All is ease and comfort

Oh thank fuck - nothing on the calendar all weekend. I don't have to go anywhere or do anything. My back is wrecked (old falling off chair injury) and I'm exhausted after working just four afternoons last week. Am weak, pathetic, old, and buried under writing projects, mostly on spec, although I do have a Benny story and a Short Trips story commissioned - yay!

This morning I'm catching up on kitchen errands - freezing pasta for work lunches, freezing soup for dinner, making hummus, making stock, making yoghurt, and making Jon do the shopping.

Also icing back while reading old issues of Excalibur with beautiful Alan Davis artwork... in which Meggan is statuesque with large breasts, Cerise is statuesque with large breasts, Sat-Yr-9 is statuesque with large breasts, Alysdane is statuesque with large breasts, etc etc.

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SMS bullies face school suspension

Four days off school is no punishment. How about forcing them to watch last night's televisual chewing gum in the Ormanblum household, The Humanoid? A few viewings of that should be sufficiently cruel and humiliating to cure the little psychopaths. If that fails, I vote for making them go to school without pants.

Yet more comicly nostalgia

New Mutants 57 (November 1987) is a perfect little issue. The Bret Blevins / Terry Austin goofy artwork compliments Louise Simonson's frothy script; the payoffs for Doug's jealousy and Illyana's boy-craziness are spot-on. Magneto looks like he's in Miami Vice and says things like "So what the heck is that?!" The following issue continues the fun with the "MAN-ee BURG-AWRK!" sequence, which still makes me laff. Sadly, I stopped reading the NM soon afterwards, partly due to the demise of Cypher, my favourite New Mutant. Weezie's writing is fun, but not quite my cuppa. But the story in which the incomprehending Warlock tries to resurrect Doug is a genuine tear-jerker, as well as splendidly grotesque - W's grinning cartoon face hovering above zombie Doug in his Sunday best, looming in the window and scaring the crap out of poor Mrs Ramsey, and then poor childish Rahne, is still affecting, especially Warlock's delight at Doug and Rahne's "reunion". Those were the days.

Rape Music II

Blatant:

It's cryin', bleedin', lying on the floor
So you lay down on it and you do it some more
- Faith No More, Epic

Ambiguous:

We ain't here for long,
(there's) no excuse your being rude,
Service me with a smile now.
(You'll get a big tip.)
You are mine.
Anytime,
There's no time like the right time.
- Hoodoo Gurus, The Right Time

At first listen this song is a bit like Sweet FA - harmless macho posturing by the band - but the line about "servicing", and the phallic joke, makes me wonder. Is the "Baby" the song's addressed to a woman?

This highlights a problem: pop lyrics are often sung more for the sound than the meaning, and there's a risk of detecting specific references to sexual violence which aren't there. Were pop music not drenched in sexism and misogyny ("I'd rather see you dead, little girl..."), this would be less of a hazard. However:

On Second Glance, Innocent:

I could never make a move on a woman that leads me on
She's got a little bit of something for everyone
It's a little too late and the wolf is on the run
- The Bee Gees, This Is Where I Came In

At first I raised an eyebrow at the hint of coercion this ditty of sexual frustration, suspicious of that old chestnut "she led me on" and worried what was "too late" (to stop?) and what the "wolf" - dated slang for a lecher - was up to. Looking again, the narrator is reacting quite correctly to a woman who's flirting indiscriminately: instead of responding with a sexual advance, he recognises that she's not serious about a relationship, and so looks elsewhere (he's "on the run").

(Yes, I really do think about pop music lyrics this much - the legacy of a lifetime spent wired for sound.)

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Further to the amusing news item about the scientists making their potentially-universe-destroying black hole, this headline from The Onion: "Scientist Has Nagging Feeling He Left Particle Accelerator On".

... and from The Watley Review: "Stealth Aircraft Show Disappoints Crowd". (After encountering the Blackbird SR-71 at the new Air 'n' Space Museum, I wish I'd thought of that one myself.)