Another one of those "Why is it...?" things.

Am I the only person annoyed by the use of the term "Judoe-Christian"?

It's not that I have any problem with people lumping two of the three "People of the Book" together, nor do I have any problem with the belief system(s) or the practitioners, so long as they are willing to give me the same consideration. it's the term and its linguistic implications bothers me.

It's the term, itself. It's backwards, you see.

Look, an American citizen may describe hirslf or be described as "Afro-American", "Italian-American", "Gyno-American", or whatever. So the base term, as I see it is "American" with the praenomen being the descriptor of a sub-group to which the person belongs.And, as far as I can think of at the moment, this structure of "descriptor before subject" is pretty universal in English: "deciduous tree", "right-wing nutbar", "one of the Tennessee Clampetts", ad infinitum.

Except for "Judeo-Christian".

In this ONE case the core group is used in the descriptor place and the subgroup is in the base position. Or am I the only one that reads this as "The Jewish sect of the Christian religion"?

The way I'm reading it, grammatically, those people that choose to refer to the presumed religious background of American culture* should be referring to our "Christo-Judean" values. Christianity is, after all, an offshoot of Judaism (or at least, so its Founder is portrayed as believing it).

Or am I wrong on this?

* Side note: Should "American Culture" be included in Georgr Carlin's list on mutually exclusive terms - you know: "Jumbo Shrimp", "American Champagne", etc.?

An ethical debate, full of sound and fury, signifying nothing...

This is a bit different from my usual screed in that, rather than going on about the stupid things that the neighbors do, or railing against the latest idiocy from the Sock-Puppet-In-Chief, I’m going to ramble on a bit about ethics and obligations owed.

Now the obligation in question is not necessarily a deep and meaningful obligation, but it’s one that I’ve been puzzling over lately, and one for which I don’t really have an answer.

So, I’m throwing the question out for public rumination.. I’d be interested to see if anyone else, preferably a deeper and/or wider thinker than myself picks this up and runs with it. (Paging Akicita…)

Postulated: An artist who uses another artist’s creation in hir own work owes that original creator a debt. This can be a debt of acknowledgement (“A tip of the Hatlo hat to:…”) or a financial debt, as a fee paid to a writer for the rights to make a movie based on hir story.

Question: Does the debt owed potentially (or perhaps even necessarily) include the duty not to make the character(s) act in a manner that the original author would not recognize as hir creation?

The item that’s got me thinking about this is the forthcoming graphic novel “Lost Girls”, by Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie. In the book Dorothy Gale (The Wizard of Oz), Wendy Darling (Peter Pan), and Alice (Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland, Through the Looking Glass) meet in an Austrian hotel as adults in 1913 - shortly before war breaks out in Europe. They tell each other, in graphic and profusely-illustrated detail, the secret stories of the sexual awakening that each experienced during the course of her adventure. This is apparently going to be, in its final form, more than 300 pages long.

Leaving aside the child-porn-ish aspects, and the question of whether bringing the raincoat brigade into comic book shops is a good or a bad thing, it’s the use of the characters that has me pondering.

Certainly, the book would not resonate so much with its potential audience if it featured three completely original characters telling their tales of adolescent awakening in wholly unique fantasy lands. No; obviously, the choice of heroines was intentional, and meant to provoke a response. Whatever one may say about Alan Moore, and whether or not one always agrees with his decisions, he does not appear to act without some thought aforehand, and to deliberate effect.

Now this is not the first time that Mr. Moore has taken another author’s characters and run with them – to good effect, I might add. Sometimes he creates pastiches of recognizable characters – half of the fun in reading the stories in the “Top 10” comic, set in the city of Neopolis, where EVERYONE has super powers, is recognizing on whom many of the characters are based. In the classic series “Watchmen”, the heroes are pastiches of heroes created for the now-defunct Charlton Comics line in the 1960s. On the other hand, in “The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen” he acknowledges that his characters are “the real deal”: H. Rider Haggard’s Alan Quartermain, Bram Stoker’s Mina Harker, Jules Verne’s Captain Nemo, and others.

Now here’s where it all gets a bit murky.

When “League” was made into a (stupid but moderately entertaining) movie, Mr. Moore insisted that all mention of his name be removed, as they had not made HIS “League”. And therein lies my problem; with the exception of the “Fiendish Chinese Devil-Doctor”, whose inspiration, Dr. Fu Manchu, was still under copyright by the estate of his creator, Saxe Rohmer, all of the characters that Mr. Moore used were in the public domain. This meant that, while the obligation postulated above – to pay or otherwise acknowledge his debt to the creators of his templates was made moot, the question posed of an obligation to the characters themselves, and the original authors’ conceptions was not.

In essence, the impression given was that making someone else’s character, for example, a laudanum-addicted wreck was acceptable usage, but turning him back into a swashbuckling adventurer was not. (Or naybe it was just the whole Dorian Gray, Tom Sawyer thing that he couldn’t stand…)

(He did the "take my name off; this isn't MY story" thing again with “V for Vendetta”, which was completely his creation with David Lloyd – as far as I’m concerned, it’s their toy and they can do what they want with it.)

“Watchmen”, on the other hand, was an interesting case. Mr. Moore had originally intended to write the story using the Charlton heroes, but when told that in fact DC Comics, the current rights-holder, had plans for the characters he went back and created recognizable surrogates to use in his story. Assuming that this did not change the basic structure of Mr. Moore’s story, this, in the original, would have meant established heroes betraying, raping and killing each other during the course of the series; all, presumably, without input or consideration of the original characters’ creators’ feelings or opinions as to whether their creations would betray, rape, or kill.

Now in the comics industry, where characters are, for the most part, owned by mega- media conglomerates and creative teams on books are routinely, almost promiscuously, swapped around, it is not unusual for continuities and defining characteristics to change in a blink; so we’re sort of used to seeing, for example, Bruce Wayne’s Batman be retconned (RETroactive CONtinuity changed) from millionaire playboy adventurer who jokes with his youthful “chum”, to the near-psychotic (I’m being charitable, here) grim avenger of the night with scarcely a thought for the character, much less for what the original creator might have thought of any of his creation’s later incarnations.

Which brings us back to the original question: What (for want of a better term) moral responsibility does an artist have to someone else’s creation? Is it enough to tell a good story with the character? Or is there an obligation to use the character in a manner that is respectful of who and what that character is to its creator and its fans? Alternatively, when does Rider Haggard’s Alan Quartermain stop being Rider Haggard’s and become Alan Moore’s Alan Quartermain? And if you’re willing to take another writer’s characters and turn them upside down, do you have a moral right to complain when someone does it to one of yours?

Now my gut feeling is that, from an ethical, “do unto others…” “what goes around…” sense, the answer to the last question is no. On the other hand, in a “does this make a good story?”, “Is it art?”, sense, I have to go with Robert Crumb’s Rule of Thumb for artists: “Whatever works!”

So, as you can tell, I come down firmly in the “I don’t know” camp.

The floor is now open for discussion.

Just to show...

...that I wasn't making it up about the ugly crap in the previous posting...

...Ah-h-h-h... Y'know, for the full effect, you should probably zip past this post and read that one, if you haven't already done so. Go ahead... I'll wait.
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...Hmm-hm-hmmmm-hm-hmmmm-hm-hmm-hm-hmmmm...
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All done? Good. Let's continue.

As I was saying, just in case some of you think that I was exaggerating just how much the crap that I was sent offended my designer's sensibilities, I post for your edification ONE side of the offending flyer:

(Please note - I'm only including one-half of the total ugliness that I received since revealing such crapulosity in its entirety to the untrained viewer could cause blindness, madness, hair on the pal... uh, no, wait... That's something else... Well, in any case, it wouldn't be good for you. Trust me; I'm a trained professional.)



Now, I realize that, as a non-driver, I simply may not havet been exposed to a lot of car-dealerships' direct mail pieces and they might, in fact, ALL be this ugly (in which case, I weep for my people...) but that doesn't change the fact that this is one ugly@$$ piece of trash!

For those of you whom I have not already bored to tears with this diatribe, let me explain my thoughts on graphic design.

Leaving aside the concepts of "good" and "bad" for a moment (Don't worry; we'll come back to them shortly!), I believe that there are two types of graphic design:

1 - Design that is intended for USERS and;
2 - Design that is intended to impress other DESIGNERS.

The intent of the former is to pass on information in the clearest, most readily-comprehensible way possible; the intent of the latter is to show off one's bad@$$ chops and proclaim one's alpha-dogness in the kennel.

I believe that it *IS* possible to do both, but it's generally beyond the skills of 99.9 percent of the designers out there.

(For the sake of full disclosure, I should point out that I include myself in that 99.9%. I'm a solid, meat-and-potatoes cook; I'm not Escoffier!)

In designing for end-users, the designer should be, essentially, invisible. Shoving one's way in between the users and the information that they're hoping to obtain is the cardinal sin for a designer in this case.

In designing in the hopes of impressing other designers, then the FACT of one's existence and influence on the viewing experience IS the information being imparted and gets top billing.

Both of these are fine and valid methods of working - I'm just an end-user designer. Always have been, always will be. Possibly because my initial impetus in graphics was in drawing comics, storytelling seems to be the basis of what I'll call, for want of a better term, my aesthetic. The question that I'm always trying to answer as I work is, "What is the minimum amount of data that is necessary for me to include for the reader to understand the story that I'm telling?" Because if they don't get the story, then I've failed in my job as a communicator. I don't have the quote right in front of me (and, of course, he put it much more succinctly), but Robert Heinlein pointed out in an article on the craft and business of writing that it's perfectly okay to have an ulterior motive in writing a story (aside from the obvious one of paying the mortgage) - you may have a point of view that you want to express, a warning to give, or a philosophy to expound - but if you can't do that while first and foremost entertaining the paying customers, then you're going to be going back to real work pretty darn quickly!

The "good" and "bad" only comes into the equation if the design of your piece doesn't do the the job that it's supposed to do! If it doesn't let the end-user get the information that s/he is looking for as easily as possible, or alternatively doesn't show the rest of the pack just WHY you ARE the (wo)man, then it's bad design. Otherwise, the worst that can be said about it is that it's inappropriate to the task at hand.

The examples that I usually use for the two types of graphic design are:

1 - end-user information - Popular Science
2 - design-mojo demonstration - Wired

If you're in the middle of re-plumbing your bathroom using a Popular Science article, you REALLY don't want to have to hunt for the next step; alternatively, I've never seen Wired Magazine as actually being about presenting information as much as being about the edgy, pushing-the-envelope look and experience.

Now the excrescence that started all of this, really (in mine 'umble opinion) succeeds in neither of these functions... Actually, in all fairness, that's not quite true...

If we assume that the purpose of the flyer is to impart the information: "We've got a metric sh*tload of cars that we need to unload in a Gawdawful hurry and we can't afford the space to tell you anything really useful about all of them, so instead we're going to cram as much randomly-sized disjointed verbiage and as many uselessly small pictures as we possibly can into the limited space that we have available in hopes that you'll be curious or, heck, even confused enough to come out to see what we're trying to sell you," then I will have to admit that it succeeds admirably.

If it has ANY other intent, it fails miserably.

That's my opinion, anyway.

Closing Thought for Today:
"efficiency + elegance = excellence “ -- Torley Wong

Alright! ALRIGHT!! Quitcherbitchin!!!

To both of my readers - Yes, I've been well aware of how long it's been since my last post.

But the sad fact is that, for the most part, I haven't felt enough bile backing up to inspire me to write and that, after all, is what usually inspires these mini-screeds of mine.

And I'm not sure why that is... Certainly the drivers in my neck of the woods haven't gotten any better at operating or parking their vehicles in the past months. And the Sock Puppet in the White House hasn't gotten any less venal or stupid. Heck; the Vice-President mistaking a 65-year-old, 5' 10" white male for a 6 ounce *BIRD* without having to explain that to anyone who didn't need him to sign their time-sheets every week wasn't enough to get me going. Sadly; that's pretty much so par for the course that I couldn't really get worked up about them.

Sad, really.

But, the other day, an item arrived in the mail that was so... I don't know... I honestly can't find a word that *PRECISELY* describes this letter. Let me show you, and you can decide.

Here's the item in questuin. It looks pretty serious, in that severe, Social Security Administration/IRS/ Federal Bureau of Threatening Leters kind of way.



Looking more closely at the upper left-hand corner, we see the return address block and the big black box:



Hmmm.. boy... official-sounding Section of a Departmnt of a Center... must be big...

And look at the instructions in the boxes... orders for the postmaster in case it can't be delivered, warnings about the penalties for keeping it from going to its proper addressee... Whoah...

And who IS that addressee...?



...Why, it's addressed to "Resident"...

Yes, folks... It's junk mail that WANTS you to feel threatened, so that you'll open it immediately and find out that it's (drumroll, please...!)

A FRICKIN' BOGUS CHECK IN A BADLY DESIGNED ADVERTISING CIRCULAR FOR THE LOCAL SATURN DEALERSHIP!!!

And I honestly don't know which bothers me more: that someone thought that making their target audience feel vaguely threatened by all of the official-looking verbiage on the outside of the advertising piece was a clever marketing ploy, or that the flyer is *SO* incredibly ugly!!!

Frankly, I don't know if this idea came from Saturn Corporate, or was the bright idea of the local dealership but, whichever it was, they should be thanking whatever gods they pray to (Mammon, presumably, at the very least!) that I *DO* have such a limited readership, else this bit of commercial placental ejecta would actually be SEEN by people who might be in the market for a car from a friendly, intelligent, neighborhood dealer - into which category, I hesitate to include ANYONE who thought that this was a good idea!

On he other hand, just to show that thre I have no REAL hard feelings towards Saturn...

Since I *DO* graphic design and advertising for a living, I should tell whomever hired the advertising firm that came up with this putrescence of an ad campaign that they probably have a good case for recovering the money that they spent on it since - unless the job was just given to the boss's brother-in-law or some similar arrangement - the agency presumably claimed that they actually KNEW something about advertising, customer relations, and/or graphic design -- which by all rights should open them up for charges of misrepresentation and breach of contract!!

So there!

ClosingThought for Today:
"Rage is the only quality which has kept me, or anybody I have ever studied, writing columns for newspapers” -- Jimmy Breslin