Wow, China. Just...wow.

So, I heard about this over at Pajiba. It appears that China's thought police State Administration of Radio, Film, and Television have banned time travel as a subject for television and film plots because "the producers and writers are treating the history in a frivolous way, which should by no means be encouraged anymore." Richard Brody at The New Yorker's The Front Row points out the potential for time travel fare to non-frivolous, and the importance of "the free play of the imagination" as a sign of political freedom -- exactly the sort of thing this regime does not allow. Pajiba, in addition to mocking the agency's complaint that "many stories are totally made up," Steven Lloyd Wilson at Pajiba focuses on the connection between time travel, memory, and the dictator's illusion of an unchanging present, in which they are the constant. Both interesting responses.

For my part, I hope some young geek in China is seeing this as the final straw, and planning the best rebellion ever. I hope that when that dictatorship falls, everyone will be wearing their forbidden geek emblem of choice (the one at the Pajiba site rocks pretty hard). Until then, stay strong Chinese time travelers. The past is not forgotten, and the future is yours.

WONDERCON 2011, part 1

So this year is shaping up to be the year of the con. First up: WonderCon (I'll also be going to ComicCon and WisCon). You've seen some snippets from this year's event, but it's taken until now for me to ahve the time and the energy to do a full write-up. So, here it is: WonderCon 2001 (*insert fanfare here*).


DAY ONE HIGHLIGHTS
Day one was April Fool's Day, and the joke was on me. I realized that I'd left a notebook at school that I needed to do some work, so had to go all the way to Stanford and back before I could get my geek on (which was supposed to start at 12:30). Not cool. Having accomplished that, I headed straight to the Comic Arts Conference side of things for a panel on queer space, othering, and identity in comics (I was mostly there for the queer space in The Sandman paper. Some interesting stuff, and I met some cool people afterwards, one of whom told me about Archaia publishing - where my research funds went to die.

So, I was tipped off that Archaia publishing, one of the publishers that had a booth on the exhibit floor, had been known to have something called a "buy two, get three free" sale. My initial response to this was, "wait, buy two, get a third one free?" Oh, no, my new acquaintance said -- pay for two books, get three additional ones free -- FIVE BOOKS FOR THE PRICE OF TWO! So I was like, "There, now." So there, then, we went, and -- lo, and behold -- they were having the sale in question. Now, I'd had no intention of buying one book, let alone two. But, if they were going to throw down with a crazyface sale like that, the least I could do was *look* at the books, right? And it was probably just some random publishing house that wouldn't have anything I wanted anyway, so no danger. Except that it turned out to be the place that published The Lone and Level Sands, the graphic novel that I almost taught this quarter, which is Moses v. Pharaoh from pharaoh's p.o.v., drawn from biblical and scholarly sources. And they have all this interesting mythology and religion related content. And I might have accidentally gone into a full-on book buying frenzy and dropped about $100. Which, luckily, will all be reimbursable from my research funds. Phew. (It wouldn't have happened if not for the research funds.) I didn't find out about the $5 galley copies until after the spree (and they didn't have the stuff I bought in galley copies anyway, except for one book, which was volume 2 of something), I might have gotten a couple of those on Day Two. We'll talk more about that later. Back on Day One, I also talked to one of their editors about a forthcoming booked called The Immortals, which will be a set of independent stories that take place in the world of Greek mythology, but are more grounded in reality. So Pegasus might show up, for example, but he won't have wings. Or something. The book will be original stories in the world of the movie, as opposed to a tie-in. Anyway, it piqued my interest, and resulted in finding out about a panel the next day, at which details of a special signing with stars of the movie would be revealed. I was more interested in the book, but figured, "Why not?"

I figure that a lot at WonderCon. Something about all the collective geek-effervescence makes me a little crazy. This probably accounts for how I got the autographs, and then gave them away. More on that next time.

In the interim, here's what I bought:
Days Missing, vol. 1
The God Machine
Hybrid Bastards
Inanna's Tears
The Secret History Omnibus, vols. 1&2
Some New Kind of Slaughter
Syndrome

Racism in Mississippi: not a news flash

So, yesterday, there was some random poll asking Republican voters in Mississippi who they want to vote for for governor, and for president, and whether or not interracial marriage should be legal. Huh? The pollsters asked the question of everyone, and claim to be trying to get a sense of the kinds of people likely to want to vote for each candidate, but have only released the Republican results so far. Now, my objections to the sensationalism, research methods, and feeding of the politico-media election frenzy machine aside (it's April and you're trying to generate a scandal poll? really?!), what I'd like to talk about for a second are the reactions to the results. Commenters were shocked (shocked, I say!). Agencies reposted it. Adam Serwer describes the results startling, and points out that the younger generations ideals do seem to be shifting. I think the latter point is an important one, but have to disagree on the former. We are startled by something when it is unexpected. Shock carries, to my mind, that same element of surprise with its outrage. 46% of a random sample of Republican voters in Mississippi says interracial marriage should be illegal, and people are shocked? Maybe, but only if you're shocked, that the number's not higher. IT'S MISSISSIPPI, FOOLS! Why is anyone shocked that almost half of a sampling of conservative voters -- hell, *any* voters in Mississippi -- is racist?!

Racism in Mississippi isn't a news item, especially in a random sampling of conservative voters. It's a Thursday.