Day: July 13, 2003

As if his Mister Miracle statue wasn’t bizarre enough, Todd McFarlane has decided
to launch a series of statues based on a “reimagining” of the Wizard
of Oz. Unlike the figures that are a tie-in to American McGee’s upcoming Oz
videogame, these aren’t tied to any external product — McFarlane apparently
just wanted to screw with Oz.

Not bad, except the lion is supposed to be cowardly. Here he looks like some
lion terminator sent from he future.

Oooh, what a brilliant mind — take a female character and show her off in
a bondage pose. Yeah, that’s never been done before.

This is supposed to be the wizard. Yeah, it doesn’t make any sense to me either.

The tin man doesn’t look too bad, though looks like it should be for the unreleased
“Tin Man and the Texas Chainsaw Massacre” book.

Toto, the fanged mole rat? Whatever.

I’m a bit behind in posting pictures of the anti-war protests. These are shots I took on Sunday,
June 29, 2003. This is from protests the local peace group holds every Sunday
in downtown Kalamazoo:

Basic crowd shot. There are a few more people off to the left (no pun intended).

The guy holding the “Disarm U.S.” sign pretty much says it all. Along
with the “Violence is never a solution” sign, all they need is a “U.S.
Out of North American” sign to complete the triumvirate.

Violence is never a solution? You have to wonder why these
folks bothered to try to smuggle arms at all — they should have known that
violence is never a solution. (Perhaps they support Gandhi’s
solution to this conundrum).

“Violence is never a solution” is sort of the Mirror World version
of the “Kill them all and let god sort them out” thinking. It’s difficult
to take seriously anyone who seriously holds either idea.

This time around we’ve got a woman worrying about the future of Syria.

If I were her, I wouldn’t be too worried about her Syrian friends — the Syrian
state always seems to find ways to deal with its enemies (but hey, stopping that sort of atrocity would just
be furthering American imperial hegemony!)

The Patriot Act needs to be repealed, but “terrorism on your rights”?
This is why I pretty much refuse to participate in public protests of any kind
— you have to dumb down and sensationalize the message past the point of no
return. (Even Fox gives a more nuanced version of the Patriot Act than this).

The person in the center is holding a sign reading “George Bush Dictator
Dangerous to Democracy.” Hey, I didn’t vote for him and I don’t plan to
vote for him next time around, but Bush a dictator? Again, this is simply left
wing self-marginalization central.

Note: As a public service, I’ve included all of the photographs I took of the protests on June 29, 2003 here. These are free to use for any purpose provided you credit me, Brian Carnell, as the photographer. Take them, edit them, republish them, whatever.

Matt Drudge has an item about an upcoming comedy about the military, “Buffalo Soldiers,” that is generating controversy because it centers on an enlisted man dealing drugs out of a military base. If it’s a low brow comedy, who cares? (Did anyone mistake Stripes for anything but a hilarious low brow comedy?)

That being said, Joaquin Phoenix has this to say about the movie which he stars in,

I don’t know why anyone would be offended. It wasn’t a movie that was intended to offend. And if we don’t show things as they really happen, then what’s that about? Censorship!

Well if the movie is designed to show things as they really happen, it’s a bit odd to set a drug comedy in the U.S. military. In the late 1970s and early 1980s the military had a serious drug problem. The Pentagon responded to this with random drug testing and a whole lot of discharges for those failing such tests.

The result was a steep decline in drug use. In fact, drug use in the military is far lower than it is in the civilian population. This White House fact sheet, for example, reports that only 2.7 percent of military personnel reported using an illict drug in the previous 30 days, compared to a rate of 16.1 percent among civilians 18-25 and 7.0 for those 26-34.

If you’re interested in reporting what really happens at a U.S. military base, it’s a bit odd to focus on a drug ring given the extremely low rate of reported use of illicit drugs in the military.

Would that be censorship?