Whine and Cheese

While I know that Facebook has its uses, it often becomes a forum for people to troll and toss out opinions that no sane person would speak. I try not to engage in such discussions, because too often people defend their opinion so strongly that it becomes abusive. The responses by some can be incredibly telling though.

I was reading a post there about a group of Japanese high school students who had developed a process on how to observe the development of a fertilized chicken egg. The process seemed incredibly basic, yet fascinating. They cracked open an egg gently, placing the yolk and albumen in a clear cellophane/plastic cup, capping it, and placing it into an incubator. The video showed the chick forming and eventually "hatching" without a shell. The resulting chick was just chirping around.

One commenter was a high school teacher who lamented that Japanese classes in science was "light years ahead" of American classes. While I don't necessarily agree with the statement, I think generally people believe that Japanese schools are more rigid and advanced. Lots of the opposing comments refuted his claims, some more vehemently than others.

The comments that made me both laugh and shake my head was from younger folks who commented that "light year" was a unit of distance not time, implying that the teacher was incorrectly using the terminology and, therefore, had no place to comment on education issues. When the teacher told them that "light years ahead" was a common expression of advancement, and even provided a dictionary link for the term, he was dismissed by the same commenters because they had never encountered it before.

The irony was amazing, these ignorant younger people arguing about the expression versus the literal in a discussion about the status of American education. I just shook my head.

Disgusted, I just moved on to a cute story about rescued kittens.

After publishing the comic last week, I've been in a bit of a malaise. prisoncitybear coined the term "post-artum depression," the little bit of sadness after finishing an art project and the excitement dies down. That and some work stresses have left me feeling a bit out of sorts.

Today, I went out for a coffee and planned to do a bit of drawing. On the way, I stopped off at a local comic book shop and picked up a few titles. The shop guy and I started having a discussion after he asked me if I had seen this book or that book.

I told him that a lot of the current titles out didn't appeal to me anymore. The characters were the same in name, but, thanks to all the rebooting (which seems to happen twice a year or so), that's all that was familiar to me. For example, I told him that I wasn't an overall fan of the New 52 when it started. I told him that I lamented the loss of continuity and comic book history. Wonder Woman was particularly rough. She had gone from the "fight the war with love" character to being a vicious, almost callous, warrior. And she wasn't the only one. The clerk told me that the most recent "reboot" has Black Canary as the singer in a band with a mysterious history. No longer the wig-wearing wonder in fishnets, I was saddened by this desperate attempt to appeal to a new audience. Why can't DC just create new characters with new names and history? I'm sure the familiar name sells, but it seems to be a temporary boost in sales.

(I could make the same argument for the new "Jem and the Holograms" movie, but that's a separate post in itself.)

The clerk said something that made perfect sense in a way. He says that each title that comes out has a shelf-life of its own. He told me that most titles are lucky to make it to two years before the comic book company revamps or restarts it. It seems that the younger, modern-day reader has a short attention span when it comes to comics and maintaining their interest is nearly impossible. Per the clerk, a lot of new comics are automatically limited series.

I had recognized this phenomenon myself actually, but didn't realize it was so wide-spread. Most comic books are on-going stories, almost like serials, where the tales are continuous. Missing an issue means missing out on the continuity and getting lost. I told him that most of the comics I had bought were one-shot comics, or comics with short tales in them. When I started reading comics, stories were distinct from issue to issue (except for two or three-parters). If you missed an issue, the next issue was a separate story or adventure. My web-comic is like that too for the most part. Interest didn't seem like it waned so easily.

Where will comic books go from here? Who knows. I just wonder if this new business model has made me outgrow comic books for the most part.

After purchasing my comics, I made it to the bookstore for coffee and did some drawing of my own. With Halloween approaching, a lot of my drawings have been horror/sci-fi related. This one came to mind today and I put a bit of humor in it. I called it "Probe."


"Probe"

After my post this morning, I wondered if some of my views of the number of straight players on a gay softball team were just my own. A cruise around the internet said they weren't and that a growing controversy has been brewing for some time. I'd be curious how you all see the issue.

The primary issue is the limitation of the number of heterosexual players on a given team in a gay league. The North American Gay Amateur Athletic Alliance, the national LGBT softball league, currently has a rule that no team can have more than two heterosexual players on its roster. Critics have said that such leagues should not have any exclusions as it makes us gays appear to be hypocritical. We don't want to be discriminated against and yet we appear to discriminate against straight people for not letting them play or only play in a limited fashion. The opposing side says that gays need a place where we can freely participate without the pressures of being harassed by straight players. It's an interesting situation. Ideally, both sides are correct, but how to find the balance needed is the hard part.

( On and On... cut for the uninterested )

So what do you think?

Cartoon Network is running a Tom and Jerry marathon today. I used to love watching these cartoons for the most part. However, I find them more difficult to watch these days, especially since whoever owns the rights has been making them more politically correct. This entry might be a bit unpopular with some folks.

Tom's owner, referred to online as "Mammy TwoShoes," is a large black woman whose face we never see. In the cartoons as I remember them as a child, she had a very cartoonish voice. She used the word "ain't" a lot (I still do). A modern voice by another black actress has been re-dubbed over the original dialogue now. Certain scenes have also been cut from the cartoons because they were deemed politically incorrect as well.

One of the points that bothers me about this is that these are Academy Award nominated or winning cartoon shorts from the 1930's and 1940's that have been edited. I feel like someone is trying to clean up history, if you can view these cartoons to be historical. I often wonder how people would feel if they re-dubbed Butterfly McQueen's dialogue in her Oscar winning role in Gone With the Wind. I am bothered that the cartoons of my youth are being distorted.

As a child, I never thought the Mammy TwoShoes as a racial stereotype, only that this individual lady had a funny way of talking. I never though of Tom's charred face from the exploded tea pot as "blackface." I suspect that if young children watched the unedited cartoons today, they would likely not see these things either. I can't even buy the DVD's of these cartoons because they only sell the edited versions. By chance, I own a VHS copy of some of the cartoons that are the original versions and I'm sure it will be valuable someday as it is valuable to me already.