* Tom Spurgeon link of the day #1: Spurgeon on the 5th anniversary of the Danish Muhammad cartoons. I think that the last time I spoke about the cartoons, in the context of how that dumb fuck in Florida’s threat to burn Korans made me reassess them, I didn’t express myself clearly, so let me try again. There’s a degree to which I think art, the act of making art, is an inherent good. There’s a lesser but not insignificant degree to which I think that blaspheming is an inherent good. And there’s a degree to which I think that doing something that pisses off assholes is an inherent good. So when the Danish Muhammad cartoons came out, even though they were pretty openly a disrespectful provocation first and foremost, I thought “Yeah, okay, right on.” But when the dumb fuck in Florida threatened to burn a bunch of Korans, well, that was just a disrespectful provocation. He wasn’t an artist making art, he himself was the kind of person who’d get really upset by blasphemy if directed at the right Abrahamic religion, and he himself was an asshole. Suddenly I could the cartoons’ underlying fecklessness and nastiness was something on their own and as their own unpleasant, inadvisable things, quite aside from my feelings about art and blasphemy and asshole-baiting.
* Tom Spurgeon link of the day #2: Spurge speaks with Robot 6 guest-poster Chris Arrant on the state of comics and comics journalism. Given recent events, this struck me as the money quote, no pun intended:
Arrant: And specifically the comics journalism field — what kind of kick in the ass does it need?
Spurgeon: I think more money would be good, Chris. A bootful of cash. An ass-kicking of filthy luchre. That sounds like a jerky response, but I think if industry journalism is valued the best thing that can happen to it is that it’s supported, and that it’s supported without qualification. I’d love to be able to work an eight-hour day on CR, but I can’t afford to. I’m sure a lot of people feel the same way about writing comics articles and the like. I’m so grateful for the opportunities I do have, and I realize a lot of that is patronage rather than a cold, commercial transaction.
Tom goes on to warn people away from using comics journalism as a stepping stone to comics creation, a slap in my face personally that I will take up with him through force of arms when next we meet.
* Words I never thought I’d write: Kurt Busiek on Coober Skeber 2.
* A brief history of Ray Sohn’s True Chubbo.
* Whoa shit, get a load of The New York City Outlaws.
* Well shit the bed with the lights on: Alex Timbers, director of Bloody Bloody Andrew Jackson and The Pee-wee Herman Show, was in my sketch comedy group in college. He was funny!
* I got as far as this little number from Rich Juzwiak’s wall of animated gifs from Harmony Korine’s Trash Humpers before something in my brain died.
* Your Real Life Horror Headline of the Day: “Army ‘Kill Team’ Leader Wanted a Necklace of Fingers”
* Just to end things on an up note, may I suggest that if you have not done so recently, you listen to the first Prodigy record? It’s a scream.