Pamela “Craziest Bitch On The Internet” Atlas approvingly quotes some nutbar here:

The reality is that the Palestinians in the disputed territories are different from us, because the majority of them are evil. By that, I mean that the problem isn’t just their leaders and the terrorist thugs, the problem is the average person on the street. The butcher, the school teacher, the traffic cop — the majority of them are vile, sick, twisted, evil excuses for human beings and that’s why there is no peace in the region.

So far, so good – your standard eliminationist rhetoric, rendering the proposed enemy subhuman, et cetera et cetera, cheeseburger cheeseburger cheeseburger. But then it takes a whole new twist:

Which leads to a very basic question: if this was happening to Americans, how far would we be willing to go to stop it? The truth is, we already know the answer to that question because our ancestors have had to deal with this sort of savagery when Indians tortured and murdered American settlers. Our response was, depending on the situation, to slaughter them and/or force them to move.

Today, in our very civilized world, we look back with shock and horror at what we did to the Indians — and indeed, some of them didn’t deserve what they got. All too often, our ancestors didn’t make much of an effort to distinguish between friendly, peaceful Indian tribes and murderous, cannibalistic savages. On the other hand, their strategy of massacring our enemies was one that has been used throughout the ages and it has been proven, time and time again, to work — and it certainly worked for us.

Look, I generally avoid commenting on the Israel/Palestine situation, for the very simple reason that it is enormously complex and enormously controversial and I’m pretty sure I’m not going to say anything particularly clever that will magically make things better, but I am willing to go on the record as saying that the centuries-long extinguishing of Native Americans was, you know, very bad, and that comparing suggested policy to it in a light where killing lots and lots of Injuns is viewed as an honest-to-god Good Thing is more or less the definition of absolutely fucking insane.

(There are some who might care to compare the respective body counts between the Native Americans and the settler-Americans in this “protracted war” between the “murderous, cannibalistic[1] savages” and the good god-fearing white folks, and then the body counts of the Israelis and Palestinians. Absent of all other considerations and recriminations for crimes both real and imagined, one thing can be unambiguously stated as fact: the body counts for the Native Americans and the Palestinians were/are much, much higher than their opposite numbers.

[1] One might also note that the cannibalistic savages bedeviling the brave settlers were not, in fact, cannibalistic at all.

ME: Hi. My phone got smashed up and I need a new phone but I don’t want to spend a lot of money.
CUSTOMER SERVICE PERSON (of company that shall go unnamed but which rhymes with “Bodgers”): Certainly. What’s your account status?
ME: I’ve been month-to-month with you for a few years now.
BODGERS: I see. So you’re not under a contract?
ME: No.
BODGERS: In that case, the best I can do is offer you (shitty phone) for $100.
ME: Wait, though. I’m willing to enter into a contract in order to get a cheap phone. Or a free one. Whichever.
BODGERS: All right.
ME: Like, I see you’ve got a basic business plan here, $25 for 200 anytime minutes per month. That’s simple and suits me.
BODGERS: Okay, then I can offer you (shitty phone) for $79.
ME: …but it says here on the website that it costs $25.
BODGERS: That’s for a new customer.
ME: But that doesn’t make any sense. I’m offering to enter into the same brand new contract that a new customer would. I just want to keep my existing phone number.
BODGERS: I can’t really do anything. It’s policy.
ME: So you’re saying that if I cancelled my account, then called you right back and created a brand new one, that I could get the phone at the cheaper rate. Or, for that matter, an entirely different phone of better quality, which would still cost less than what you’re quoting me right now.
BODGERS: Yes.
ME: But if I want to keep my existing account, as regards which I have not missed a payment for years, I have to spend extra money to get the same phone that you would give to a new customer for less, regardless of the fact that I’m willing to enter into the same contract that he is.
BODGERS: Yes.
ME: What’s the incentive for me to keep from simply shutting down my account and signing up with one of your competitors, who will offer me a free and nicer phone when I sign into their contract?
BODGERS: To tell you the truth, I’m not really sure.

Hal Turner openly advocates the murder of Barack Obama and/or Hillary Clinton.

Guess who gets arrested after a collision: the rich white drunk driver or the poor black sober one.

Erick “Not An Actual Viking” Erickson is on a tear lately. Now that he’s told us all how black people aren’t actual voters and that white Democrats are all racists for not voting for Barack Obama (except those that did, but they don’t count), he’s attacking NOW New York for their attack on Ted Kennedy (among others).

Now, admittedly, NOW-NY’s press release is batshit insane and patronizing to feminists, to say the least. (I particularly liked this response from Feministe‘s comments: “Silly me! I thought feminism was about equality and social justice, and it’s really about being in a club and making sure my club wins!”)

But good ol’ Erick! It’s not enough to say that the statement is stupid hyperbole. No, Erick Erickson goes the distance to make sure you all know exactly what he thinks of those durn feminists.

As the Clintons and their supporters continue their destruction of the Democratic Party, we see the latest salvo fired from the thighs of ugly nags.

IT COMES OUT OF THEIR VAGINAS WHICH THEY DO NOT EVEN BOTHER TO SHAVE!

From the nether regions that see no men, New York’s National Association of Gals is out bashing Teddy Kennedy

1.) “Gals”? Does Erickson think he is in a 1940s newsroom comedy? Next up: the unironic use of “tough dames.”

2.) I’d ask “what the hell is his unseemly, nervous fascination with pussy,” but, well, i understand why he might be obsessed with pussy. Hint: it is much the same reason that Belloq was obsessed with the Ark of the Covenant in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Since Janet Reno endorsed Hillary that should negate this one man’s physical battery against womankind.

“Because Janet Reno is a dog, just like all those ugly feminists! HAW HAW HAW! Pass me the porn.”

Why, exactly, are Star Trek series box sets on DVD so much more goddamned expensive than everything else?

Barring the “complete series” box sets (which are only a reasonable price on Amazon anyway – these are box sets with a list price of over nine hundred fucking dollars for seven seasons, or about $110 per season), Star Trek box sets are massive ripoffs, constantly about half again (minimum) what most other TV season box sets of comparable size cost. The box sets aren’t particularly noteworthy in terms of providing a complete “all the toppings” experience; they’re pretty much average in most respects or even below average (there’s often very little commentary and a paucity of making-of documentary shorts, which frankly given the obsessive documentation that goes into the making of Trek is completely flabbergasting).

And god forbid you should want to buy seasons of Voyager or Enterprise. (Well, I thought Voyager was kind of lame – the ship looks like a shoe and Neelix needs to die in a fire, dammit – and Enterprise was pathetic, but I know there are people who actually like them.) On Amazon, the best price you can get for single seasons of those shows is $116 per box. Again: this is easily more than double the cost of any similarly produced series.

No other show rips off its fans like this. There are a couple of series that are similar in price, but there are always obvious reasons for that price, usually to do with increased production cost. The next most expensive sci-fi series you can find are the box sets of the new Doctor Who, which is an import produced under special license (which is why it has a high cost). Season 2 of Battlestar Galactica is expensive, but that’s only because Sci-Fi hasn’t produced a single-season box of it. The various HBO series are more expensive, but that’s because the higher DVD sales prices are part of HBO’s pay-cable profit model.

None of this applies to Star Trek, and frankly there’s no goddamned reason at all why the seasons should be so expensive. It’s the most popular sci-fi franchise of all time. I’m not a hardcore Trekker – far from it, believe me – but if I could pick up reasonably priced box sets of the original series, Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, I’d do it, because those shows were all quite entertaining and occasionally (Next Generation especially) groundbreaking television. Surely selling more copies of the series at a lower price point would increase the health of the franchise even further, making it only more relevant?

Or is Paramount just determined to rip off as many nerds as it possibly can?

Sometimes I wonder what I feel like writing about and I draw a bit of a blank. This is why I am thankful for Republicans. Give them a couple days, and inevitably they will produce a howler. For example, this one, from a mid-to-high-level organizer in the Rudy Guiliani campaign:

“I’ve been very concerned about this Muslim thing for quite awhile. The average American does not know beans about what the Muslims are about. I am talking about the Muslims in general. I don’t subscribe to the principle that there are good Muslims and bad Muslims. They’re all Muslims.”

Wow. No, just wow.

(Also, I am horribly amused by the use of the phrase “know beans.” I honestly thought I would never see that phrase again without rereading a Henry Huggins book.)

This lament from “a Former Nice Guy” has been making the rounds of the blogosphere. The fact that here and most especially over in particularly crazy-ass righty-land are falling over themselves in a rush to agree with this tripe only confirms my worst expectations.

But let’s to it, shall we?

I see this question posted with some regularity in the personals section, so I thought I’d take a minute to explain things to the ladies out there that haven’t figured it out.

What happened to all the nice guys?

The answer is simple: you did.

That’s not a resentful beginning at all!

See, if you think back, really hard, you might vaguely remember a Platonic guy pal who always seemed to want to spend time with you. He’d tag along with you when you went shopping, stop by your place for a movie when you were lonely but didn’t feel like going out,

Hey, wait, I know that guy! It was that guy down the street! The one who buys a lot of porn!

Seriously, who the fuck “tags along” with a girl when she goes shopping? If I want to hang out with somebody because I like the person, I do. I don’t expect to earn, like, extra points or something because she’s buying girl stuff (and that’s the implication in this little rant: “I was so good to you because I went along and did all the stupid crap you like when I could have been at home playing World of Warcraft”). If you like the person’s company, then that is its own reward. I’ve gone shopping with girls plenty of times, because I love used bookstores and I like company, and gosh darnit if that isn’t fun all by itself even if I don’t get any pussy afterwards.

And if you want more, then you actually have to try and make sure that the other person knows you want more, which doesn’t happen if you act like an expectant jackass who thinks if he spends enough time standing around awkwardly with his hands in his pockets while that girl he wants to fuck tries on dresses in… okay, I am honestly blanking on the name of a store that specifically sells nice dresses, but that’s probably because I don’t bother to be a whiny little kiss-ass and follow girls around when they go shopping… anyway, said guy figures if he does this enough, suddenly the Fuck Switch gets flipped. Except it doesn’t work that way, because that’s, you know, misogynistic.

How is this shit hard to figure out?

or even sit there and hold you while you sobbed and told him about how horribly the (other) guy that you were fucking treated you.

I just want to say this right now: Guys, if you know a girl who is with a guy, and they’re not married, but you think you would be better for her than her current man person is? Fucking say so. There is no right of ownership here, got it? It may sound like something out of an 80s sitcom, but you’re not screaming out “NO WAIT YOU SHOULD BE WITH ME” at the wedding or anything, you’re just making your own intentions known. You know why guys like this don’t say anything? Because they are terrified of rejection; they know in their guts that she’s going to just say “no” to them, either because of the inherent self-loathing so common in the breed or because they know that, yes, she’s actually happy with the guy he resents. So they just act like chickenshits.

(If they are married, you don’t get to say “I would be better for you.” Even if you might be. There’s a fine difference between bold and stupid.)

Never mind that these idyllic platonic-but-nearly-more scenarios never happen. Really, what single woman is going to go over to Creepy McStalksalot’s house when her boyfriend treats her like shit? “Goddammit, Rodney cheated on me. Who’s going to make me feel better, my girlfriends? My mother? No, wait, I’m gonna go spend time with that guy who remembers every thirty seconds that he’s staring at my tits so he jerks his head upwards for a bit before dropping it right back down. He can comfort me the way nobody else I know and love can, because he wants to fuck me, and as a woman all I want is to be placed on a pedestal.”

At the time, you probably joked with your girlfriends about how he was a little puppy dog, always following you around, trying to do things to get you to pay attention to him. hey probably teased you because they thought he had a crush on you.

I’m pretty sure they didn’t compare this Nice Guy to a puppy dog. People like having puppy dogs around. The puppy will be cute and love a woman unconditionally. The Nice Guy will do neither of these things.

Given that his behavior was, admittedly, a little pathetic,

You have to love it when someone writes a hateful diatribe and inserts a little sentence like this to show everybody he’s being balanced and reasonable. But you know what? The behaviour this guy wrote about is not “a little pathetic.” It is people pointing at you and laughing in the street pathetic. It is Adam-Sandler-movies-after-Happy Gilmore-pathetic.

you vehemently denied having any romantic feelings for him, and buttressed your position by claiming that you were “just friends.”

Interesting use of language here as our scribe claims these women deny having sexual feelings for these fucking losers, as opposed to simply not being attracted to creepy nebbishes.

Besides, he totally wasn’t your type. I mean, he was a little too short, or too bald, or too fat, or too poor, or didn’t know how to dress himself, or basically be or do any of the things that your tall, good-looking, fit, rich, stylish boyfriend at the time pulled off with such ease.

I personally believe that nothing says “sex machine” like a short, bald, fat, poor, uncultured dickweed with no social skills. How dare chicks want to hang out with somebody who actually put time and effort into his own personal upkeep?

Look, I can sympathize with guys who don’t look like Jude Law, because I don’t look like Jude Law either. I’m kind of a loudmouth (my entire law class will attest to this) and if I don’t exercise regularly then I get really fat and zitty. But guess what – that’s why I exercise regularly, and it’s because I’m a loudmouth that I decided early on to work on having a sense of humour and not saying things that were totally stupid, because if you must be a loudmouth, then at least be an entertaining one. It is not some horrible betrayal of who you are as a person to improve yourself specifically to make yourself more likeable. It shows a valuable understanding of social skills.

(Also, since when do chicks not like bald guys any more? Is this guy from the 80s? Did he miss the whole shaven-head esthetic that got really popular fifteen years ago and never went away?)

Eventually, your Platonic buddy drifted away, as your relationship with the boyfriend got more serious and spending time with this other guy was, admittedly, a little weird, if you werent dating him.

…and because the Nice Guy realized, on some subconscious level, that no amount of hanging out with you was going to get him pussy. Not that he could admit this to himself, because this would mean admitting that those jerks who were getting laid regularly were actually working to get it, by learning how to dance or make conversation or tell a joke (an actual original joke, not just quoting “The Simpsons” at somebody) or making sure they looked attractive to their target demographic.

More time passed, and the boyfriend eventually cheated on you, or became boring, or you realized that the things that attracted you to him weren’t the kinds of things that make for a good, long-term relationship.

You know what makes for a good long-term relationship? When the guy expects sex and adoration just because.

So, now, you’re single again, and after having tried the bar scene for several months having only encountered players and douche bags, you wonder, “What happened to all the nice guys?”

Firstly, “douchebag” is one word, not two. So this Formerly Nice Guy lacks grammar and writing skills. No wonder he never gets laid. Doesn’t he know that chicks dig a dude with mad grammar skills? They are after me all the time to show me how I cleft a gerund, it makes them fucking swoon, it does.

Secondly, the bar scene is filled with Nice Guys just like our author here, except that instead of thinking that the Magic Path To Vagina leads through the Valley Of Dutiful Friendship, they think that it’s quicker to just get her drunk until her standards drop enough that they qualify. (Also, there’s plenty of people who go to clubs and bars just to drink and dance and have a good time. They, oddly, do not have a lot of trouble getting laid. Go figure.)

Well, once again, you did.

OH SNAP I DID NOT SEE THAT COMING

You ignored the nice guy. You used him for emotional intimacy without reciprocating, in kind, with physical intimacy.

See, this is the part where I went “holy shit,” because normally in “I Used To Be A Nice Guy” type rants, this sentiment is only implied, a nasty little undercurrent of malicious envy and spite. But this guy comes right out and says it: if a guy acts friendly towards a girl, the girl has a moral duty to fuck him.

You laughed at his consideration and resented his devotion.

(I think he meant to use “erection” rather than “devotion” here.)

You valued the aloof boyfriend more than the attentive “just-a-” friend.

At least the aloof boyfriend would give the poor girl some space. Mister Nice Guy would be around all day if a girl let him. “Maybe she’ll decide to have sex with me in the next five minutes!”

Eventually, he took the hint and moved on with his life.

He moved on so much that years later he has to write nasty anonymous open letters on Craigslist, but he’s TOTALLY OVER IT YOU KNOW.

He probably came to realize, one day, that women aren’t really attracted to guys who hold doors open;

Because acting like it’s something special isn’t chivalrous. It’s retarded. I hold doors open for girls all the time. And guys. See, it’s like this: I am going through the door, so I hold it open for other people as they pass after me, or pull it open and let people go through first because the way we’re standing it’s convenient and polite to do so. And – guess what – they do the same for me!

Now, if I were going to act like some colossal twat and make a big scene out of opening the door, perhaps with a wave of my hand and a “M’lady” to punctuate it if I really just wanted to confirm that I was so starved for the attention of a woman that I would pretend I lived in Victorian times – maybe, just maybe, women would get skeeved out when I did it.

or make dinners just because;

But he’s already made it clear that he isn’t doing these things “just because.” Remember? He said he expects sex in exchange. It’s “reciprocating,” you know!

or buy you a Christmas gift that you mentioned, in passing, that you really wanted five months ago; or listen when you’re upset; or hold you when you cry.

Chris Rock has a really famous routine about how “n***as always want some credit for shit they supposed to do.” This is entirely equivalent. Mister Nice Guy here is complaining that he isn’t getting extra credit (and by “credit,” I of course mean “ass”) for being a tolerable human being. The same sentiment is found in how most of these rants usually have a “but in the end, you sluts end up with a Nice Guy” comment buried somewhere in the middle – the belief being, and this is core to how the Nice Guy operates, that eventually if he just keeps being Nice, one day he will have been sufficiently Nice to get a gorgeous woman to marry him and he can fuck her whenever he wants.

He came to realize that, if he wanted a woman like you, he’d have to act more like the boyfriend that you had. He probably cleaned up his look, started making some money, and generally acted like more of an asshole than he ever wanted to be.

I love how the author conjoins looking good and being successful with being an asshole. And, for that matter, he also conjoins looking good and being successful. As if there are no rich nerds. No, wait, there are plenty of rich nerds. Most of them are married, too. Go figure! In all seriousness, the amount of self-loathing in this post is just off the charts. The author hates himself, plainly and simply: he hates who he was, he hates who he’s claiming he’s become, and he’s projecting all of that onto – guess who – the ladies.

Fact is, now, he’s probably getting laid, and in a way, your ultimate rejection of him is to thank for that.

Because of you, he finally gave in and bought his first dose of rohypnol! If only you had fucked this loser, he would not now be a date rapist, so his crimes are on your hands, lady!

And I’m sorry that it took the complete absence of “nice guys” in your life for you to realize that you missed them and wanted them. Most women will only have a handful of nice guys stumble into their lives, if that.

That’s a horrific thing to say. Reversing the equation, I have known (er, in the non-Biblical sense) countless women of good character, high intelligence, exceptional grace, some wickedly funny to boot. Does this mean that those feminists of the moral-superiority-of-women school were correct all along? This is some radical shit this guy is writing here!

So, if you’re looking for a nice guy, here’s what you do:

1.) Build a time machine.
2.) Go back a few years and pull your head out of your ass.
3.) Take a look at what’s right in front of you and grab ahold of it.

YEAH I’M TALKING TO YOU DONNA McARTHUR OF SIOUX FALLS! YOU COULD HAVE HAD ALL OF THIS BUT INSTEAD YOU HAD TO GO AND MARRY CHAD JUST BECAUSE HE LIKED TO TAKE SHOWERS REGULARLY AND GOT HIMSELF A FANCY ACCOUNTING JOB! WELL NOW I’M IN MARKETING MAKING GOOD MONEY AND I GET LAID WHENEVER I FEEL LIKE IT AND I COULD COME OVER AND TAKE YOU AWAY FROM YOUR LIFE OF DRUDGERY AND TWO CHILDREN BUT I’M TOO BUSY LIVIN’ LA VIDA LOCA AND YOU COULD HAVE BEEN LIVING IT WITH ME BUT IT’S TOO LATE NOW AND I BET YOU’RE SORRY AREN’T YOU?

I suppose the other possibility is that you STILL don’t really want a nice guy, but you feel the social pressure to at least appear to have matured beyond your infantile taste in men.

“Hey, maybe it’s just me, but I bet there’s a possibility – juuuuuust a possibility – that not only are you stupid, but you’re a bitch too! What are the odds of that?”

In which case, you might be in luck, because the nice guy you claim to want has, in reality, shed his nice guy mantle and is out there looking to unleash his cynicism and resentment onto someone just like you.

If you were five years younger.

Given that this is being written by a Former Nice Guy, I’m not sure that “now I’m the guy who goes around pathetically trolling for younger women because older women don’t look like the girls in my porn collection” is exactly a step up, frankly.

So, please: either stop misrepresenting what you want, or own up to the fact that you’ve fucked yourself over. You’re getting older, after all. It’s time to excise the bullshit and deal with reality. You didn’t want a nice guy then, and he certainly doesn’t fucking want you, now.

Again: he doesn’t want you so much that he wrote this long-ass post on Craigslist! And anonymously, to boot, just so that if you read it, you wouldn’t know that it was him so maybe if you, I dunno, “accidentally” bumped into each other in the street someday, he could be all “oh, wow! It’s so good to see you” and then start following you around while you shopped again – that’s how much he doesn’t want you now!

Terry Pratchett diagnosed with rare form of early-onset Alzheimer’s.

Excerpted from the current review of Battlestar Galactica: Razor on Television Without Pity:

Now, Commander Lee Adama is flying the Pegasus. And it will change him, too. “The Bucket and the Beast,” they called them. Pegasus was a gift, too. Between the Bucket and the Beast, between Galactica and Pegasus, between Cain and Abel, or Adama, there’s a razor line of difference. Luke 11:49-51, and it’s once in a blue moon that I go near the New Testament, but check it: “Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute: That the blood of all the prophets, which was shed from the foundation of the world, may be required of this generation; From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation.” Between the altar and the temple, well, that’s where everything happens. It’s where we live, in space; in time, it’s our generation that pays. No matter what year you were born in, you’re in the generation that pays, because this has all happened before and will happen again, and we slay our prophets as quickly as they come. Between the temple and the altar, there’s a razor line of difference.

What the fuck?

No, seriously, what the fuck?

I like Galactica too, but come on, isn’t it a given that one wants to avoid the Wank Train like this?

If you want to read one of the most startlingly bullshit interviews I have seen in ages, go here and read Marvel publisher Dan Buckley’s comments on their new online initiative and illegal downloading.

It’s almost infuriating. The level at which Buckley flatly refuses to engage perfectly valid questions and concerns about Marvel’s digital model is just insane. A perfectly fair comparison to Rhapsody is mentioned, and Buckley says “no, it’s not like that” without even bothering to explain why. (The answer, incidentally, as to why Marvel’s online comic movement isn’t quite like Rhapsody is that culturally we’re used to paying to listen to music we don’t own, but we’re not used to paying for books we don’t own and want to read. Of course, that particular difference is one that actually makes Marvel’s digital position worse rather than better.)

And, of course, Marvel’s strategy towards illegal downloading is kept deliberately vague. Questions as to how the torrent model that exists – which is blatantly superior to Marvel’s in a large variety of ways for the consumer – will be dealt with are left unanswered, except to say that Marvel is going to be taking its cues from how the music industry has handled illegal downloading, which is like taking tips from a caveman on how to beat Gary Kasparov in a game of chess.

But it gets worse! Explaining the choice of initial selection and how new comics will be added each week, Buckley says: “This will include providing marketing support for our publishing and entertainment initiatives…”

No shit. Here is the list of comics currently available via Marvel’s digital delivery system. The majority of these comics can be summed up as follows:

1.) Failed miniseries and ongoings which didn’t particularly impact the market and which have no serious sales value (Gambit, District X, Jubilee, Doc Samson, et cetera), including whole runs of series that you can now get at remaindered bookstores (Spider-Man’s Tangled Web).

2.) One-shots not easily collected in trade format or elsewhere (Civil War: Choosing Sides, for example).

3.) …and first issues of things Marvel wants you to buy in trade or single issues (Moon Knight, Civil War, Runaways, Captain America, Immortal Iron Fist, Annihilation, et cetera). For longer-running titles, Marvel’s pretty blatant about this, giving you the chance to read the first issue in each trade.

There is a name for small teaser portions. It is called advertising. This is what Marvel’s entire digital initiative amounts to: you are encouraged to pay money to buy the real comics. They’re not even particularly shy about it, because when you read the first issue of any given comic that you’ve paid to read, they remind you to buy the collection.

Granted, Marvel’s strategy is to use the digital model to encourage new readers. That’s fine. I am down with encouraging new readers. But last I checked, not many people were horribly encouraged by the prospect of paying to read the same fucking comic twice.

And of course there’s a model they could have used. Amazon’s putting it out there right now with their Kindle reader: “you buy the book for a very low price, and anytime you need to download it from us, we let you.” It’s a fantastic model for a publisher to adopt, because it essentially lends control of a person’s library to the publisher. (I’m of two minds about it, personally, but there’s no question that it would be good for Marvel.) Use some proprietary software to keep illegal trading of the comics to a minimum and Marvel could be raking in bucketloads.

Sweet Jesus, how is it possible for a company to fuck up this badly?

Very quietly, just before Thanksgiving so nobody would notice, Marvel and DC sent cease-and-desist letters to zcultfm.com. For those of you who do not know, zcultfm is – or, rather, was – the comic book torrents site, with an immense library of torrents, many of which even worked.

It is also how I have first read most of the new comics published over the last three years. Every single comic parody I’ve done had its origins in DCP scans. (I have a scanner, but it’s not a very good one.) For those wondering, I generally delete most of my downloaded comics after a single read. With the exception of Legion of Super-Heroes, I have not purchased a single issue of a comic book since about 2002 or so.

So I must be a downloading leech, only costing DC and Marvel money. Right?

Well, let me put it this way. This is most of my collection of trade paperbacks and comic hardcovers.

Now, the top right shelf actually doesn’t really have any comics on it, it’s just books that mostly fit in that space nicely, so ignore that shelf, but the rest, pretty much all trade collections of comics and the occasional original hardcover.Now here is my collection again, except that this time, everything I’ve bought as a result of reading the issues first after downloading them (almost always from zcult) and giving them a try? Is highlighted.

My, that’s a lot of highlighting. And since the resolution is a little low, let me just point out that the vast, vast majority of the highlighted content gets published by – wait for it – DC and Marvel.zcultfm – along with scans_daily, which more or less exists as a fan community for the downloads propogated mainly by zcult and Demonoid (also recently shut down) is responsible for me buying the hardcover of The Immortal Iron Fist. It’s responsible for me buying NextWave and the Garth Ennis Punisher and the JMS/JRJr Amazing Spider-Man and the Milligan/Allred X-Force (and then X-Statix) and Runaways and the Brubaker Captain America and getting me finally turned on to the Fantastic Four.

DC? It’s responsible for me buying All Star Superman and Seven Soldiers of Victory and Fables (all of it) and Y The Last Man (all of it) and The Losers (all of it) and Pride of Baghdad and War Stories (which I never would have even known existed were it not for a Garth Ennis megatorrent I downloaded mostly to reread the issues of Hitman I sold in anticipation of collecting the trade paperbacks which were halted mid-run – and incidentally, DC, fuck you very much for that) and Light Brigade and Formerly Known As The Justice League and Gotham Central.

Oh, and if any smaller/indie publisher feels like getting in a snit, I’ll tack on Queen and Country and .303 and the Busiek Conan and The Five Fists Of Science and… well, I could go on.

Comic downloads transformed me from being a guy who bought one comic book per month and the very occasional graphic novel or trade collection, and into a guy who buys two to four trades a month (and sometimes more). I wasn’t going to go back to investing in single issues, because single issues are a terrible value for money and a horrible pain in the ass to store and I can’t lend them out easily when I tell somebody “hey, you should totally read this.” And if you go to zcult and read the postings from the fanboys there, it’s quite obvious that I represent the norm for comic downloaders, despite the fact that our doing so irritates Dan Slott terribly. (PS: Dan Slott, She-Hulk is on my trade to-buy list, although right now I’m steadily working my way through the Bendis/Maleev Daredevil books.)

And the important thing to note here is that DC and Marvel, unlike the incredibly backward music companies they’re trying to imitate here with their painfully stupid legal action, do not have a realistic competing model to offer. Marvel’s pay-for-comic service, despite my kind words previously, has a clunky interface, is slow, doesn’t display the comic work as well as a basic .cbr or .cbz file, doesn’t have a good selection… with a lot of improvements it could be a realistic model, but since I wrote my approving post, everything I’ve heard indicates that Marvel considers their currently mediocre-at-best offering to be a finished, final-stage product, which only earns them a “what the fuck?”

I mean, at least the record companies, when they shut down Oink, could point to iTunes and say “look, we offer mp3s for sale for money, please use that.” And despite the fact that iTunes is kind of a ripoff, at least it’s an option. DC and Marvel don’t even have that. If I want to read the old Roy Thomas Infinity, Inc. run, or the original Speedball ongoing, I have three options: 1.) Wait around for them to collect it in trade, 2.) Spend a small fortune on back issues I don’t want to store in the first place, or 3.) Download the comics torrents. Quick, which one do you think I’m going to pick?

How sad is this?

What’s worse is that they’re just antagonizing people to no good end, because everybody knows how torrent filesharing works now. Here’s the short version:

MAJOR MEDIA COMPANY: Hey, you! You’re downloading the product I made without paying money! Stop that at once!
INDIVIDUAL DOWNLOADERS: Uh, no.
COMPANY: Oh, that’s how it is, is it? Well, I’m going to shut down your torrent-sharing website!
DOWNLOADERS: Fine. We’ll just go over to a different site which will take you three to six months to find out about and shut down.
(Repeat until heat-death of universe or The Rapture, whichever comes first.)

I simply can’t stress enough how shortsighted, how ignorant, how goddamned lunkheaded DC and Marvel are being right now. They aren’t just shooting themselves in the foot like other media companies; they’re shooting themselves in the head. Internet downloading and the word-of-mouth generated by it has been quietly driving their business for the last couple of years now and they want to kill it. It’s just staggering.

New Zealand to rest of world: “no fatties, please.”

Found in a Pyjamas Media column’s comments:

I’m not sure you do. Hollywood has made utter garbage at least 90% of the time for at least 10 years, if not more. I will provide just one factoid. In the last two decades, more actresses have won the academy award for portraying a prostitute than for portraying any other profession. Why do current Hollywood writers have such a obsession with prostitution?

First off, I went and checked, because I was pretty sure that “factoid” was not actually, like, true. And of course it isn’t. Only one woman has won an Academy Award in the last twenty years for portraying a prostitute, and it’s kind of a stretch to say that because the woman in question was Charlize Theron for her work as Aileen Wuornos in Monster, and the most distinguishing aspect of the character was not that she was a prostitute but that she was a serial killer.

In comparison: two cops (Helen McDormand in Fargo and Jodie Foster in The Silence of the Lambs) and three rich British ladies (Helen Mirren in The Queen, Emma Thompson in Howard’s End, and Gwyneth Paltrow in Shakespeare In Love). WHY does Hollywood continue to glamourize cops and rich British ladies? WHY?

Secondly, though, I wanted to just make my general disgust with this line of argument known. You can argue against the strike in good faith (and Brad Fox has done so, both here in the comments and at his own joint), even though I won’t agree with you. But the line of argument advanced above – and it’s easily the majority opinion among those (mostly conservative) commenters is “I don’t like it so they don’t deserve anything.”

And that’s just abhorrent. It doesn’t matter if you think Hollywood makes a lot of crap; they also make about a trillion dollars a year in revenue, so the question of whether you personally are invested in the product is moot. It’s both stupid and insulting to think that you have to like a business to determine whether or not its practices are sound.

The question is simple: do writers, having helped to produce a product that is financially successful, deserve a share of that financial success? Answer that question. Jesus, how is this hard?

So you say to me, “I like search engines and all, but what I really wish is that I could have a search engine endorsed by KISS. I bet KISS would provide me with an excellent search engine.”

And I say “have I got something for you.“