The Girl With The Dragon Comicon

Emerald City Comicon © 2014

Hi, folks! Well, you'll have to deal with real-world, grown-up problems pretty soon, what with the entertainment industry coming in. So here's a major first step for the whole of the community:

Abuse of women.

So many people in cosplay at comicons are women. So you can imagine what they've had to put up with from the boys. Fortunately, one of the best comicons for protecting women is Emerald City Comicon. Their "costuming is not consent" poster notices at last year's show were a great example for how to act like grown-ups between the genders.

An excellent article about how the problem is being addressed is at ComicBookResources.com

Of course, when a problem comes up, it happens to me, so I have to address it. So here goes. For the local boys, here are some rules of behavior. The reason for the title of this post is that, in this movie a woman takes brutal revenge for rape. As a child, she clears a brutal man out of her mother's life.

After the 1940's, when the boys of the northern hemisphere had one of their particularly brutal spaz attacks and all came home thinking women were whores, the abuse of women began to be addressed. Kurosawa's "Red Beard" showed what women had to face, and how men - well - in too many cases, simply ignored the problem until the situation was ghastly. "Thelma and Louise" had women cheering as two women demonstrated they'd had enough. "Titanic" showed girls they had a right to themselves and their own bodies. "Kill Bill" was just one of the genre of Japanese rape-revenge movies, that translated early on to the unexpectedly stylish "I Spit On Your Grave." 

So now, as 2014 comes to the Olympic Peninsula, the men are starting to be scared of what the women are asking for - full equality, and the right not to be abused (thank you, nice online proofreader!). Here are some basic rules, guys:

1. Don't start sexual hooting at women you don't know. It's abusive and threatening behavior. It makes the nice guy who pointed out a friend look like a fool. If that was your intent, you've got two victims. Proud of yourself?

2. Don't make threats against women, claiming they're being watched by the police, or you're looking for their address. This is stalking. This is a crime.

3. Once a woman backs you off, all further approaches become stalking.

4. Wife-beating humor is NOT funny. Nor is accusing a decent man of slapping women around. You might have hung out with the woman-haters back in high school, but you are not the majority of men.

5. If a boyman is behaving like this around women, you men, then don't sit there hanging your heads silently, or pretend to join in his fun. You're just showing alliance with and participating in criminal behavior. And you taking pictures of the woman who is dealing with the problem? Yeah, you too. It's not going to do you any good if that woman is all over the internet, already, but if you did it to her, you've probably done it to threaten other women and girls. 

6. If a woman accuses you of these behaviors, don't try them in private, or follow her out of the building to get in one last nasty remark, thinking she "won't be able to prove it." If you've done it to her, you've done it to other women - and back in high school, you terrorized girls. Do you really want to meet any of those people? Now? 

Back in the 1970's, when I was getting a ride back to the barracks from Madigan Headquarters, the Sergeant Major I should have been able to trust as a superior rank tried to put his hands on me. I told him I'd tell his wife. 

He smirked, "She won't believe a WAC." 
I replied, "If you try it with me, you've tried it before. What's a divorce do for your chances of promotion?" 

The woman can use the lack of witnesses too, you pathetic loser. The SMAJ drove me home politely. Hopefully, he thought before trying it again (though I have my doubts of anybody in the military - how's their record for raping their comrades, today?).

7. Women, if you're harassed, stalked, abused, or other wise cornered, chased, frightened, struck, whatever, you have resources. Clallam County Domestic Violence Page  You have the Sheriff's office, including the Anonymous Tips Line. 

8. You know where such people work. You don't have to accuse. You just have to ask. Who are they working for? Who are they associating with? Are they on community service? Why is no action being taken against this behavior? Who is funding any organization in which this behavior is being allowed? Hell, I suspect some of these dumb guys may be on community service, anyway. Oh, that's so smart. Then again, we're not talking about guys with the IQ of Bill Nye, here.

9. Start an anti-abuse group. It's needed up here. Badly. Invite all the good guys and bring lots of food and music. Set up a reporting system. Take pictures and spread the word. Make abusers as afraid of cameras as bad cops; good cops are wearing them voluntarily.

Any guy who starts trying to quote the few examples of women abusing men - that is a tiny, TINY minority - and men KILL women and children. All the time. Decide which side to be on, because women have had it with this kind of behavior. It's killed too many of us. And it can escalate. The abuser thinks he has the right to do it. And where has he gotten that idea? Your community had better be asking itself that question.

And now, since we started this article with geeks, just google "date-rape nail-polish." You'll find loads of controversy and "no ways!" but it proves that good guys have had it with the bad boys. 

Any of you abusing women - you know those religious sects in the middle east are losing their minds because women might - MIGHT - refuse to be abused any more. Do you really want to be in the same box with those guys? Really? So far, I've seen NO action by religious groups to stop this kind of behavior. In fact, they employ abusers here. What does that say?

Back To Art - Thank You, Godlets!

Picnic Pavilian, Clallam Bay Park

I was so sick and tired of fighting for the local silent weaklings, but it looks like Rayonier has finally shot itself in the foot. Can we say, "Tumbling Rapids?" Maybe Forks has more guts than Clallam Bay and Joyce, after what happened to Pillar Point. And you moron fishermen - you really think we can't see you in Clallam Bay trying to harass the sea mammals? That better not be a rifle, asshole. But enough of talking to resource idiots; one of these days Mom Earth will take care of THEM. HARD.

Anyway, I was begging to go back to the arts, where I belong, and stop messing with numbnuts local rural politics. They're easy, but they're not my baby. Solar will build itself, from the ground up, while the whimperers with the 1970's information will lose. Those making fake assumptions about things that DO work and are improving will be laughed at. In their faces. So, as usual, the godlets answer my vague thoughts (and you really have to be careful what you ask for).

Wild Sorrel, in the last of the summer sun.

Forks is opening a new arts center. Yay, Forks! An event I am thoroughly on board for is coming up in April. It's run by a local gentleman who has his head on straight, and wants to learn more. More news to come, and I'll be promoting it everywhere, including letting them use my international press release list.

But, let's have a little air cleared about the local attitude toward the arts. We won't go into the truly moronic shutting down of the arts, dance, music, etc., that goes on in the local schools - we know the pointless dumbness of that, and if they won't work for their own good, I'm not their mommy. And I'm not listening to the crying and whining when that comes back to bite them in the ass. Enough of the spoilt babies. Here we go:

Neah Bay Popsicle ARTIST:
see definition in text.

"Twilight" taught the local community that the future of human existence is entertainment (we sell and buy to and from each other). Of course, all single book markets fade, and that one is, too. But as people who come to the Clallam Bay Comicon know, I can help them get ALL the books and movies and set-building, and put everybody up here on the road to fun, clean, well-paying employment (not "jobs" - that 200-year-old paradigm is dying, and good riddance). All it takes is using the heads a bit, and I don't know anybody stupid up here, anybody who can't do it. I've seen lots of stupid behavior, but that's just lack of trying, not ability. 

However, they're stuck firmly in the 19th-century world of gallery artists snubbing each other, thinking they're avant garde for copying van Gogh with a palette knife, and calling fabrics and basketweaving "crafts." This note is to start to educate 'em. 

First of all, if you designed it yourself, it's "art." If it's out of a kit, it's a "craft." Doesn't matter if you carved, painted, beaded or cooked or photographed or filmed it. Or danced or sang it. There's original art, and there's Cover Art (as in, I suspect, to "cover" the bills until your art takes off for real). Now I'll dust off my hands and get on to the next lesson. Ready? 

The guy with the arts center messaged me to tell me there'd be an "arts" event. He made some remarks I and some other entertainment-industry people had to straighten out, and he immediately learned and got on the right track. This event will be a success if he keeps on that road. He's good people.

But now to talk to the local arts scene, and tell you you're not good enough to be as snobbish as you think you can get away with. You're going to be facing professionals, and not just easy-going me, who for years has simply let you slide. This is a wake-up call.

The first time I saw this sloppiness was at the Clallam County Fair art show. Two pieces should have won. For ability, experience, and use of materials, a couple of paintings that wouldn't have looked bad at a minor Seattle gallery. But what won? Some poorly-done pencil/watercolor thang of an old lady with white curly hair, and a still-life that looked like the label of a jam jar. You're letting THESE people run your art life? Please. It's embarrassing. Then again, the stars of a fair are lambs and potatoes, so they're not exactly a professional arts venue.

I THINK the gang up here thinks "art" means "we can put it in a frame" - which is why they call pressed seaweed and fishprints done on copyrighted maps - "art." (Of course, they ARE art, but just being put in a gallery isn't how you define art.)

And those of you thinking you can do abstracts - give me air. An abstract is for long-practiced experts, who are tearing apart their medium to view it more clearly, to see what their eye is really seeing. Slapping paint on a palette because you think that's how it's done - what do you think a true expert can see? We saw what you did, there (hell we can see the guy who did the bison in the cave-paintings invented the first filbert brush). You have at least 20 years of hard work and learning, before you can even begin to think you can approach a full abstraction.

(Of course, all art is abstraction, but let's keep this simple. As for copyright, just hit the page and don't argue about it. Those are the rules, and that's IT.)

And teaching and learning by copying out of somebody else's how-to book? And offering ignorant versions of native art because "Them injuns charge too much?" Gallery prices at 50% markup, with no framing, insurance, advertising, travel? And artists dumb enough to pay it? Oh, yeah, I've seen it all. The amount of ignorant arrogance is simply breath-taking. As a long-time attendee of comicons, I can tell you the stupidest newby wouldn't make these mistakes. There are too many hard sharks in that business to put up with the dumb and self-satisfied. Cross those big fish, and there's blood in the water.

And please, while you're looking at my page for the comicon, look at my artist rates. This is where it STARTS. Art is our future. Pay for it correctly, and it will come back as collectibles. You didn't know that? 

So get ready for the art world that Twilight handed you. And either learn to surf properly, or get slapped with the board and sent under where the sharks can get you. Because they're swimming in, with gleaming teeth. And soon.

One last thing: CONTESTS for art-festival posters? REALLY? Find an artist you like, and hire her or him. Damn, people. Stop whittering, "It will give you such good exposure!" People die of exposure. But don't feel bad - the world at large tries this crap, let alone your little elbow of the earth. 

Into The Future

I've been doing my gloating and kidding around over on Facebook, so it's not going to end up here. Every time somebody gives up and joins me, I don't gloat - I start telling them how to do cool stuff. And the photos in this post are just for the pretty and happy.

The Clallam River, recovering and cleaner.

Thank you to everybody who's spreading the word on this blog - including the people who hate it. Remember, I'm just the messenger - I'm just outing bad behavior, not making it up. And there are a few people, who know the resource/greedhead past is going to die within a generation, who are bringing their kids to me, knowing I won't hurt them and will make their future here, in a decent rural area, possible and hopeful. 

I can't clean up your history - there are too many people with photos of exterminated wolves, and pictures of

Happy Beach Monster!

grandpa with walls full of dead bears and cougars, or so proud of themselves standing on the stumps of destroyed forests. The Natives in boarding schools - the survivors still over on Facebook, breaking hearts, talking about the horrors of The Bad Times. You're stuck, like America, with its genocidal past, the whipped slaves, and the pyramid of buffalo skulls. None of us can bury that - nor would decent people want to. But we CAN make a better future.

So, leaving the anger and fear behind, let's all look at the latest possibilities. First of all, arts and entertainment can and will have clean, low-footprint jobs for everybody. This includes forestry and construction. They need real wood and real set-builders. Don't let your forests go to toilet paper and chipboard, when you can carefully steward your future beautiful boards - which

Makah Days canoe crew.

go for huge prices, when treated properly. When you look at a tree, you shouldn't see something to take your anger out at, something to - as I've heard confessed - to enjoy being destroyed - but an ally and friend. Nature gave you a chocolate cake covered in gold. Don't stomp it or shit on it and then expect to be able to spend or eat it. 

I speak as pulp-industry spawn. I've seen the bad happen. Listen to the warnings of one who has been there, and doesn't want it here. Not without a fight.

Small point: solar use. First of all - it is NOT the 1970's. Most of what you get from local government is mentally nailed into that era. It's antique. Look at Germany, and pay attention (yes, and that translates as "Achtung!"). Speaking of Germany, it's pretty much solared up - with the same

Pebble-roasted, buttered oysters.

climate as ours - and it's gotten out of gobbling up all the solar equipment. So the prices are dropping!

Everybody up here immediately talks about hooking into PUD and "selling power back." But that's a 1970's concept. It's an attempt to keep the locomotive, when we need the SmartCar. And my dad was a long-distance trucker, who said that forget trying to out-muscle a semi for safety, and get the smallest, fastest, most agile car you could find. You will LOSE a crash with a haulage truck - better to AVOID it. And you people can't DRIVE or PARK those pretend tanks you got now. Let's all get light on our feet - and our footprint.

Speaking of unwieldy crashes:

Sequined Hummingbird, Neah Bay.

We MUST drop the idea of huge grids. Every one of you I've spoken to GETS it when I talk about rivers being kinetic energy, and fossil fuels being second-level fuels. And understands when I say that a huge grid is not only antique, but expensive, inefficient - and hooking directly into a star. A huge grid is capable of not only turning birds into puffs of smoke, but being massively dangerous. 

Now, we've handled dangerous things before, because we needed to - and not always well (ask the Russians about that) - but why do it if we can't do it as book says: "Smaller, Faster, Cheaper" - ? (Hard copy at the library). Solar is about little 12-volt appliances, some of them with their

In Clallam Bay Park.

own dinky panels. Solar is about Neah Bay turning neighborhoods into mini-grids, so that a central battery bank keeps chugging, even if one house goes down. 

Clallam County is fighting over what kind of meters to have, electronic, or analog. This is like fighting over who gets to make the buggy whips. You're wasting your time, people, over the unimportant. Get your heads in the real game.

Water? Why isn't every neighborhood taking care of all this rainfall? Perhaps bigger grids work in cities, but everything goes out here all the time, including electricity, water and sewer.* We have to think smaller, cheaper, faster. It's just how it is.

Look, folks, sooner or later, every empire eats itself alive, after the resources are cleaned out, and it's been doing war as business. Then Rome has to cut back on the far colonies and take care of the homeland. Guess who we are, out here on the Olympic Peninsula? That's right - Great Britain. And when Rome left, the Dark Ages began.

Sprinkles Yogurt, Port Angeles.

But does it have to be dark here? Why don't we get started, now? Let's take power and water out of the hands of the utilities - except as the base for making and centralizing lower-cost bulk equipment orders and storage - and use that money for the things government is REALLY good for: roads, bridges, public transportation, education, libraries, and health care. 

Perhaps if we all buckle down and make our small power work, every single kid could be funded by us to get an education at the Peninsula College - which is the ultimate investment in the future. Let's pay for the good stuff, and take care of the smart basics ourselves.

We can all do this. I KNOW you can - you're all smart enough and you love this place too much to fail. This is the New Frontier - you have a chance. Get started before Earth imposes her deadline - because she will call it in, and then it will be too late; she will drop her mask of Kind Mother and reveal herself, Kali-like, as the great Juggernaut she is, stomping forward in her power, and flipping out any little useless cog (like us) that gets in her way. Don't wait for the deadline; keep Mom happy. 

Mom likes fun. Look at the animals when they're on their own, most of their lives. The great thing about the new future is, it will depend on doing what you want, for the fun of it. You are no more on this earth to work yourself to death, than a seagull enjoying September, floating on the waves during Grownup Summer. Neither are your children. Give them the chance. It's being offered to you, with both hands. Stop complaining about how the kids won't dig ditches (have you not heard of the backhoe?) and start being proud of how they're renovating our world for the good.

Get to work. No - Come to PLAY. 

(*I didn't bring sewer up until the end, because Americans are big babies about it. We're so scared of considering it, we flush away our poop in our drinking water. Sooner or later, we'll have to organize for disposal without water. Face it, before the typhoid or cholera epidemic starts - and it will. And it's not difficult. Just ask the library for Humanure. Oh, don't whimper. Any of you who have enjoyed Beyond Thunderdome - did you think they'd brought along the pigs to power the cities? If you guys can't face it, ask the moms to work on it - they have to deal with diapers, so it shouldn't freak them out.)

Stockholm Syndrome in the Forest

Oh, NOW I get it.

Why the local population says nothing about the destruction of their parks, the clearcuts, the pumping out of all the money overseas as the forests are scarred.

Stockholm Syndrome.

I know, because I'm starting to do it myself. I "expect" my favorite groves to be flattened, and if they're not, I expect them to be ruined next year, so some guy can have more condos in France or Poland, and so the Chinese have something to ship goods to us on. I am beginning to pretend the alder/big-leaf maple, fir groves are okay, even though they're just green bandages.

Is this what the logging companies mean by "We're going to show those City Folks what a Scenic Route LOOKS like!" ?

Now I'm not mad at the locals as cowards or greedheads or fools. They're damaged. They're trapped. They HAVE to lie to themselves, and pretend this is all right.

I'm not going to try to compare them to women trying to raise kids in a war zone - but the blind eyes walking by a flattened campground, as the privatizers destroy our national legacy - are the eyes of the broken and defeated. 

THAT's that look. I've never seen it before. And it hurts. My god, and they raise whole generations in that pain and defeat and self-delusion?

What pain. More than the forests and animals - what helpless, disabled, human pain.