Posts Tagged ‘ simplify the universe ’

i wish we could write titles in capital letters

March 19, 2010
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i wish we could write titles in capital letters

CAUSE THEN I WOULD SAY THAT COMIC BOOKS ARE AWESOME I’ve always wanted to be Batman. Batman is pretty much my hero. Although, I’m not sure I could take on more than 4 guys at a time. So maybe Robin? Ugh Robin is totally lame. Alfred? Maybe. I guess being Superman would be cool, but Superman is really a frat boy. Have you ever met anyone from Iowa? I can’t relate to that at all. I always thought kryptonite looked sweet. But. If you bling out with kryptonite are you actively projecting the image that you are NOT Superman? Plus, it almost definitely gives you cancer. Cancer of the everything too. Back to the task at hand. Spiderman? Too snarky. Hulk? Can’t speak properly/is green. The Flash? Running: that’s it. Green Lantern? All it takes is a ring. Maybe I should think more realistically. If I had to actually BE a superhero I’d probably go with Reed Richards. Mister Fantastic of the Fantastic Four. A sensible choice I would say. Super smart, super bendable and stretchable, leader of men, and he’s married to the hot girl of the group. Though I just now considered the potential caveats of having a

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i love you, i love you not\/\/the ethics of eros

March 17, 2010
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i love you, i love you not\/\/the ethics of eros

Slavoj Zizek is insane.  He is also brilliant.  In the short clip from the documentary “Zizek!” Zizek contends that love is evil.  Love is about excluding one thing to focus on another.  A part of me wants to say, right on Zizzy! but then another part wants to say, wtf, mate?! Love is exclusionary.  We shift our focus to the object or subject of our affection and in so doing we necessarily exclude other objects and subjects from our gaze.  Is this a violent act?  Is it evil, as zizzy suggests?  I think not.  Can it lead to evil?  Without a doubt. There are two ideas at play here: 1. Love is necessarily exclusionary 2. By loving one thing more than an other, we do violence to that other. I agree with zizzy on the first note, but I have to disagree with the second.  To love is not a difficult thing.  We experience the pangs of love everyday.  We are continually disappointed by the actions of others which suggests that we expect certain things from the actions of others.  We expect the world to be a kind and caring place.  If we didn’t, there would be no disappointments.  We

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navelgazing

March 16, 2010
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navelgazing

“Sit and contemplate your navel.” A Flash movie featuring Phototapestries 1–79, in chronological order. All artwork and music copyright © 2002–2009 Michael Lujan. (Please wait for a few moments for the movie to load.) . . . . . . . .

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this week on the avant guardian \/\/ simplify the universe

March 15, 2010
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this week on the avant guardian \/\/ simplify the universe

Here’s the raw truth: simplification involves destruction.  The world is place of clutter and sprawl.   To simplify is to kill the clutter. Back in 1985, the DC comics universe was a case study in clutter and sprawl.  An expansive roster of characters inhabited a number of parallel universes.  Earth 1!  Earth 2! Earth 3!  Earth B!  Earth X! and so on.  Different Supermen with their own storylines?  Batman has a daughter?  Lex Luthor is a hero on a different Earth? The kahunas at DC were concerned, rightly, that potential readers would be turned off by having to navigate a fictional universe choked with a half-century of comic jetsam.  So they masterminded a 12-issue story arc that would, in the words of writer Marv Wolfman, “simplify the universe”.  This meant constructing a narrative that would compress the out-of-control multiple universes into a single neat one.  So, from the brain of Wolfman sprang the “Crisis on Infinite Earths” and in an epic comic cleansing, billions of fictional people were scoured from the pages until just a single accessible Earth remained. To show their dedication to this simplification, some fan favorites had to get killed off too, most notably Supergirl and Barry

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