Couldn't have said it better myself

in

Whole article is not only a great primer on why I voted a hearty NO on Ohio's bullshit Issue One, but a succinct guide to understanding the clusterfuck that is the present state of Ohio politics:

With Issue 1 on August 8, Ohio lobbyists and politicians demand total unchecked power.

They seek to create signature requirements so burdensome that they would destroy the ability of Ohio citizen groups to bring amendments to our Ohio Constitution ever again.

And they seek to ensure a minority of voters can veto critical decisions over the life, liberty, and pursuit of happiness of all Ohioans.

Ohio Republicans presently enjoy absolute control over our state’s legislative, executive, and judicial branches. Last year, they manipulated that power to override a majority of voters on gerrymandering.

Now those same gerrymandered politicians seek to rip away citizens’ power so that a majority of voters can be overruled on the Ohio Constitution itself.

THE SPECTRE, Vol. 3, No. 8 (Ostrander / Mandrake; DC, 1993)

in

Every Wednesday morning, I make a blind pull from Siri's (randomized) choice of one of the 20 alphabetically-organized shortboxes that constitute my comics collection, (re-)read it, write about it, and publish the resultant review / memory / whatever. Earlier installments live here.

(Box16): One of the crown jewels of the 90s (words rarely uttered though the era does hold a special place in my heart), DC doesn't get much better than this SPECTRE series, a perfect collision (similar to the 00’s JONAH HEX series) of writer and artist and characters – Corrigan / Spectre (Mandrake's Spectre, like Kaluta's Shadow and Adams's Batman) is THE Spectre, as far as I'm concerned), Amy, Nate – pushed to their limits in a deft balance of the topical (HIV ignorance) with the timeless (demons and the afterlife and human nature and all): in a just world, this volume of THE SPECTRE would be spoken in the same breath as Gaiman's SANDMAN.

I've always imagined (supported by evidence of previous lackluster efforts) The Spectre – a mostly-naked, pasty, all powerful vehicle of wrath and vengeance in pixie boots, a hooded cloak, and a speedo – to be a difficult character to get right: while he has limitless power and can do anything (not always a good thing), from punishing a mugger to stepping in to bring one Crisis after another to an end, he's not the most elastic of DC's stable (a la Superman or Batman): punishment, wrath, green cape, a dead cop powerless to stop his perpetual companion.

Ostrander and Mandrake succeed where others failed (and continue to do so (while all have been solid – I'm a big fan of Hal Jordan’s time as The Spectre, as vehicle of redemption, one of those rare transformations that, to me, worked; and I wish Crispus Allen had had a longer tenure – there hasn't been a capital-G Great take like Ostrander/Mandrake on The Spectre in awhile) by leaning in and pushing the character and his staples to their nth degree: their Spectre is both heroic and terrifying, a potent mixture of hardboiled private eye and embodiment of vengeance; I would both love and hate to see Tom Mandrake draw my greatest fears.

While it's been in the "pick them up whenever you see them" file, I'm adding this series to my list of "runs to complete”; an absolute pleasure to revisit.

(insta)deactivated

in

After much searching through menus and settings (and an unwillingness on the part of the app on the iPad to scroll down far enough to hit the "deactivate" button requiring me to go to a computer), finally hit the deactivate button (six days early, but to hell with it: those who wanted to stay connected have already done so, the rest, bye): my Insta-presence is no more. Aside from that one video with the "get that shit out of my face" vegan frog (which I did watch about 35 times before hitting deactivate: that "motherfucker stop, STOP!" shriek kills me every time), I don't miss any of it.

(And when Threads launched, I realized I didn't really need or want another microblogging conversation platform: that's what this space and the Fediverse are for / Note: still want to use the FV for my comment system here; running out of time before the next annual bill comes due.)

Didn't go full delete on Insta because I'm enough of a shit that I don't want the other Tylers Weaver to have that account name. I've protected it long enough, even added the extra W to myself, across multiple platforms and decades, this being my third (holy shit).

Related/un–: I anticipate the day that some startup buys (or pulls a Muskian coup on SpaceKaren himself) the Twitter name and the rights and the bird and brings it back, sort of like Twinkies and PBR, banking on nostalgia as a (highly viable) business model. As someone rightly said, the brand was the only thing that didn't need fixing at Twitter.

Anyhow byebye massive communication/advertising conglomerate techbro companies. We had our laughs and our cries and our successes and our failures but it's time to move on. Internet dinosaur powers: activate.