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Maniacal Monday

The Contract with God Trilogy

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When I started this blog every day project I planned to make Monday, Maniacal Monday.

A time for rants, a time to be more negative.

Maybe in the Lewis Black or Dennis Miller before he got boring and right wing. But I have found it one of the harder days to write.

Frankly, I don’t find much to rant about.

I could say cancer, and yes that is a big rant, and something that affects us all, my family definitely included. My aunt, my father, my father in law ….

I don’t know if it’s the year of spirit I made my theme for 2012. Or just realizing although I have a lot of pessimism I do like to focus on good things.

So decided I will talk about the book I just finished Will Eisner’s “The Contract With God Trilogy”. This took a while to read. The first and third books I read quite quickly. The middle book “A Life Force” took much, much longer.

“A Contract With God” when it came out in 1978 was literally the first graphic novel. The whole form is not even 35 years old. A tale of a man who wanted to do everything good, and had “a contract with God”, and lost his child. A book almost no publisher wanted. And very good and groundbreaking. ***1/2 (4 GR)

“A Life Force” is perhaps too ambitious for me, too many interlocking threads, too complex. Found it quite wordy, and very slow reading. I see why some like R Crumb say it as a work of genius, but was dissapointed. **1/2 (3 GR)

“Life on Dropsie Avenue” was a fast read. It’s about the rise, decline and fall, and rise and fall again of the Bronx. Tales of racism, and ethnic clashes. Of payoffs, and bribes. Of New York, wonderful and corrupt city that it is. The Bronx literally was burning in the 70s. ***1/2 (4 GR)

Would definitely recommend this trilogy, although to me there are many better graphic novels to start with from the amazing “Persepolis” to Guy Delisle’s amazing “Pyongyang” to genre classics like “Watchmen” and “V for Vendetta”. But, if you want to know where it started I would recommend “A Contract With God.” If you want to know about the ethnic clashes that are an all true and sad part of the history of NYC and the Bronx I recommend “Life on Dropsie Avenue.”

Love that I was able to get this through Minerva. And support your local library.

Edmund

Ranty rant rant rant

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When I first started blogging every day, I didn’t think Maniacal Monday would be hard.

As my wife Lanna can well attest I like to rant a lot.

But poetry Tuesday has been super easy, thoughful Thursday pretty easy, #FridayReads Friday has pretty much a template now (honestly stolen from Nick Hornby’s “Believer” column) and the Saturday Night Review has been a chance for reviews and for sometimes business related stuff.

The only other day which has been as hard has been the Spirit of Sunday.

So want to rant about?

I suppose rants can be positive as well, so want to rant about how amazing craft beer is across the nation and especially in Maine.

Was just at the fabulous Great Lost Bear and thinking about how many great breweries there are in Maine, some of which are very, very small. Such as: Marshall Wharf (Belfast, ME); Andrew’s (in the midcoast); Maine Beer in Portland, Oxbow, and of course the nationally known Allagash.

So go beer, and go Maine!

If they build it .. they will come

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Today I want to talk about two of the most wasteful city government purchases.

The worst is convention centers .. convention business is going down, but cities keep building bigger and better convention centers that mainly sit empty.

Building a billion dollar palace for no customers that is empty most of the time, is about as wasteful as city government gets. Thought of this with the Saturday December 31, 2011 WSJ editorial called: “Have We Got a Convention Center to Sell You!” http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204720204577126603702369654.html

The second is sports stadiums. Millions spent for billionaires.

I honestly think if a teams loses a sports team it doesn’t mean much.

I don’t think it’s worth a billion dollars for LA to have a football team.

I don’t think sports teams should be able to have cities hostage for keeping teams in a 20 or even sometimes 10 year old arena.

What do you think?

The big lie

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Don’t worry we are here to help you.

The money will trickle down.

It’s all about freedom. It’s about democracy, it’s about the religion of our fathers.

There is someone trying to get you; your stuff, your loved ones; the boogeyman, the other, the scare. So we build walls, literal walls to keep people out; figurative walls of racism, sexism, homophobia, classicism.

Call you opponents names like: anti-American, socialist, liberal, fascist, communist, for a gay agenda.

Be beholden to people for money, commercials, ad buys, mailings. We can’t have public money, public airtime for campaigns, corporate “people” should have more power then actual people.

Watch out for my opponent he isn’t: Christian, Patriotic, Compassionate, like you!

I am for America; I am for a Christian America, a better time, better values, less to worry about.

We can’t raise capital gains, we can’t end the Bush tax cuts, we can’t end the social security payroll tax cap, what about the job creators? See all these jobs they are creating, how amazing the economy is doing.

Billions, Trillions lost, homes foreclosed with bad loans, but there are no criminals on Wall Street. No! Those people camping with signs those are the real danger. Let’s give them tear gas, let’s give them riot police, even if 911 calls go unanswered.

A democracy, a Republic, at least that’s what America used to be. Corporations are people too right, we can’t restrict their speech.

Koch brothers are much better then a Union brotherhood. The US Chamber of Commerce’s members clearly all have a right-wing agenda, just like all teachers are liberals.

This stimulus will help the economy, giving money to this company gives job, we need to buy this arena or the sports club will leave. What’s ten million, or hundred million between friends.

It’s all so important to the economy; corporate welfare is good, tax breaks are good. But helping the poor eat, the homeless find homes, people learn that’s bad.

Tenure that’s good, teachers that gave up that’s good, having students stuck in failed schools that are more like prisons that’s fine.

We have the best healthcare system in the world, if your Warren Buffett. Where else do people have to call an insurance company to see if it’s ok if they check on a possible concussion. Where else can you worry about your healthcare with or without insurance.

We live in surreal, bizarre times. Hopefully, we all work to be the change we want. Get involved, get active, don’t just #Occupy the couch, or even the park.

We can make the world what we want to be, not the corporatist, militaristic, prison-industrial complex it’s become.

We can do better, we must do better, and be a beacon of democracy, not greed and corporatism.

Da tale of da mooooppppp

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Today was busy.

Really, really busy.

I work in a call center and we were getting tons of calls with offices closed.

And we move into a basement.

Nice space, but really it’s a basement.

And the janitor sometimes leaves stuff there.

Especially his mop filled with chemicals.

It often smells bad, but usually there is like a quart of stuff in it.

At lunch time around 12:45pm I noticed something smelled funky. It was the mop with 2 GALLONS!! of cleaning product.

I figured it would be there for a few mins but eventually would go away.

So went back to work, took calls, it was busy. But then I noticed my throat was hurting a little, and when the door opened even my eyes burned a little.

I hadn’t had the reaction before from the moppppp …

So I asked the supervisor on duty about it .. and wrote an e-mail to someone. But, it stayed there for 2+ hours and it was just getting worse.

So I talked to someone else who advised me to move the mop.

When I went back on my break it was back.

And eventually the person sitting next to me who grew up in NYC suggested that I just dump it out. So I did. And called building management, because it was seriously that bad.

And a few mins later it was back, and the janitor was upset.

I said, there is a 24/7 call center now. It is hurting my throat, and noxious. So hopefully he doesn’t do that anymore.

And note to y’all .. if you fill a mop with chemicals, use the mop and then let that dirty water go.

Don’t fill the mop bucket, do all the other buildings in an office complex and have it sit next to a bathroom in an underventilated basement.

Da moooopppp. (Thinking of da hooook from Kurt Vonnegut’s Cat’s Cradle)