Playing To Win

By Priest January 12th, 2016, under Politics

Can Bernie Sanders win the general? Seriously, will people vote for a withered-looking Sanders over a vibrant-looking (but, IMO, incredibly empty) Marco Rubio? Will people actually, seriously, cast a vote for Donald Trump over Hillary Clinton–like her or not–in a general?

I’m just a little baffled by primary politics. I love Bernie Sanders, but get serious: the vast majority of American voters are going to vote a personality or a haircut. Martin O’Malley looks and sounds a lot more like a president than anybody running. I don’t understand why people–Dems or Repubs–vote their rabid partisanship rather than vote strategically in the sense of voting for the more electable candidate.

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Open Range

By Priest January 7th, 2016, under Politics

So, I’m in Safeway Christmas Day looking for a whistle. Safeway, of course, does not carry whistles. Nor does Walgreens or 7-Eleven or any other retailer open on Christmas Day, but when you’re desperate to finish wrapping the kids’ toys, you’ll waste gasoline driving around anyway. This white male, typical of many white males here in Ourtown, passes me in the aisle. He’s wearing a dark tee shirt, shorts and athletic shoes, and has what appears to be a Glock-18 holstered at his side. Now, what alarms me most about this guy is the outfit, not the gun. It’s about ten degrees outside and this man is walking around in a tee shirt and shorts, which immediately makes me question his state of mind. He is also open carrying in a state where obtaining a concealed carry license is about as difficult as ordering a pizza. There really is no reason to open carry in Colorado other than that you just want to be seen with your gun. Whether for political reasons or other, open carriers have made a conscious choice to raise the blood pressure of everyone around them by wandering supermarket aisles with their pistol hanging off their hip; thus making Safeway not so safe.

They know full well the discomfort and alarm they are causing. I can prove it by wandering the aisles of Safeway with my penis hanging out. I’d be drawing attention to myself, and needlessly so. In Colorado, if you can stand a background check, you can get a Concealed Carry Weapons permit and put your gun away. If you’re open carrying here, you simply want to be seen. That, or you’re trying to make some political statement about background checks leading to gun confiscation or the Apocalypse or some other lunatic nonsense. Read the rest of this entry »

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TFA (No Spoilers)

By Priest January 6th, 2016, under Movies

Star Wars: The Force Awakens is a brilliant film, the latest empty-calorie frenetic 120-miute chase scene from director J J Abrams, who is threatening to become the Michael Bay of franchise remakes as he cheerily goes about strip-mining better films while demonstrating, amid astonishing creative wizardry, that he doesn’t actually understand them.

As with Abrams’ Star Trek reboot, TFA serves up heaping helpings of nostalgia like Grandma’s delicious chicken and dumplings, albeit served with a trowel from a plastic bucket and flung from the window of a speeding minivan. Keep up, open your mouth wide enough, and there are wonderful morsels. Also, as with Abrams’ Trek, the pace and nostalgia efficiently mask the film’s alarming lack of depth. Whereas the quasi-religious overtones of the original Star Wars disturbed the Force of Evangelical Christian Televangelists, triggering fierce debate and even condemnation from religious conservatives, TFA never slows down enough to provoke any level of academic or religious discussion.

In its headlong lunge to un-do one of the greatest pop sagas in human history, TFA makes absolutely no statement about the essential nature of mankind, the existence or role of God, or the role of spirituality. TFA says, essentially, that we can never again believe that evil has been vanquished. All of that Ewok dancing was for nothing because the Bad Guys Always Strike Back.

Which means, if I take this shiny, delicious candy-apple Star Wars into my heart, if I take it seriously, I have to now severely devalue the original trilogy, which I, at my advanced age, honestly can’t do. I similarly accept Abrams’ Star Trek for the fun Saturday Night Live sketch that it was but can’t possibly take that film seriously. TFA is a substantial improvement on the satirical Star Trek and the apocryphal sequel Into Darkness wherein Abrams, already choking on his ideologically bankrupt Trek Lite, virtually rapes the Holy of Star Trek Holies—The Wrath of Khan—while the family is tied up and forced to watch. Read the rest of this entry »

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Apple TV

By Priest January 6th, 2016, under TV

Craig wrote:

“I never got a Blu-ray player, but jumped on the Apple TV bandwagon pretty early and get my HD movies that way.”

Here in my cave, I’m only dimly aware of Apple TV, but a friend recently sung its praises. Better/worse than Chromecast, Roku, etc? I pulled the plug on cable/satellite about five years ago, now, and have grown so used to *not* watching TV that I am now like unto one of those obnoxious recovering alcoholic-types. I mean, we celebrate their sobriety, we really do, but I’ve had *crack fiends* come out of rehab and become obnoxious bores telling me what’s wrong with my life and how to fix it. I am that way about commercial television.

It’s not a religious thing, I’m not trying to preach to you, but I find it disturbing that, for all of its wide-ranging supposed inclusiveness, my visceral sense is at least 90% of what’s available on the Boob Tube denies God, which offends me. Now, wait, don’t click away, here’s what I mean: I don;t need or want every TV show to shake the hand of Christ. I loved House of Cards (which I saw on disc, as I see most TV). What I’m saying is, don’t be so freaking openly hostile, in every frame of every show, to who I am as an individual. Read the rest of this entry »

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Comic Book Colouring

By Trev January 4th, 2016, under Comics

Hi CJP,

You’ve mentioned how colourists can sometimes mess up and not colour scenes the way the writer or artist intended (Klang, for instance). How is this possible? Do they not have notes to ensure scenes are coloured correctly? And if the notes are ignored, why hasn’t the editor picked up on it? In this day and age with computers is it not easy to correct mistakes before they go to print?

Speaking of computers. I personally feel that modern colouring has made comic books too glossy looking and it’s lost it’s ‘cheap’ but stylised look. I especially like the sort of pastel tones of the books from the early 80s.

Modern comic colouring veers towards very muted tones where it’s hard to actually see what’s going on. I don’t know why this is because surely the idea of comics is to make everything easy to follow.

I’m just wondering what your views on modern colouring are?

Thanks in advance.

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