Got the new Previews last night. Here’s my impending order.

• Showcase Presents: Green Lantern Vol 1 (DC)
• Astro City: The Dark Age #4 (DC)
• Long Hot Summer GN (Image)
• Jack Staff #10 (Image)
• Vaistron #1 (Slave Labor)
• SPX 2005 Anthology (CBLDF)
• Action Philosophers Self-Help (Evil Twin)
• Mister X Volume 2 TP (ibooks)
• Knights of the Dinner Table #107 (Kenzer)
• Hikaru No Go vol 5 (Viz)
• Fortean Times #202 (FT)

This issue answers the question that I and three other people had: “Where’s volume two of these Mister X trades?” An SPX Anthology is usually a good deal, even though the last one (the “War” one) was disappointing. You get some good comics AND give some cash to the CBLDF, so it’s like a pie made out of smaller pies! The Pekar book is tempting, but not in hardcover.

As usual, I reach out to you. What else should my gaze fall upon? What am I missing? What am I crazy for wanting or not seeming to want?

Recently I read these two articles:

God and Country: A look at Patrick Henry College, where young Evangelical Republicans are trained to become the leaders of tomorrow.

Inside the Mind of an Iraqi Suicide Bomber: A look at the mindset of a person who is willing to die for, yes, God and Country. But mostly God.

I’m not going to try and be all clever and say OMG LOOK HOW SIMILAR THE TWO ARE. Blowing up yourself and civilians isn’t the same as becoming a Congressman.

But these articles have gotten me thinking about the idea of religion and government. And the combination of the two. Many folks (myself included, when I’m in a bad mood) see the Republican party as wanting to establish a theocracy in America. I’m actually not so sure about that. I think that Bush and Cheney (especially the latter) don’t mind talking a good game about Jesus and babies, but their interest in those subjects stops at getting Evangelical Christians (ECs) to support them. They’re interested in power and money, and if they were put in a position where they had to choose between ExxonMobil and the Southern Baptist Convention, we’d have some unhappy Baptists running around. In fact, a lot of conservative Christian groups feel as though Bush hasn’t delivered for them, even as people like me shudder at the amount of religion that’s gotten into government.

Then this posting at Slacktivist pointed me to a third article in this area:

Worship as Higher Politics

This editorial, from a large mouthpiece of the EC community, takes ECs to task for arguing, essentially, that we need to get back to the ideas of the founding fathers to fix this nation. I’m not surprised at the message in the editorial, that the path to a correct society lies only through God. It’s the logical next step for their movement.

I’ve been thinking lately about the theocratic movement, and the oddity of trying to align it with the “will of the founding fathers.” Some amount of cognitive dissonance is necessary for believing that a bunch of Deists and Atheists intended the country they were founding to be solely Christian. Granted, a similar amount of cognitive dissonance is required to believe that George Bush is a true Christian — the conservatives have no trouble bending their minds to accommodate two clearly opposing ideas simultaneously. It seems to me that, rather than argue that Jefferson and the Constitution are as important as (or at least a pathway to) Jesus and the Bible, why not eliminate the troublesome middleman?

I think what we may see soon, and I think the editorial above is a pointer to this, is a movement that says, “We’re going to make this a Christian nation, regardless of the intentions of the founding fathers. What they wanted is immaterial. They either made a Christian nation or they should have, and either way, that’s our goal. And if the Constitution disagrees at some point with the Bible, then the Constitution needs to step aside.”

One could argue that this is already the idea, in deed if not in word. But I do suspect that very soon we’re going to see it vocalized. The founding fathers and the Constitution are nice and all, but in the long run, they’re not what matters to ECs. They have a higher responsibility, a higher calling. Would they damn the nation by subscribing to a document written by men instead of one written by God?

No, the young suicide bomber and the young conservatives in the articles at the top of this post aren’t alike in their methods. But their goals are the same. They are willing to do whatever it takes for God. The suicide bomber is more honest, in my opinion, when he says that “he fights first for Islam, second to become a ‘martyr’ and win acceptance into heaven, and only third for control of his country.” Republicans of his age aren’t yet willing to die for their God and country, but I think that combining those two ideas is the second step on that road, with the first step being the elimination of whatever stands in the way of combining them.

I have two tales of this past weekend to relate. Some readers may remember the storyteller at the library walk-a-thon. At that time I signed up for his group’s mailing list and it turns out that they meet every 4th Friday of the month at Blue Moon Coffee for storytelling. Blue Moon is literally around the corner from me, so Friday night we joined TJ and Mary for storytelling.

It was mostly an older crowd, but they welcomed us cheerfully and expanded the story circle to let is sit in. And then the stories began. We heard the true tale of a circus clown getting peed on by a lion, an Irish folktale, a story of an Arab woman and the Devil having a contest, the origin of the Incas, a bit from The Odyssey, and many more. Eventually we realized that it was literally a circle, and they were going around it in order, and we were sitting in it, which meant we were going to have to tell stories! Yikes!

Of course, we could have respectfully declined, but not us, we storified! Mary told a Native American folktale, TJ told of a contest from ancient Rome, Becky gave us a tale out of Boccaccio, and I gave a short version of my pool story. All were very well received, and I’m looking forward to next month.

I was trying to figure out what kind of story to tell next month, and I think I have a pretty good idea. Many of the stories told were folktales, tales from mythology, involving heroes. I know plenty of stories like that! Stories that are just as good, have fantastic elements, and teach a valuable moral lesson at the end. In fact, I know a great one: the origin of Spider-Man. Spider-Man’s got one of the two best origin stories ever (the other being Batman.) And I think I’m gonna tell it.

What I could have told was a story of intrigue and adventure that took place on our very own street. A while back the older couple in the house across the street passed away. Out of nowhere a son of theirs appeared and began living in the house. Shortly afterward it went up for sale. This son is something of a jerk: he floors his big noisy truck up and down the street, plays the radio in it too damn loud, and had all kinds of people coming and going from the house at all hours. (I’ve never understood why so much of assholes’ time is spent being loud.)

Then the cops started showing up. About a week ago two were there while someone apparently moved out of the house. Then a few days later, two more showed up. Finally, on Saturday, someone got arrested.

Long story short, the son had invited in all these people who were dealing drugs out of the house. He finally tried to get rid of them, but they turned on him, and apparently he fled. One broke into the house to let in others, and that’s when the cops showed up. They hauled away two of them. From what I hear from neighbors who are nosier than us, the interior of the house is trashed.

Since then, the son has returned, and we figure Round Two should start soon, as I suspect he hasn’t learned anything from the experience. The house is still ostensibly for sale, but we’ve also heard that it’s listed for $250,000, which is somewhat more than we paid for our non-trashed house with new kitchen and bath. Also, I think few quarter-million dollar houses lack garages and driveways, instead having had a truck parked on the lawn for months. Not that the “For Sale” sign is up anyway, it’s lying prone off to the side of the yard.

Here’s the moral of this story, folks. If you absolutely gotta be an asshole, why can’t you do it quietly, to yourself? Don’t make the rest of the neighborhood suffer from your need to be a jerk.

I think you can see why I didn’t share that tale at the storytellers’ circle.

Don’t think we didn’t see it. When we told y’all we were gonna go after our front walk with a sledgehammer, don’t think we didn’t hear you snickering and muttering “Pfft, yeah, right, those two with a sledgehammer…” We know all about the various bets going around…what portion of the body would be seriously injured first and who it belongs to, etc. You guys were all scoffitty scoff scoff, the “nattering nabobs of negativism”, as former Vice President Spiro T. Agnew eloquently put it.

Well, naysayers, let’s hear you say nay to this:

  

  

  

That’s just the two of us (yes, I did some too!) in forty minutes. Unfortunately, it was still too damn hot to go much further, but this was mainly Proof of Concept. Can we tear out our front walk with just a sledgehammer? We sure can. Should we tear out our front walk with just a sledgehammer? Eh, probably not. Will we tear out our front walk with just a sledgehammer? Hells yes!

13:29:47 [Discordanian] Be sure to recompile your kernel.

13:30:35 [legomancer] i tried to fsck my tarball

13:31:36 [lanfaedhe] disgusting!

13:41:20 [legomancer] that’s not what your mom said when I was grepping her fstab

13:41:32 [legomancer] OH, SNAP!

13:43:24 [roomtemp] daaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaamn.

So here’s the interesting thing about the MI-5 episodes we watched. MI-5 is, of course, the FBI of the United Kingdom. And since this series began in 2002, it focuses (at least for these first two episodes) on terrorist threats.

In the first episode, the enemy is an American woman who has come to England to blow up abortion doctors and recruit new members to bring the anti-abortion battle to U.K. soil. There’s a lot of talk in this episode of the U.S. wanting her extradited as soon as possible so they can show her capture off as a success in the War on Terror.

What’s wrong with this picture? That’s right, the U.S., in 2002 (and now), would not have regarded someone who murders her own civilians with bombs to cause fear as a terrorist, if she was American. As terror expert and blogger David Neiwert has repeatedly pointed out, as far as the War on Terror is concerned, all terrorists are non-Americans. Mary Kane, the character from MI-5, might be paraded before the cameras as a criminal–might–but she’d never be called a terrorist.

Likewise with the enemy from the second episode, a white supremacist trying to foment a race war. England might consider that a terrorist threat, but our country wouldn’t. And I’m not being smarmy or sarcastic here, I’m telling the plain truth. As Neiwert quotes the Washington Post in the link above, “Officials at the Department of Homeland Security and the FBI acknowledge that since the Sept. 11 attacks they have viewed foreign threats as a higher priority than domestic ones. A recent department internal assessment of threats did not list militias, white-supremacist groups and violent antiabortion activists. The assessment, first reported by Congressional Quarterly, did mention radical environmental groups and animal rights activists as potential threats.” So yeah, Earth First! and the Animal Liberation Front are terrorists, but the Klan, the Minutemen, and Operation Rescue, less so. The only other terrorists are the ones we’re fighting in Iraq.

Except when we’re not. Last week Karl Rove, a guy who seems to believe he’s someone who was elected by the people, declared that after September 11, liberals wanted to talk to terrorists, but conservatives wanted to fight them. Yes, yes, whatever. We all know how that’s a load of kack. I only mention it as setup for this punchline: now Rumsfeld is talking to terrorists. This was first reported in the London Times (you know, the foreign paper that we have to go to because our domestic news agencies feel Americans aren’t interested in “non-stories” like what our government is up to.) and interestingly, is actually mentioned on the Fox news website as a TV show transcript. Rumsfeld, in that interview says sure, they might be talking to bad guys, but not the bad bad guys, just the good bad guys. You know, moral relativism and all that.

So the lesson to be learned is: by all means, you should be afraid of terrorists, because the government needs you to be afraid. But you gotta keep an open mind about what we mean by “terrorists”. You go around with all kinds of fancy definitions like, “people who use violent criminal action with the intention of spreading fear among a populace in order to make a political statement” and you’re gonna be lumping in all kinds of non-terrorists like people who murder abortion doctors, people who murder gay folks, and the religious fanatics who hate us but are our friends today. You just let the government tell you who the terrorists are. Some days it’s Europa, some days it’s Eurasia, and that might seem confusing, so just worry your little head about terrorists in general and leave the specifics to the experts on causing fear to a populace for political gain.

—

Incidentally, in other political news, your property isn’t yours if a shopping mall wants it, and oh look, we are torturing people after all!

This weekend it was too damn hot to do much of anything except sit around, so I did just that, reading me some comics in the meantime, most of which had some kind of musical angle to them.

I finally read Scott Pilgrim vs. The World, the second volume in the Scott Pilgrim saga, and it was just as awesomely awesome as the first volume. If you haven’t yet picked up this series, you are willfully defying the wisdom of comics aficionados everywhere and will probably be punished for your insolence.

I also read volume 1 of Beck: Mongolian Chop Squad from Tokyopop, a manga about a 14 year old nobody who gets a chance to be somebody when his life intersects with a hip 16-year old who’s in a band. It was pretty good, and seemed to be a nice mixture of the music angle, his romance angle, and other elements. One of my only complaints about Hikaru No Go is that the Go aspect is front, center, and full in effect, leaving very little space for fleshing out any other aspects of Hikaru’s life, and I think Beck balances that better. Beck was a pretty solid first volume, but it won’t kill me if I don’t get any of the others.

Speaking of bands, I also got into The Stereos. I first heard of this band…er, comic, over at BeaucoupKevin’s crib, and after reading his description of these books, I decided to snag them myself. I ordered them off the website of the books’ creator, Brandon Hanvey. I got both books: Battle of the Bands, and In the Garage. And they were both just incredibly charming. Usually with “all-ages” books the label is kind of misleading…there are books that are kid-friendly but not too adult-friendly. This one is solidly in the “all-ages” category. The stories are pretty straightforward and charming, with plenty of humor for all. I particularly liked the page showing the other bands playing the talent show: I identified (I think) Nirvana, Weezer, They Might Be Giants, Sleater-Kinney, and a few others. Plus, dig this: so I pay the guy for the books, right? And he sends them to me. Plus a bookmark. Plus a bumper sticker. Plus two pins. Plus, he inscribes one of the books and does a sketch. I mean, how cool is all that?

In addition to comics, we watched the first disk of episodes of the BBC series Mi:5, which Becky got from Netflix and which was way cool. We’re stoked for more, now that there’s no more Doctor Who for a while. I noticed something interesting about those episodes that I’ll try to remember to talk about tomorrow.

Also, my eBay auctions ended with me $130 richer. Sweet! That’s going towards my new monitor and new DVD burner, which should be arriving any day now!