for the past 900 words, but that is what the ads do to PCs. Besides, that's what we PC owners are like - unreliable, idiosyncratic and gleefully unfair. And if you'll excuse me now, I feel an unexpected crash coming.

I hate Macs by Charlie Brooker, a response to the Mac vs. PC ads

Colbert Report November 11, 2008: Proposition 8 Protests - Dan Savage

Colbert: Meanwhile, the California gay-stapo spent Sunday protesting Proposition 8, a constitutional amendment which bans same-sex marriage. One of the biggest protests took place at Pastor Rick Warren's Saddleback Church. Now, Warren has been one of the loudest proponents of gay marriage (I think Colbert meant Proposition 8), which is very brave considering "saddleback" is gay code for something I cannot say without incurring significant fines. I will only say, it does not involve an actual saddle.

Colbert: Black man's keeping you down!
Savage: A few black men have kept me down in the past, but . . .

Savage: But old people are the real villains in the piece and they're dying, which is some comfort.

Colbert: Is that what gay people are like? Vicious?
Savage: Yes, it is, actually.

Savage: But, you know there are a lot of fundamentalist Mormons out there who have multiple wives and they have spare sons and somebody's got to soak those extra Mormon boys up, so why not some polygamist homosexuals. We should put that on the table.
Colbert: Soaking up, by soaking up, soaking up, is that code?
Savage: Soaking up is what you do immediately after saddlebacking.
*Colbert's brain breaks*


How To Make Love Like A Zombie by Violet Blue

Think about it (while you still can). When you're a zombie, you're just not in control of your urges. Or the rips and tears in your clothing. What you lack in speed and agility, you make up for in determination -- like looking for living morsels to wrap your lips around and nibble a little. You have an innate "can-do" attitude, and you can "do" anyone who looks tasty. Or slow. Or injured.


Poverty in America Living Wage Calculator


What Photoshop would look like in real life.

The postmillennial version of a Leather­man is the Apple iPhone. Like all digital technologies, the iPhone has yet to achieve the hard-grained, Spartan elegancies of the steely Leatherman. It makes up for this with its cannibal appetite for other tools.
Self-Reliance 2008 by Bruce Sterling

8. Make sure you pack a snack (like a juice box and cookies) to eat immediately afterward to help with any wooziness.
How To . . . Have Sex With A Vampire

By the same token, never give the fans what they want. They'll just hate you for it. They may clamor for two characters to get together, but once it happens, they'll instantly get sated, bored and disgusted, in that order. If you do have two popular characters get together, one should turn out to be a clone or an evil alternate universe version.
A Guide to Fan Husbandry


5pm At Least I Don't End My Sentences With Prepositions
Angry customer on phone: Where are you located at?
CSR: Iowa.
Angry customer on phone: I outta come there and kick your ass!
Calm CSR: With all due respect sir, bring it. (hangs up)

Boyrum
Iowa City, Iowa
Overheard by: Cube Mate


I need a house with puzzles in the furniture and secret doors.

Theo: Spiderman and Iron Man do it in that movie.
Josh (turning away from another conversation): What?!?
Theo: Robert Downey Jr. and Tobey Maguire have sex, therefore it is like Spiderman and Iron Man are having sex.
The One-Universe Theory of Movies

Venom, to Two-Face: You need those meds, man . . . When Spiderman beat me that one time, I was on meds for like a year.
Two-Face: Aaand we're on Spiderman again.
Venom: Let me have my issues.
Head Trip

The phrase pwned, a perversion of owned used by online gamers, made it into an episode of South Park—not quite the OED but still authoritative—and enjoys broad ironic usage.
Epic Win by Christopher Beam

The Poetry of Sarah Palin: Recent Works by the Republican Vice Presidential Candidate

"Outside"

I am a Washington outsider.
I mean,
Look at where you are.
I'm a Washington outsider.

I do not have those allegiances
To the power brokers,
To the lobbyists.
We need someone like that.

(To C. Gibson, ABC News, Sept. 11, 2008)

Man decorates basement with $10 worth of Sharpie
I think I would have used one or two colors, not (just?) black.


ChooChoo Bear Corset
WANT. NEED.