Blood Libel: Ignorance, stupidity or political doublespeak?
Posted: January 12, 2011 Filed under: politics, stupidity, weird 5 Comments
(image of a ‘Blood Libel’ at right courtesy of a circa 1939 German Nazi newspaper)
In response to criticisms over the gun related metaphors and imagery used by SarahPac and other politically right-leaning pundits, political candidates and media gadflys in light of the Arizon shootings, Sarah Palin has responded with a video in which she stated, “Journalists and pundits should not manufacture a blood libel that serves only to incite the very hatred and violence they purport to condemn. That is reprehensible.”
Her statement is bizarre for so many reasons, and I’ll make no apologies for admitting to my dislike of Palin. For one thing, it seems strange (and ironic) that Palin, who poses as one of the great supporters of the doctrine of personal responsibility, should feel aggreived when someone else gets shot. My own view is that if you encourage someone else to shout ‘fire’ in a crowded theatre, people are going to be angry at you if they get injured in the stampede for the exit, whether or not you were one of the ones doing the stampedeing. Using terms like ‘reload’ and ‘second ammendment remedies’ and putting ‘surveyor symbols’ on ‘target’ state representatives is going to be viewed as ‘questionable’ when someone does go out and shoot people. That’s one of the risks of making public statements — they can (and will) come back to bite you in the ass.
But I’m also disturbed by Palin’s use of the term, “Blood Libel.” It apparently dates back to the gospel of Matthew where Matthew reports that the Jews who agitated for Jesus’ execution said, “Let the blood be on our heads.” In the middle ages, ‘Blood Libel’ was used to encourage hatred of Jews and to support the false claim that the Jews used the blood of Christians in secret ceremonies. This reasoning was later picked up by the Nazis and other anti-Semites. So “Blood Libel” has a long (and hideous) history.
Unfortunately, Palin didn’t present her remarks in a historical context, so we don’t really know what she intended to mean by the ‘blood libel’ claim. Was it just an accidental pairing of two words? Given Palin’s fundamentalist christian bent and the wording of the phrase, “manufacture a blood libel,” (rather than something more direct and less biblical in tone, like “commit libel”), that seems unlikely. Is Palin an anti-Semite? It wouldn’t surprise me. Or is the inclusion of the word intended as a double meaning to Palin’s supporters and foes alike? Is she tossing this offhand reference to ‘blood libel’ into the mix in order to stir up the obvious claim of anti-Semitism from her foes so she can once again turn that accusation around and say to her followers, “See? The lamestream media really IS against me! Now they are accusing me of anti-Semitism!”
I’m thinking the latter is a definite possibility.
Crazy people with guns
Posted: January 11, 2011 Filed under: politics, stupidity 3 CommentsI read today that in 2010 in Pima County, Arizona, about 45% of the mental health patients were forced out of public treatment programs because the tax payer didn’t want to pay for those services. I wonder if any of the voters who voted down public financing of mental health services last year will make the connection that having their state representatives and judges and children shot dead in a grocery store and not having sufficient mental health services might be in any way related.
Go figure.
Whose fault is it?
Posted: January 9, 2011 Filed under: politics, stupidity, wierd stuff Leave a comment
(BTW, the picture at right is not actually Sarah Palin, but instead is pornstar Lisa Ann who portrayed Palin in a porn film. Lisa Ann is as close as you will get to a picture of Sarah Palin in my blog… unless you have a picture of Sarah Palin killing a puppy or slapping a child; I’ll put that on my blog).
One of the Palin ‘SarahPac’ spokespersons, Rebecca Mansour, has claimed that Sarah Palin and her supporters have been unfairly targeted by the media and states that the symbols are not ‘gunsights’ but map surveyor symbols. Strange how someone else gets shot and Sarah Palin is suddenly the victim. Shortly after the controversey, the graphic disappeared from the SarahPac website (which begs the question of whether or not those ‘cross hairs’ were indeed ‘surveyor symbols’ rather than gun sights… if they were just innocent surveyor symbols, why suddenly decide to take the graphic down?). Back in March of 2010, even media personality Elizabeth Hasselbeck, a Palin supporter, said the ‘gunsights’ were in poor taste and no one from the Palin campaign contradicted Hasselbeck or corrected her by announcing that they were ‘surveyor’ symbols at that time. It’s pretty clear (to me at least) that if Sarah Palin and her followers claim that there was no ‘violence’ in the message they were giving out, that they are lying sacks of shit — but, then again, what else is new?
However, despite my active dislike of Sarah Palin and everything she stands for, I can’t honestly say that I think she is responsible for the shooting. The things she says and tweets and posts on Facebook are stupid and reprehensible and I wish she wouldn’t say them… but they are also just words, and, unfortunately, given her right of free speech she has as much a right to say those words as I do to criticize what she says.
From my recollection, in 1995 when Timothy McVeigh detonated his bomb at the Alfred Murrah Building in Oklahoma, there was a period of stunned silence afterwards. The Limbaughs and the O’Reilleys and the others (whomever the lefty equivalents of Limbaugh might be — Rachel Maddow?) didn’t immediately chime in to offer blame (although, let’s be honest, then President Clinton did benefit, politically, from the unfortunate event — and his opponents like Newt Gingrich were forced to step back a bit from their anti-federalist rhetoric). Today it seemed like the politicals and pundits couldn’t wait to start blaming each other — the blood and brains were not yet cleaned up off the floor of the Safeway before the finger pointing began.
Am I a part of a culture of "always buying shit"?
Posted: January 6, 2011 Filed under: moaning, philosophy 7 Comments
When I tour the different discussion sites having to do with RPG stuff, I frequently come across posts about buying stuff and links to sites where one can buy stuff. There is cheap and stupid stuff for sale. You can buy steel, hematite or wooly mammoth ivory dice. There are even high end ’boutique’ sites that cater to the ‘geek culture’ with all sorts of stuff like Geek Chic where you can buy an $8,000.00 gaming table. And they now make a USB drive shaped like just about anything.
I have to confess that while I LIKE buying and owning shit (I am an American, after all), part of me thinks the whole “Geek is the new cool” and “express your unique individuality by buying more shit like a sword handle umbrella or a set of Lord of the Rings Plush minis” begins to make me a bit sick. Because, let’s face it, if you need a table to play games at, do you really need one that costs 8 grand? Do you carry an umbrella to keep the rain off your head or do you carry an umbrella with a samuri sword handle to impress your cubemates at how wacky you are? And if you collect things like Gandalf plushies and you are over 8 years old I don’t even want to know you.
I don’t know if I am a geek or not. I’m not good with computers or math (in spite of having one lightly used MSITM degree). I can’t tell you which actor played Doctor Who in which episode nor do I have a strong opinion on whom the best doctor might be (my default answer is ‘Tom Baker’ because I know his name). I can’t speak Klingon nor do I know the Vulcan calendar. I don’t really like gaming conventions (I have been to two). But somehow I fit the definition of ‘geek’ or I am ‘geeky.’ And when a large part of the definition of ‘geek culture’ seems to be ‘buying clever and useless shit’ or ‘collecting one pristine sample of everything and keeping it in mint condition,’ then I want out.
I realize that for me to rail against the ‘rampant consumerism’ of ‘geek culture’ is a lot like the pot calling the kettle black. I try to make money by illustrating RPG products. I have about 100 lbs of vintage lead minis (including a Jabberwocky and an Umber Hulk) in my basement. I buy more books, art supplies and music than I probably should, given my budget. Right now I’m trying to make some money by making some mosaic items that I hope people will buy (unemployment is like that). I even published my own game book via Lulu (which probably makes all of my “I don’t wanna be a geek” talk kind of ridiculous — and did you see how I snuck in a link to it? Buy a copy, please? Thanks!). But there is stuff and there is crap — and, I’m sorry, but most of what is sold through ‘Think Geek’ or other similar sites is useless crap.
I don’t know where I’m going with this. Maybe I’m just fed up because more and more of our lives seem to be spent on paying for or buying things… maybe it’s just male menopause or a mid-life crisis. What about making and inventing things? Miller (played by Tracey Walker in Repo Man (1984)) said, “The more you drive, the less intelligent you are.” Maybe that’s true. Everybody drives in Detroit and we have some astoundingly stupid people out here (like the guy who leaned on his horn and gave me the finger the other day because I made a left turn). But I also wonder if just spending a lot of time acquiring more and more stuff we don’t really need also makes us stupid.
2011 is a year when I will buy less. I’m still buying tools and art supplies, books and I’ll include a small budget for music. I’ll buy electronics and similar stuff only if I must (my S.O. has asked for a DVR capable TV because Netflix is phasing out discs by mail in favor of downloads). For the rest, I’ll do my best to recycle, re-use, repair or self manufacture.
Buying Art in the OSR
Posted: January 1, 2011 Filed under: art, OSR, publishing 7 CommentsI wanted to continue the conversation that developed in the comments portion of my last post because I think it’s worth talking about. One set of comments that struck me were from Jim of LotFP and B. Portly Esquire:
JimLotFP said…
>>The thing that irks me about Raggi’s
attitude is that claims to be an “art director” and knows best.
What’s the alternative? One thing that
is totally escaping me in this conversation is how I’m to get the right
look and feel if I take a hands-off approach.More than anything else in
this whole publishing thing, dealing with artists is the big thing that I’m
still largely in the dark about.
I’m not going to call anyone out on this one, because I think the positions of both people have merit. But I hope that a majority of problems can be avoided if expectations and the philosophy that drives them are made clear up front. Maybe that’s just the optimist in me talking because I seem to have had more than my fair share of misunderstandings and fuck-ups.
As an artist and photographer, there are actually only a few things have really made me want to put a bullet in a project in my past work, but they all seem to boil down to actions or events that cause me to feel as though my time and efforts are not valued or are taken for granted by the client. I don’t know if that makes me ‘uppity’ or not. But maybe I can start the conversation by talking about what I want as an OSR artist.
It drives me insane when someone comes to me asking that I do work that I am obviously not suited for. I don’t draw with a computer tablet. I don’t paint like Larry Elmore. I don’t do anything in an ‘Anime’ style. I’ve never drawn something “furry” or “Toonish.” There is nothing like that in my samples or on my website. So I guess I don’t understand why some people seem to keep asking me for that… especially when portfolio sites like ‘Elfwood’ or whatever all over the web are bursting with people who do that kind of stuff. This is especially galling when the requester only gradually reveals that this is what they want… when, three or four emails into the conversation and I’ve been sending them sketches and trying to pin down what they want, they finally say, “Can’t you do more of an anime style?” Motherfucker. If you could strangle people via email I would be a murderer several times over.
If, as a client, you have a laundry list of requirements, deliver them in advance. If you are the client, realize that you may not always get 100% of what you want (especially if you think of it late in the process). Over on Dragonsfoot I remember reading some dick ranting on and on about how the picture of the mindflayer in the original Monster Manual had little pupils and the description said that the mind flayer didn’t have pupils. What a dicksack. If, as a client, you can’t handle the occassional discrepency between what you wanted and what you got, then go to art school and learn how to draw because that is the only way that you are going to get 100% of what you want 100% of the time. If, as an artist, you absolutely can’t stand to make any changes ever, then illustration (where you illustrate someone else’s book or idea or whatever) may not be for you.
My time is valuable to me. I get resentful when someone sends me a big manuscript and says, “You are the artist… read this over and pick out a dozen different illustrations that you would like to do, then do sketches of them and send them to me for approval and I’ll tell you what changes to make.” Honestly, I do not want to read your manuscript or be your unpaid art director or layout artist. My one-time usage price assumes that I can just sit down and draw the thing and send it to you and be done with it.
Obviously, my loyalties are on the ‘artist’ side of things… but I want to work in illustration and I want people to be happy with my work so I try to understand the client point of view. And I’m trying to teach myself how to avoid problems and identify clients that I may not be able to have a productive relationship with. So part of what I want to tell Jim of LotFP is that he should try to find artists he can work with who can consistently deliver the ‘look and feel’ that you want and allow that it isn’t brain surgery — occassionally, the artist might draw pupils on the mind flayer(whether because you forgot to tell him or he didn’t read your art direction)… but if you get most of what you want most of the time, you are doing pretty well in the grand scheme of things.
I don’t know if what I have written here is helpful or not — I hope it is. I think it’s a conversation that the members of the “OSR” publishing community need to keep having. From my own experience in the world of commercial print production, the problems of the OSR artists and OSR art directors are not unique to the OSR — they are just part and parcel of the collaborative process of getting something to print. Personally, I like the D.I.Y. aesthetic of the punk-era ‘zine and think too many OSR publishers are hung up on making their product look like it was published by TSR circa 1985… I wonder if OSR publishers would do better to celebrate the “warts and all” aesthetic of the small press… but that’s just one opinion.
Back Home
Posted: December 31, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized Leave a comment
I’m back. Unfortunately, I did not come back alone — I have brought some sort of a bug along with me… so I have taken to my bed. Surprisingly accurate image of my current cirmstances at the right, minus the haloes, wimples and saints. And, rather than being surrounded by loving attendants, I’m just an unshaven slob in an unmade bed with dirty socks on the floor, luggage not yet unpacked and a sink full of dirty dishes.
Hope to become more active in the coming days/weeks… and the Fridge is empty so I know I need to at least venture out to the store for supplies. But I feel like crap.
Happy Holidays!
Posted: December 22, 2010 Filed under: Uncategorized 2 Comments
Thoughtcrime 1.0
Posted: December 21, 2010 Filed under: philosophy, politics, sexuality, stupidity, wierd stuff 2 Comments
Philip Greaves, the man who wrote a ‘how to’ book on pedophilia that was briefly for sale on Amazon, has been arrested in Florida even though he lives in Colorado. Greaves wrote and self-published the book, “The Pedophile’s Guide to Love and Pleasure: A Child-Lover’s Code of Conduct,” in Pueblo, Colorado. It was briefly carried on Amazon.com, but, after considerable protest, removed from Amazon’s list of products for sale. Detectives in Polk County, Florida, apparently purchased the book from Greaves through the mail, had him arrested by the Pueblo police and are now seeking to have him extradited to Florida where he will be charged. Sheriff Grady Judd said, “The message is very clear: If you write a book, if you sell that book, if you transmit that book to anyone in our jurisdiction, then we will investigate you and arrest, because our goal is protect the children.“
I would never say that I like the idea of someone writing a book like Greave’s book. There is no doubt in my mind that pedophilia is wrong. But I’m extraordinarily disturbed that a Sheriff in Florida would first ask someone in another state to send him a book and then seek to arrest that person for having sent them the book. The arrest hinges on the fact that such a book is illegal in Florida (Mr. Greaves may have been ignorant of that fact), but Mr. Greaves did not violate the Florida law until detectives in Florida wrote to him and asked him to send them the book. The Sheriff is arresting Mr. Greaves for a crime that law enforcement officers encouraged Mr. Greaves to commit. Aren’t there any actual criminals in Florida in need or arrest?
The other part of the story that disturbs me is that Mr. Greaves isn’t being arrested for commiting acts of pedophila. He is being arrested for writing about pedophila. I think that’s an important distinction. I’m certain that rape is wrong and I think rape should be illegal, but I don’t recall anyone having suggested that it would be right to arrest Ayn Rand for the rape scene she wrote about in “The Fountainhead.” On a practical level, I am very uncomforable with laws that don’t limit themselves to what the criminal does, but instead extend into what the criminal might think or write about. Reading books about murder or fantasizing about murdering someone or even writing a book about killing someone is not murder. And yet, Sheriff Judd claims that he wants to protect the children by arresting someone in another state who wrote a book. Should the authors of ‘Lolita’ and ‘Gravity’s Rainbow’ also be arrested since those works of fiction contain references to pedophilia?
The entire story worries me because it makes me wonder what the next logical progression of this event might be. If Greaves can be arrested for writing a book in Colorado that is illegal in Florida, where does Florida’s juristdiction end? If writing the book is illegal, how about owning or reading it? (and, honestly, I don’t know how anyone could judge the legality of the contents of the book without reading it) If writing or reading about certain matters is illegal, then shouldn’t thinking about them be wrong as well? And, if so, how do you enforce that law?
In the end, the issue isn’t pedophilia because, as far as I know, the author is not going to be charged with physical sexual misconduct. The author wrote a book in which he apparently described how one might go about seducing children… which, no matter how distasteful we might find that, is much different than actually doing it. If anyone deserves to be arrested on the basis of the Florida law that makes it illegal to import ‘pedophilia instruction manuals’ across the state line, shouldn’t it be the detectives who caused the book to be shipped to Florida by ordering it?
When did "roleplaying" become a suicide pact?
Posted: December 21, 2010 Filed under: games, philosophy 5 Comments
Some players seem to come up with an idea for a character and then want to stick with that idea through hell and high water — being ‘true’ to the idea that they originally generated the character becomes the way in which they ‘are’ that character. So, before hand, the player might decide that the concept of their character is that the character is an elf hater. They might generate some sort of backstory where the corpses of their parents were found riddled with elvish arrows, making the character a kind of ‘Charles Bronson: Deathwish’ guy who just hates elves. Should an elf show up in the game, the player will have his/her character react with hatred, attacking or refusing to cooperate with any elf (whether NPC of PC).
Unfortunately, the player will argue that his/her character’s maniacal hatred of elves will allow no other action. If objections are raised, the player will say, “But I am just playing my character.”
The problem with this approach to roleplaying(at least from my point of view), is that it tends to make all interactions with elves ‘about’ that one player character’s pathological hatred of elves. Any time an elf steps into the game, the player will grab center stage by acting on the object of their character’s wrath. Unfortunately, this seldom seems to leave much room for other players to ‘play’ whenever an elf is around because the violent dislike of elves ‘built into’ the one player’s character will preclude all other action on the part of the group.
I would suggest that generating a character with an impossible personality trait (like an unreasonable hatred of elves) can serve as a ‘poison pill’ for any hope of cooperative play. Instead of just being a ‘quirk’ of one player’s character, the player’s choice can become that which all of the action revolves around and the rest of the players need to either spend their time making sure the player character in question avoids elves or be content to having every elf NPC or PC get hacked down or driven away. My suspicion is that creating a player character that, by design, cannot cooperate with the other player characters is perhaps a passive-agressive power move on the part of the player. He or she selects a role that insures that the action will almost always revolve around them.
Blackmoor: Return to the Origins
Posted: December 13, 2010 Filed under: Blackmoor, campaigns, Chainmail, games, miniatures, war games 4 Comments
One of my art teachers used to like to say, “The essence of originality is a return to origins.” At the time, I think he was trying to tell us something like, “All ideas come from somewhere, so if you like the way a given artist uses leaf shapes or animal shapes, etc., then, instead of imitating that artist, go look at leaves or animals.”
It is in this spirit that I have dug out my old copy of the medieval miniatures game, “Chainmail” and my copy of Dave Arneson’s “First Fantasy Campaign.” I’ve been thinking about running a continuing campaign with fantasy armies battling for supremacy in a fantasy continent reminiscent of Tony Bath’s “Hyboria” campaign for a long time. A few years ago I tried to jump start interest in a D&D campaign that switched back and forth between players RPGing adventurers going on adventures and generals running armies with mixed success by surprising the players with a war game one night. I don’t think the players liked it that much.
Instead of trying to sell others on the idea, I have begun to think about just doing a ‘minis’ campaign for my own amusement, and fighting pitched battles where I can play the part of both generals and allow fate (or the dice) to decide the course of empire.
I already have a fairly substantial collection of minis, including lots of orcs, goblins, humans, etc. I have some scenery (including scratch built buildings) although the terrain in my photos (link above) is long gone. I originally wanted to do this with my own fantasy maps, but recently I came across my copy of “The First Fantasy Campaign” and think I will just use that.
The rules will be Chainmail, with certain modifications (I think Chainmail’s morale system is impossibly complex and want something simpler).
My basic idea is to set up the fantasy kingdom as it is described in “The First Fantasy Campaign” at the start and establish each kingdom (Blackmoor, Egg of Coot, Duchy of Tehn, etc.) with a baseline of resources, including armies, monsters, etc. Then I would like to write the general motivations for each kingdom/power. The Egg of Coot, for example, wants to conquer all others on the map and convert them to his/her/it’s territories. Then I need to come up with random event cards (there are about 50-60 already in the First Fantasy Campaign) which randomly indicate viking attacks, diesease or plagues, storms, invading orcs, etc.
Hopefully, when I am done, like a ‘low tech’ game of the “Civilization” computer game. I can set events in motion and see how they develop. If Egg of Coot conquers or destroys one of Blackmoor’s villages, then Blackmoor is less able to regenerate/replace troops or supplies.
Although given everything else on my plate, I need another project like a hole in my head… but I’ve wanted to do this for a long time and have always delayed because “the time was not right” or I couldn’t find others interested. Enough. I’ll try to keep the general public informed and maybe even set up a blog/site with battle reports once I get going.