Belly Boat

The other day, while typing through a haze of painkillers, I wrote: “Warriors For Innocence come off a little weird, to say the least. Mind you, so does Andrew Vachss.”

A few people asked me about this comment in email, and I was happy to clear it up for them, but a mutual associate has asked that I clarify in public.

When Andrew Vachss does tv pieces on Oprah and the like, with that laser focus of his that cuts right through the crap and the cotton wool, with a presence that is calculatedly intimidating: yeah, in that context, he comes off a little weird and spooky. People of passion and determination always do. I imagine Mr Vachss himself would be the last to describe his presence on these things as soothing or cuddly. I have a stack of his books — I bought at least one of them, BLUE BELLE, instead of food in the 80s — and nothing but admiration for the man. That’s what I said to our mutual friend on the phone, and that’s what I’m saying here.

Also, I don’t want him to set his dogs on me. I hate dogs. And I won’t get far on one working leg.

Is now available for free download from the Steampunk site, where you could also, if the fancy took you, order a print copy on recycled paper.

I love the issue’s tagline: “A Journal of Misapplied Technology.”

(crossposted from Bad Signal, my daily email diary thing)

In reconfiguring The Engine message board, I’ve taken off the no-superhero rule. That’s less interesting to me than it was two years ago, and, as I move into other concerns, it only makes sense to let everyone have use of the place. It’s not backtracking, so much as not giving a fuck anymore…!

Moreover, I want my friends to be able to talk about all their work.

So if you’re a professional comics creator — and if you have to ask if you’re pro or not, you’re not — register on the Engine using your real name, and drop me a note at warrene @ aol.com with your Engine username so I can fix your access to the Creator’s Conference section, where only pros can post.

This goes for everyone in pro comics — we already have a large population of manga people, and, it turns out, a nascent TV star (heh).

Seriously, the Conference section is my favourite part of the Engine, and I’d love to see more pros there.

And for everyone else: only the pros can post there, but everyone can read it. The volume of new art and sketches by comics artists alone makes it worth the trip, like the monthly Covers thread.

Anyway. So long as you do comics, you’re welcome there.

(Cue Andrew The Host crying quietly over the traffic rush.)

http://www.the-engine.net

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Macaque

This story is just so odd that I’m not sure how to go about synopsising it:

It is almost two weeks since a disturbing story broke about a little boy named Ondrej who had been severely abused by his mother. From that point on, the whole thing became more and more curious, as somebody said to be his 13-year-old sister disappeared from a children’s home. First it emerged that the authorities had no record of “Anna”, who Ondrej’s mother had been attempting to adopt. Hundreds of police officers searched the country for “Anna”, in vain. Now it seems that the alleged 13-year-old is in fact a diminutive 34-year-old woman. The girl has never existed, apparently…

Performance artist Mark McGowan has eaten what he claims was a cooked corgi in a protest over the Royal Family’s treatment of animals.

The corgi, which died at a breeding farm, was minced and cooked with apple, onion and seasoning.

As he ate the meatballs, McGowan reported: “It’s disgusting. It’s really, really, really disgusting.”

Speedy solar storms carrying a billion tons of charged gas through space let out a thunderous scream before they unleash satellite-stopping radiation storms that slam into Earth’s magnetic field.

(Which I think I already knew, but it’s a nice image nonetheless)

From his sketchbook at the Engine:

Starlit

Warren Ellis: waves his cane at a cold and uncaring sky, having survived another night

LOL BOTS.

And, yes, I’m afraid this is categorised as People I Know.

Without contradicting my previous take on the situation:

Until such time as LiveJournal/Six Apart work out how to tell the difference between fantasy fiction communities/support groups/fashion discussion communities/survivor histories and actual criminal use and traffic, and restore those fiction groups and survivor support teams to full working order, my own LiveJournal will become read-only, and I will produce no new content to be read on that system.

I do believe that some stupid people got what was coming to them today. But a lot more people have been mistreated by LiveJournal for no reason beyond blind panic. I see no reason to tacitly support that by continuing to write under a LiveJournal URL.

Test plaintext 5 – ignore

JunkDNA Fiction, on Twitter:

Her voice tugs at the Geier Hitch in my bullscrotum. Desperation and desire brawl like warring, wounded brothers.

http://community.livejournal.com/innocence_jihad/: formed in response to this.

For what it’s worth: Warriors For Innocence come off a little weird, to say the least. Mind you, so does Andrew Vachss. But LiveJournal’s response bears more study. Their sloppy, blanket response indicates that they simply don’t have a process in place to differentiate between nonce-news and people writing about furry widdle brother and sister unicorns who love each other very much.

The outcome, therefore, has been pure comedy, with comments that read very much like “I love spending all day reading about forced underage incestuous sex with squirrel fisting on top, but of course I’m not interested in that in real life — that’d make me a pervert!”

LiveJournal is part of Six Apart, which has in times past proved itself to be, shall we say, socially backwards. They’re not good at dealing with people. The questions of importance are less about the somewhat gung-ho and poorly informed Warriors For Innocence, and more about the panicked spasm LiveJournal had, that appears to have had very little thought put into it.

All that said: if you listed “rape” as an interest on your LiveJournal user profile, you must have known that someday someone was coming to see you about that.

* Fred Thompson to announce run for Presidential nomination on July 4 Oh yes.

* Scriptwriting programs

* REMAKE/REMODEL: 9 – Princess Pantha

Warren Ellis: is pouring Red Bull right into his eyesocket

Anti-kiddiefiddler group Warriors For Innocence claim responsibility for LiveJournal “permanently suspending” hundreds of LJs that betrayed interest in paedophilia. However, it seems not to have gone so smoothly:

Setting a new precedent, LiveJournal, owned by Six Apart Incorporated, deleted over 500 of its sites or journals today. Responding to requests from Warriors For Innocence, LiveJournal chose to remove sites that promote pedophilia, child sex, child abuse, and other illegal activities.

…we did not report sites that are about Lolita fashion. Those sites were deleted by LJ because LJ (not WFI) chose to delete all sites with certain �interests� listed…

…We can tell the difference between a pedophile site and a survivor/support group site. And no, we did not ask for the survivor/support group sites to be deleted. We actually expressed our concern over keeping them up and running even though their interests may be listed as the same as a pedophile site…

Lia’s got a small collection of related links here. Personally? I have an eleven year old daughter. I’m with Warriors For Innocence on this. (EDIT: A little clarification, for the hard of thinking.)

A short film by Scott Byrne: