Kaz - The Tragedy of Satan

I Didn't Think Erik Larson Could Do This

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Jesus Christ!

Metal Gear Solid V - The Phantom Pain

Aw yesssss. The torture of scantily clad women, child soldiers, water boarding, cruel imprisonment, murder, unanaesthetized surgery, cowboys in Afghanistan, hiding behind horses, sneaking around, 'real-time weather', the simultaneous glamorization and criticism of violence and war, and a guy named Skull Face. What the fuck else do you want? Like, really? What? Nothing. There is nothing else.

David Luban - Liberalism, Torture, and the Ticking Bomb

"But the pressure of liberalism will compel them to think about it in a highly stylized and artificial way, what I will call the 'liberal ideology of torture.' The liberal ideology insists that the sole purpose of torture must be intelligence gathering to prevent a catastrophe; that torture is necessary to prevent the catastrophe; that torturing is the exception, not the rule, so that it has nothing to do with state tyranny; that those who inflict the torture are motivated solely by looming catastrophe, with no tincture of cruelty; that torture in such circumstances is, in fact, little more than self-defense; and that, because of the associations of torture with the horrors of yesteryear, perhaps one should not even call harsh interrogation 'torture.'
 And the liberal ideology will crystalize all of these ideas in a single, mesmerizing example: the ticking time bomb."(source)

Fabiola - Part Two

That night she kept thinking about the lamp. Her mother would keep her from filling it with oil when it extinguished itself, but that had not stopped her from looking. She wondered what it meant, those naked bodies and her leg raised above his head. That luxurious couch. What connected them? Why was she looking back? She'd heard her brother with the slave girls. His quiet moans and their whimpers. Would that be her one day? Once she'd been married? Blood rushed to her cheeks against her will. Returned from dinner, she lay in bed remembering the furtive touch of the young man. Her racing heart and a feeling she did not understand prevented her from sleeping. She did not want to sleep. Not when she could let her mind drift with him. Sleeping would bring this dream world, this glow, to an end.

Awaking the next morning she chided herself for her immodesty. Her mother's words repeated themselves to her. She remembered the importance of her honour. And she remembered her duties as a daughter. Today she was to visit the market. So long as she was accompanied by two male servants she was permitted to go alone. This was yet another rare concession on the part of her parents. She did not really need to go. The servants were more than capable of selecting the fabrics they would use to assemble her brother's new clothing. But Fabiola wanted the market, just as she wanted the dinner. She wanted to walk along the waterfront, watching the ships as they unloaded foods, bodies, and materials into the city; she wanted to take in the scent of people cooking; judge the beggars on their appearance and skill; overhear commerce, gossip, and mundane talk. It excited her and made her feel that perhaps she could, walking behind her husband, one day belong on high priest's road, a citizen rather than a visitor.

St. Vincent - Prince Johnny

Stromae Feat. Lorde, Pusha T, Q-Tip, and HAIM

Fabiola - Part One

Her mother had raised her like a boy. She liked the freedom that it afforded her, even if she was still forced to cover her hair. Like a boy, she could attend dinners, sitting motionlessly, looking down, careful to keep her legs closed together. Her mother taught her to eat slowly, pausing between morsels. She was to never reach for what she wanted, but to ask politely and quietly without imposing. News traveled quickly about this. A throng of young men had approached the house threatening rough music, but her father beat the ringleader mercilessly and ordered his companions to pick him up from the pig shit. They had already earlier tried to take her against her will, calling her a whore, but a quick flash of the knife and a sudden drawing of blood had changed their minds. This after they had humiliated her in the streets, throwing food and rocks. She did not care. Not with all these voices.
 

The men at the table ignored her as they spoke about politics, trade, and the way of a world she would likely never experience. Hiding in plain sight, she used their talk to imagine travel and adventure. Sometimes she would get to sit near to him. The young man with the voice that stood for her above all the others, deep and assertive, yet elegant. Unable to raise her eyes from her meal, she could never see him, but she could smell him and feel the warmth radiating from his body into hers. These sensations called to her with a force she could not explain or even acknowledge to herself. She did not know it, but this was why she did not care about violence and humiliation. She wanted everything these dinners had to offer her. Or, at least, she thought that she did. That was before his hand brushed against hers for that one quick moment. And she heard him apologize for his transgression. After that she could think of nothing else but transgression.

COPRA

Source: The Comics Journal

"Reading Copra we see these elements plainly inspired by superhero comics of the past, minus the explanation of context that would be offered up by dozens of books published every month for decades on end. Here it is always the first time, although there are no introductions to set out ideas of any limiting parameters. Everything is in media res, as if Fiffe is trying to capture the feeling of reading a random comic-book issue and not understanding who all the characters are meant to be- but somehow he forgets that those old comics, when well-made, were constructed so that a first-time audience could find them, and be provided with introductions to characters and recognizable stakes. In other words, they told an actual story, and didn’t just demonstrate the artist’s approach to color and page design.

I acknowledge that to a practitioner of the form, the artist’s approach to the labor of their job might be the most interesting element. This is a twenty-dollar collection of a comic explicitly designed for people whose ideal comics reading experience is paying fifty cents apiece for old Norm Breyfogle comics, and who feel as if the stories and scripting mostly just get in the way. Those readers are out there, and I hope they find Copra, if they have not already. But other readers, seeking a comic they can actually read, may hearken back to the early ’90s, and wonder, “How is this particularly different from the first wave of Image Comics?” The only real answer is that Fiffe is comparatively disinterested in splash pages."

Hannah Diamond - Every Night

Yeah, so I knew I was going to have to post this the moment I set eyes on that cover...

American-Russian Relations

Bear Time Is My Favourite Time

The latest episode of Rachel and Miles X-Plain the X-Men dropped yesterday. This week they discussed in some detail Bill Sienkiewicz's work on New Mutants. They make the claim that Sienkiewicz's work marks a turning point in comics generally (although here I think what they really mean to say is 'superhero comics generally')--a ripping open of the envelope with respect to what the pages of sci-fi inflected, action adventure dramas could do.

I wish that they were right. I wish that the page to the left was indeed a turning point. But it really wasn't. Sienkiewicz has been influential, yes, but the body-stocking- punch-em-up-will-they-or-won't-they-kiss-this-week crowd will always look to Jim Lee and the like before they even consider challenging either themselves or their audience with something evocative and expressive rather than naturalistic and classical.

At any rate: this Sienkiewicz kid has it goin' on!

Do It Like You Mean It

How To Interview Ghosts

As usual with a story like this avoid the comments section on YouTube or even Vice News itself. Here I'll just say that it does seem likely that a lack of enforcement capability is a slightly larger part of the equation than the reporter allows for in her closing statements. And that the systematic issues extend to, and perhaps even cascade down from, the weakness of the overall bureaucratic apparatus.

An Apology

Out the window I see the leaves congealed on the shingles of our garage. A brown and green slop ready to clog the eaves. Snow has given way to the dark of wet. The pavement looks heavy yet fragile, like it could break with just one spell in the air.

Paint peels. Fabric sags. Trees stand perfectly still in their full, naked bronchial glory. The breathing of the earth halted once again. Everything turns inward to survive the coming slow grind of molecular structures. The static and seemingly endless sting of cyclical death. 

All that remains  to remind us of the season past and season to come are the evergreens. Bushy cylinders reaching skyward for what little light remains. Never ceasing in their quest. They stand as the ultimate promise from nature to deliver us from its necessary evils. They are a sweet kiss from a hidden mother, the sting of their needles an apology. We float now further than ever from the nuclear heart of all life. And she is sorry beyond words.

Sigourney Sundays