~ like the rest of the world, we at the angry red planet don’t talk about africa very often, but as the media is falling over themselves to be the first to say that everyone but them has been ignoring the crisis in the sudan, we have noticed a couple of absurd statements, both in the bbc:…

“One is the pressure from right-wing Christian groups in the US, who have taken up the cause of their fellow Christians in Sudan.

Their nagging – on the issues of slavery and the forcible imposition of Sharia law – helped get sanctions imposed on Sudan in 1997.”

‘nagging’. we know that the british media is expected to appeal to its audience by being testy and salacious, but to refer to warnings of slavery and violent religious laws as ‘nagging’ might be one of the reasons why many of their american cousins think they are full of shit.

…and the washington post:

“We should avoid the situations where we allow member states to hide behind the secretary general, use him as an alibi for their own inaction,” Annan told the Addis Tribune in Addis Ababa, the capital of neighboring Ethiopia.

in the midst of his whining – referring to himself in the third person – that people are calling him out for presiding over a second failure to act against ethnic cleansing, is kofi annan suggesting that ‘member states’ of the united nations should stop calling him lazy and start taking their own actions in sudan? is not this anathema to the purpose of the united nations? is not this type of unilateral action what he and everyone else – apart from the americans’ british cousins – bitched about when the united states decided to invade iraq?

~ according to be new england journal of medicine, one in six of servicemen/women returning from iraq are suffering from psychological damage. only 20% of these people are seeking help. between these guys walking the streets, housewives in fort bragg being killed, and the return of soldiers who are easily coerced into torturing prisoners, it might be safer to move to tikrit for the summer.

~ happy anniversary to our national motto: “bring ’em on!”

~ the amazing era of jrjr. has ended; he is already missed!

~ we posted this set of questions in the forums at comic book resources [w]. we place it here, with a few changes, so our non-comic book collecting readers can ponder these possibilities:

What do y’all think the effect on the election will be when/if there is an incident of terrorism – minor or significant – in the united states within 2 or 3 weeks of the election?

I have heard many conservatives say that Spain was cowed by the terrorists, because they voted out the prime minister, Aznar, who had thrown in his lot with Bush’s agenda and replaced him with someone who had promised to pull the troops from Iraq. I find this to be unfair, for two reasons: first, that many in Spain did not see their troops in Iraq and the war on terrorism as the same issue, and second, fear of terror notwithstanding, a lot of the backlash against Aznar was due to the fact that his government publicly lied and tried to blame the Basque for the attack.

I am not too interested in a conversation about Spain’s election; I just bring it up as part of the context in which our election will be held. Although there are differences, it could be thought of as a test case. If there is an incident here in late October, there will clearly be some rallying around the status quo and fear of change (ie, support for Bush), just as there will be some folks who point out that Bush has not kept us safe after all (ie, support for Kerry), but what do you think will be the majority opinion? Will huge amounts of people change their votes? Will more people think that ‘Bush got us into this’/’We need help from the UN’ and move to Kerry? Will there be a repeat of the post-9/11-unquestioning-support of the Bush administration? As the war in Iraq goes poorly, Kerry does better, but at the end of the campaign, when the war is still going terribly, are people are going to think they need a ‘war president’? Will they keep Bush, even though he caused the problems, because of the belief that Kerry will be too weak to take over? Will the election be called off if there is a dirty bomb in port Newark? If the election is postponed indefinitely, will people sit tight and wait obediently, or will they riot in the streets? I guess the question is, if there is an attack, how much power will fear have over the voters’ decisions?

~ congratulations to the angry red planet for taking our 10,000th digital photo. here’s to another 3 years.

~ after cursory research, we have determined that the .cbr/.cbz format is superior to .pdf for the purposes of digitally archiving comic books. .cbr/.cbz files are simpler to create, there are free software options available, and they are less cumbersome to view.

Update: How to create a cbr/cbz file.

~ everyone in the angry red office has been sick over the past two weeks; some of us want to eat but can’t, and others can eat but won’t. in the meantime, we have scrawled a few notes:

— we predict it is more likely that ‘outlaw cleric’ al-sadr will be killed, along with many americans and iraqis, than arrested.

— the local protest over the iraq war would draw more participants if there had been some u.s. flags instead of, or at least in addition to, palestinian flags behind which american participants were expected to march. or if the black panthers spent more time talking about bush (2004) and less time ranting about allende (1973).

— whilst investigating the percentage of local ‘artists’ at the dogwood festival, we noticed two (2) cups with markings that indicated that they contained 64oz. of cola. more surprising than the discovery that the 12″ tall cups were not an attempt at art was the discovery that each 64oz. of cola was intended to be consumed by one (1) human.

— it looks like we will rearrange our favourite spider-man cover list when ‘spectacular #14’ comes out. [+]

— ‘vetted’ is replacing ‘on the ground’ as the media’s latest annoying platitude. [+]

— too few people in this country are aware of the importance of keeping line of secularism from becoming thin.

~ happy black history month! on an unrelated not, before february ends, why not take a look at at the top 10 (plus 1 alternate) greatest spider-man covers of all time?

the Amazing Spider-Man 006

~ our holidays were extended a few days past new year’s day; we spent the extra time on the new jersey turnpike, in corporate movie theaters, and watching paramedics haul away our neighbor’s body. it was not only for us that the first week of the new year was filled with excitement, if one can judge from the stains of vomit on the sidewalk and the four civilians killed by the nypd.

~ concerning our work-trip to clichy and neighboring paris: not surprisingly, we cooked up few physical artifacts to present as evidence for the formidable amount of work we accomplished. apart from two (2) pages of ‘notes’, compiled in the jardin du luxembourg, and a fifteen (15) entry ‘outline’, drafted in wayne county’s detroit metropolitan airport, there is little to differentiate this trip from that which many would call a ‘vacation’.

~ we suspect that the new image series, “g.i.joe frontline”, is either for children or is just childish.

~ we have been doing more around here than griping about cops:

we recently completed the primary stage of a project in collaboration with from the ground [w]. we shall perhaps present the results of this work on this site, but we believe it is more appropriate to first await the appearance of the publication to which it was submitted.

we are recycling into a naive attempt at mass production the husk of an old horse that had been abandoned between a piss-stained mattress and a charred red chest in an alley a west los angeles.

we have used the past two weeks to add one (1) page to the novel.

~ the new ‘hellboy’ series ‘the third wish’ is the reason we suffer through months of hackneyed tedium. it is by far the best comic work since, well, mignola’s last book.

~ an agent of ours has reported having had a dream concerning the upcoming ‘twist’ in the sw pt. according to our agent’s morphean vision, ob1 is revealed to be the true father of luke and leia; this cuckolding of the proto-vader is what finally pushes anakin over to the dark side. as darth vader is to later lay claim to luke’s paternity, we can presume that while he is aware of the unfaithfulness of padme, he is not aware that it is her coupling with ob1 – and not one in which anakin is involved – that results in her impregnation. yoda and ob1 decide to keep this particularity a secret from luke, believing that having discovering that his mother’s husband is a lord of the sith is less damaging than having him learn that his mother is a swinger (as in, to swing).

~ despite our seeming attempts at sw fanfiction and our endeavours to remain free of toolism at the hands of the commercial movie industry, we recommend that the populace go see ‘spider-man’ more often than you see ‘episode two’. you’ve already seen everything that lucas can or will put into a sw film: a light saber battle, *troopers vs. droids, * fett, star fighter battle – maybe names and faces have changed, but you already know the story. although you know that the green goblin is going to be killed after throwing a gwen stacy surrogate from a brooklyn/gw bridge surrogate, you certainly can not claim to have seen it on film.

~ our attempts to view less violent films have ended in failure. though we thoughtfully picked ‘the french connection’, we could not miss the unmistakable tinges of violence throughout the film; in a far worse case, we, in a moment of extreme weakness, demeaned ourselves with a viewing of ‘con-air’. our casual tally of 23 on-screen deaths (not counting the dozens of trained soldiers in armored cars with automatic weapons killed by slovenly cons in abandoned cars, and not counting the untold hundreds or thousands who would have perished as a plane plowed through cars and pedestrians on the las vegas strip) notwithstanding, ‘con-air’ would otherwise still make it into the top 10 worst things with which we have wasted our time. we hope that tonight’s viewing of ‘american history x’ is a more fruitful – and non-violent – expenditure of time.

~ go find a copy of marvel’s ‘a moment of silence’ and see if you don’t also find yourself a blubbering mass on the floor.

~ lewis black claims that new york city is the loudest city on the planet earth. the angry red planet can sympathize with him; our atmosphere is filled with motorized scooters, screeching circular saw, dirt bike wheelies, wailing sirens, twins on razors, barking dogs, blowing horns, heaving garbage trucks, and everyone in the building shouting ‘freddie’ into the courtyard next to our office window, trying to draw out the elusive superintendent.

~ thanks to the few folks who sent birthday greetings; we’ll get back to you soon, time has been taken up with moving crates about the office, modeling furniture for an affiliate, and marveling at david mack’s work on daredevil. also, typing with the keyboards on out laps and the mice on stacks of phone books and coffee boxes is inducing symptoms of carpal tunnel syndrome. we need desks.