K-Squared Ramblings

Comical Third Parties

Wow… a new issue of Rising Stars! To be honest, it was a bit of a let-down. Usually JMS is better at showing, rather than telling. He’s infamous for laboriously laying groundwork in the B-plots and character moments of what seem like “ordinary” stand-alone stories, then kicking the arc into high gear and making use of it all. He did it with Babylon 5 and Crusade, with the first arc of Rising Stars, seems to be taking the same approach in Supreme Power, and from what I’ve heard (though I’ve seen very little of it) he did the same with Jeremiah as well. If you’ve seen B5 once the story got going, go back and look at some of the first season episodes, and you’ll be surprised how early some elements are established.

This issue, however, though it had some nice moments, was basically a plot summary. “Poet tells the story of…” It seemed an odd narrative choice, particularly for an issue so near the end of the story (#22 of 24) and for the first issue to hit the shelves in nearly two years. Maybe it’ll read better in context.

Anyway, that’s not what I really wanted to talk about. What’s interesting is that in this issue, one of the Specials runs for President. It reminded me of something about the way comic books tell campaign stories. When a fictional character is in the race (or the office), he (it usually is a he) is almost always running under one of three circumstances:

• As an independent.
• On a fictional third-party ticket.
• On an unidentified party’s ticket.

As we all know, third party candidates are rarely high-profile, and they rarely get significant numbers of votes, and I don’t think one has ever won the office*. Yet in comics, it happens all the time. Of course, heat vision, teleporters, and people who wear purple tights to fight crime are also commonplace. Read the rest of this entry »

Contrary to popular belief

For quite a while now, the always-excellent This Is True newsletter has been advertising writer Randy Cassingham’s latest (?) project: JumboJoke, a weblog-style daily joke post. I finally took a look at it, and thought I’d share the following pair of lists based on our political parties’ often contradictory platforms and rhetoric:

• What You Must Believe to be a Good Democrat
• What You Must Believe to be a Good Republican

At least someone has sense over there

CNN: Lawmakers oppose election delay [archive.org].

Among the outcry is a resolution sponsored by Ohio Senator Bob Ney (a Republican, for the record) stating that “the actions of terrorists will never cause the date of any presidential election to be postponed” and “no single individual or agency should be given the authority to postpone the date of a presidential election.” There are about 60 supporters of the resolution, and another 190 representatives have slapped Homeland Security with a clue stick.

Thank you, Senator Ney.

Postponing elections is not something that should be done in a free society. The essence of democracy is that it is government with the explicit consent of the governed. Take away that consent — as in take away the ability to choose different leaders — and you no longer have democracy.

This is why you plan ahead

It seems that Benton County, Oregon, has decided to stop issuing any marriage licenses until the state makes up its mind who can and can’t get married. For now, straight couples in the area will have to go to the next county over to get married.

The rationale, of course, is that they “need to treat everyone in our county equally” — even if it’s not clear whether they’re allowed to let one class of people marry.

So I suppose gay marriage can negatively impact straight marriage after all: (1) Longer lines at the courthouse might deter spur-of-the-moment weddings. (2) Confuse the clerks enough, and they’ll just throw up their hands and say “Come back tomorrow!”

Not that either is likely to happen here in über-conservative OC, but I am glad we’ve already picked up our license.