Who reads comic anymore anyways?

Not me, that's for sure!

Featured on the 22 of February of 2010 in the Union Weekly.

Glass + Cum = Broken Dreams

Originally run on 23 February 2009. Image from Google.

A Rebuttal to "Orgasm Shatter the Glass Ceiling" by Rachel Rufrano, 2/17/09

In my many years of cracking safes and romancing ladies, I have learned a thing or two. One of these facts is that women are much like safes: They’re about three feet tall, weigh a couple hundred pounds, contain precious secrets that must be hidden from the world, and it takes a steady hand to get anything from it (them). What I am saying is that making a woman come is much the same as cracking a safe. I took umbrage with Rachel Rufrano’s article because of its over-simplification of (straight) human sexuality. But also because I’m pretty sure it was making fun of my cock (which doctors tell me is perfectly proportioned for a man of my height). Then again, I whenever I hear people laughing in public I think the same thing, so that might just be my problem.

First off, some women simply cannot have orgasms. Now, I can already hear the cynics clucking their tongues and scoffing “Maybe not with you,” but it’s a physiological fact, damnit! There is no amount of jaw Olympics, pleading or sitting on the drier that can play that card any differently. Yet, somehow, they still manage to get on with their lives and be healthy, contributing members of society. Many of these women also manage to have fulfilling sex lives despite this perceived disability. Believe me, I’ve been turned down by literally dozens of them. Human sexuality is complicated and frightening enough without fixating on one particular event that might not even happen. And another thing, as far as equal rights go, aren’t there more pressing issues to deal with besides climaxing. We can all agree on that one, right?

I think we can all agree that there’s nothing wrong with women pursuing the orgasm. I personally have benefited from taking part in this noble quest, but with that said, if coming is the only thing that defines a worthwhile sexual escapade (sexcapade) then you’re probably going to be mightily disappointed. Take me, for example. I’d love to own a Porsche, but it’s probably never going to happen. Does this keep me up at night? No. Do I go into every car and compare it with this pneumatic piece of German Engineering? No. What I do is appreciate the Honda Accord that the Lord has blessed me with and I try to be thankful for every experience I have with it (Ladies, if any of you would like to be compared to a medium-range Japanese automobile, drop me a line).

What I’m getting at here is that female sexuality terrifies me. Even more so than terrorism. I mean, vaginas—ew. And don’t even get me started about menstruation. Female genitalia are like a sick parody of a Giger painting, all those folds and tubes. Who has the time to figure all that out? Not me! If women figure out that we’re not the gate-keepers of their sexual fulfillment, what else can result but complete and total anarchy? And I won’t stand idly by while Miss Rufrano dismantles the very core of our society.

The Future of Books

Originally run on 23 February 2009.

The Future of Books
Is All a Bunch of Cockamamie Bullshit

On the way back from a drunken rampage, NPR made me aware of this thing called a "Cell Phone Novel." The idea offended me on a personal level, so it only makes sense that it came from Japan—traditional home of the banzai charge, methamphetamines, and girls shitting sea life out of their asses for the sexual pleasure of people with no souls. Other than the silliness of reading a literary work on a device you typically use to find out “What’s up?” or “Where’s the party again?” there really isn’t anything inherently terrible about it, that is until the journalist started speculating about how the Cell Phone Novel might replace the book.

This, as you know is bullshit. Remember when HD-DVD and BluRay were duking it out over who would reign supreme in the high-defintion wars? (You probably don’t because you didn’t have a thousand dollars to throw at away at a new TV, a player and a new movie collection, you’re also probably not an unrepentant dork like myself). At the time there was a cadre of idiots who got together and sided with HD-DVD, because like VHS before it, it would include pornography in its library unlike BluRay (and the deceased Beta Max). These people turned out to be wrong for a number of reasons, but they represent a need in people predict the future despite basic logic disagreeing with them. NPR did this with their prediction Cell Phone Novel story—and, I imagine so did the inventors of smell-o-vision (which was discussed in another NPR story I overheard).

The shortfalls of prophesying can be expressed through one idea better than any other: Blue jeans. No matter how elaborate or well thought out a vision of the future is, everyone seems to leave out blue jeans. It’s all silver track-suits and clear, plastic rain coats. As though people would suddenly stop wearing one of the most popular and iconic pieces of clothing of all time and decide to look like robotic sex criminals. And what’s with the flying cars? Sure, they look way cooler than normal cars, but I don’t think, as a race, that we’re ever going to top the wheel any time soon. In the same way we’re not ever going to top the paper-back.

This glittering future we’re being sold is the result of some very skilled hucksters. Your post-humanism, your post-literary society, your singularity, and everything else can go suck on an egg. Jesus ain’t never coming and neither is that USB port in your head. Banking on either of those things happening in your life-time is just going to make you one disappointed SOB on his death bed.

I’m going to predict that there is never going to be that point in time where we get rid of all of our old crap and replace it with something new and shiny, either. Take Europe for example. There is still people living in three-hundred year old houses because the old buildings work just as well as the new ones. They didn’t tear everything down when we discovered plastic or the date had a few more zero’s than usual. A future without novels is a future without blue jeans.

Cinecult: Repo Man

Originally run on 9 February 2009. Image from Google.

What I like most about this column is that I can go from praising a bona fide classic film like Akira Kurosawa’s Yojimbo to smaller, stranger cult movies like Death Race 2000. Repo Man is definitely one of those cult movies and it is just as worthy of your time as on the Criterion Collection.

Repo Man is the first feature length film of the writer/director Alex Cox (Syd & Nancy) and focuses on commissar of the capitalist world: The repossession agent. If you filch on your car payments, the repo man is the guy who, through a number of legally gray means, will steal your car away from you. The mad world of the repo man is perfect comedic fodder for Cox who turns out a film that’s as funny as it is crazy—and in a world where traffic cops are vaporized and men in biohazard suits routinely walk around downtown LA collecting dead homeless people.

The bulk of the plot follows punk rocker and amateur repo man Otto (Emilio Estevez), who, alongside his sleazeballs-in-arms, as he searches for a mysterious Chevy Malibu which is also being tracked down by the CIA, a bunch of alien cultists and a couple of “gypsy dildo punks” by the name of the Rodriguez Brothers. Estevez is serviceable in the lead role, but the supporting characters and their semi-coherent monologues are the heart of the film.

The most memorable of the repo men is the crank-addled sensei, Bud, played by the venerable Harry Dean Stanton (Alien, Escape From New York, Kelly’s Heroes, among a dozen other worthwhile films). Stanton is one of the great character actors of the past forty years, and when you look at him its something of a surprise that the man isn’t dead. In the words of director Alex Cox, Stanton has a unique face that inhabits the area somewhere between a cowboy and a cadaver. He’s always worth watching, regardless of the actual quality of the film. He carries large segments of the film with his twisting, violent diatribes about the code of the repo man.

For good reason, Repo Man is among the most quotable movies ever made (right next to Predator and The Big Lebowski). There isn’t a scene in the movie that doesn’t deliver either a laugh or something profound (or maybe just crazy). The film also weaves gritty violence with surreal coincidences together extremely well, in a way that I can only compare with Cox’s revisionist western, Walker. Repo Man is a wonderfully crass comedy that you and your buddies in good time should be able to quote right into the grave.

A Keffiyeh By Any Other Name

Originally run on 9 February 2009. Image from Google, even though I wish I took it.

As we march through the months of winter, I’m beginning to realize that the keffiyeh has become the Che Guevara t-shirt of the 21st Century. I say this because, lately it seems that the political connotations of the keffiyeh have been compromised. It’s gone from a political statement to a fashion statement. Like many problems our society is suffering from, I blame the hipsters.

If the keffiyeh was associated with one person, it’d probably be Yasser Arafat, who seems to never be without his black and white keffiyeh. Saudi males have their version of the scarf, the shemagh, which is typically red and white, giving it the distinct look of an Italian restaurant’s tablecloth. The British special forces have traditionally been rather fond of scarves as week. The specific incarnation of the keffiyeh that I’m talking about though are the black and white checkered ones—the ones specifically worn by those that wish to show solidarity with the Pro-Palestinian Movement.

My problem with politics the scarves ten to accompany, but rather with the fact that I think that most people don’t know that they have a political connotation at all. It’s probably safe to assume that most members of the MSA know what they represent, but I have my doubts about the girl across from me on the bus wearing the keffiyeh she bought from Urban Outfitters while reading In Touch. I have my doubts about her in the same way that I have my doubts about the stoner with his Che shirt.

I doubt that this many people on campus are politically enlightened about the Palestinian/Israeli situation. If that sounds like a dig, it isn’t meant to be. I read the newspaper on a regular basis and I can barely make heads or tales of that whole situation. It’s probably one of the more complex and ambiguous conflicts on the face of the earth. I mean, Iranian president Mahmoud Amadinejad isn’t even sure whether or not Israel exists.

What this whole Palestinian scarf thing reminds me of was a jerk in one of my film classes. I didn’t bother to learn his name and for the longest time I couldn’t even remember what he looked like. All I knew about the guy was that he would wear t-shirts emblazoned with the letters “IRA.” I wondered, was he a naïve second-generation Irish-American or did he actually support scumbags that sell heroin to children and shoot their countrymen at funerals?

When I think of this guy, I also realize that the Irish aren’t just a bunch of carbombing drunks. Obviously, Palestinians too are more than just a rabble of rocket-hurling fanatics. We shouldn’t let jerks with bombs ruin your scarves or pride for your heritage or anything else. You shouldn’t let know-it-all snobs like me ruin them for you either. With that said, be smart about what you wear, it can be just as much of a political statement as anything else. Be aware. I mean, hey, there’s no reason that you can’t both look sharp and learn something about the world, right?

An Open Letter to the Republican Party

Originally run on 2 February 2009.

Dear Republican Party,

What happened to you, Republican Party? You used to be cool, man—Well, you were never cool, but at least you had something going for you. Smaller government and lower taxes, how can you screw up that formula? Not too long ago, you had the world in your hand—the Supreme Court, both Houses, and the Presidency—Now look at you. You’re the sick man of DC, and it’s high time you got your shit together.

I’m not here to rag on you, though. I was raised with my dad yelling at Clinton for most of my childhood—plus if he ever found out that I was trashing the party, I’d be out of a free meal ticket. The biggest reason that I’m not stooping to kick a man while he’s down is that America needs you guys. A healthy democracy requires a healthy competition. Without a serious competition we end up with Communist China or Soviet Russia or, more innocuously, six of the past eight years. America requires the other party, even if we don’t like them. Especially if we don’t like them, actually.

Your current incarnation is an intellectual and a spiritual dead-zone. On the one hand we’ve got professional scum like Ann Coulter, who wear their arrogance on their sleeve, like it’s a chevron for an elite force of loud-mouthed jerk-offs. Not to say that cockiness can’t be charming in small doses, Bill Mahr made an entire career out of this, but when he isn’t right at least he’s funny. The only service the current generation of conservative pundits supply is infuriation. They’re infuriating because they’re speaking about something that matters—our democracy—and they turn it into this hideous bitchfest that sucks in all forms of thought and rationality into the abyss.

Then there’s the granddaddy of whining Republican pundits: Rush Limbaugh, the creaking gastropod that he is. A man so edgy that he turned on McCain because of the fact that he hated Mexicans less than the other candidates. Campaigning against the best candidate the party has had in 20 years isn’t punk rock, it makes you a fat, petty asshole. Where’s William F. Buckley when you need him?

Oh, yeah. Spinning, no doubt.

The actual political wing of the party isn’t much healthier than the ideological one. Just look at the crop of runner ups in your camp last year. There was Giuliani, a man so inept that he managed to fumble being a hero on 9/11—a move only slightly less dumb that John Kerry being called a pussy for killing VC by a trust-fund baby. Then we have Mitt Romney (a known replicant) who is a believes in a religion that up until 1978 thought that the color of black people’s skin was a curse from God (a known space alien)—not that his religion is any of our business. Then we’ve got Mike Huckabee, who despite being something of a Bible-thumping nightmare, actually managed to be likable, if only because he never had a serious shot at turning the country into a theocracy he wants it to be (“All hail Presi-pope Huckabee III,” we’d all chant). This leaves us with Sarah Palin. Which one of you thought that was a good idea?


Obama beat you jerks for a lot of reasons: Exploiting the internet, being able to mobilize an entire generation of voters (and rake in their cash), and by sending out a message other than “Terrorists/Mexicans/Obama is going to kill you/steal your job/take your guns.” You lost because they were used to not having anyone to run against. You got complacent and sedentary and now here we are.

Honestly, when was the last time conservatism gave America anything to look up to? We need you to do this, not just for your own sake, but for our democracy’s sake. We need you out there making sure that Obama is doing the best job possible, because if we get a president that thinks his job is safe, we end up with Bush.

Four years, Republican Party, that’s all you need to turn yourself around. That’s how long it took for the Democrats to go from championing Yuppy Frankenstein and Droopy Dog to being spearheaded by a shiny, new racially progressive Messiah. That’s how long you have to purge the sycophants and hypocrites from your company and to actually forge something that is worth believing in. You brought this mess upon yourself and you’ve got every opportunity in the world to think your way out of it. Four years, plenty of time.

Yours Truly,
James Kislingbury, ESQ.

PS: Again, Sarah Palin, seriously? I mean, I love my mom too, but I’m not going to vote her into office.