Chapter 1: Section 4: Page 27: Line 37 (409)

Dally, intrigued, ran over and stood in front of him, peering up, as if waiting for the next part of some elaborate joke.

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 Even a five year old thinks Lindsay must be putting on the act of a silly man, spewing his stick-up-the-butt nonsense to whoever is trying desperately not to listen. Dally is my kind of human being. She would have understood my hyperbolic anger used for comic effect in my comic book blog. Oh, sure, at first I was pretty earnest! Some readers (who I must have eventually disappointed) loved the blog because it was so free of cynicism and snark. Because I wanted to love DC's The New 52. I wanted it to mean something! I wanted the change to have been thought out. I wanted drama and stories that were telling some kind of coherent story within their new universe. I thought there would be monumental changes! Exciting new avenues to explore in the stale and old personalities that couldn't be changed due to years of continuity! But eventually I realized it was all a sham and DC had hired some of the worst writers for their project and even the editors didn't give a damn. It broke me! It was the last time I was eager and earnest and full of wonder at what the world could offer! But it didn't give me what I expected. It gave me a pie in the face and an atomic wedgie. So of course I got angry! Of course I got cynical! Any sane person would have done the same! But, as Dally would have realized, I was never really angry. My life wasn't so invested in DC Comics that I was giving myself three strokes a week reading Lobdell and Nocenti comics.

One time, Marcus To discovered one of my Batwing reviews where I drilled him a new asshole due to his cover. In his post about how he'd never had a negative review like that, he mentioned how one of his friends thought it was funny in how angry I was. Yes! That was the point, Marcus To's friend! And here's how I ended that review, by the way:

"Ha ha! Look at how much I can bitch and still enjoy reading a comic book! What the fuck is wrong with me?"

But really, I can't blame anybody who thought my blog was reviewing comic books seriously. At some point in the 2000s, people forgot that the Internet was meant for fun and whimsy. Now everybody thinks everything is an argument. Being facetious on the Internet is almost a high crime these days! And I'm not talking about being facetious about things like race or gender; I usually treat that stuff seriously because, as Kurt Vonnegut writes in Mother Night, "We are what we pretend to be, so we must be careful about what we pretend." I don't mind being a super angry super fan of comic books (which I'm not; I really am just pretending at that! Stupid Vonnegut! Take it back!) but I won't participate in racism or sexism by pretending to be a Nazi asshole! Who thinks that's funny?! No, what I'm talking about is going on a huge rant about how terrible Superboy might be in a comic that's written terribly by a terrible writer only to have huge Superboy stans constantly yell at me for criticizing their fictional love boy!

Um, you know what, never mind this entry! I'll get back to Against the Day in the next post!

Chapter 1: Section 1: Page 4: Line 17

With the deftness of long habit, he flipped Darby upside down, and held the flyweight lad dangling by the ankles out into empty space—"terra firma" by now being easily half a mile below—proceeding to lecture him on the many evils of looseness in one's expression, not least among them being the ease with which it may lead to profanity, and worse.

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Where to start?! I wouldn't want to be some boring normie and start at the beginning. I'd rather be like a great Greek poet and start in the middle! The middle, in this sentence, is "terra firma" which is actually actually the middle, considering the Chums of Chance are in the sky and I'm sure some adventure of theirs will have taken place (or will take place (or will have Took-en place (I just re-read The Hobbit so that one was for me. You can ignore it))) underground.

Now that I began briefly in the middle, I'll go back to the beginning and just take the sentence apart in a linear fashion. That's because I've read too many comic books in my time and that's their standard modus operandi. First page is a big splashy battle to attract the kid flipping through the unpurchased book and then the second page ditches that excitement for the boring beginning of the story. Most comic books don't realize that they don't have to present their story in this manner. It's so boring!

With "[w]ith the deftness of long habit," we see that Lindsay Noseworth is a huge bully who not only hands out demerits but threatens the safety of every person on board the Inconvenience. What good are demerits if threats of physical violence are parceled out as well?!

This entire scene reeks of the conservative's civility argument. "Please speak and act the way we think you should speak and act or else we will punch you in the nose or shoot you with our guns. Be civil, for God's sake!" If informality of speech might lead to cussing, what leads to bullying young people into obeying arbitrary rules that have nothing to do with morality or ethics?! Oh! Oh! I know the answer to this one! A low self-esteem or some innate fear which leads to a fervent need to control and dominate every situation! It's the rallying cry of the authoritarian! I bet Lindsay considers himself to be a whatever a Libertarian was in 1893. No wait! That would probably be an Anarchist! Lindsay's definitely not that!

Here's the difference between an Anarchist and a Libertarian: a Libertarian is an Anarchist when it comes to their own life but when somebody encroaches on their own individual liberty (not the liberty of the individual but their own personal liberty!), they expect there to be a law or government to stop that from happening. An Anarchist understands that true personal freedom means everybody is doing their own thing and can live with the, possibly, resulting chaos. A Libertarian believes in personal freedom for everybody as long as that personal freedom parallels their beliefs. A Libertarian ultimately needs some kind of bodyguard; an Anarchist defends themselves! That's why Libertarians usually turn out to be Authoritarians in disguise.

I know Anarchy is going to be a constant theme in this book! Even if that anarchy is really just activists organizing for social and economic justice and being labeled as anarchists by people who profit from the current status quo.

You might have noticed that I've refrained from swearing so far on this blog but not for any reasons regarding looseness in one's expression! I'm just trying to stay more in character! Grunion Guy...I mean, Anonymous Blog Writer doesn't swear as much as that other guy, the one that professes to be Grunion Guy but is really mostly just himself, Anonymous Blog Writer. Wait. What? Hmm, maybe if I confuse myself enough, I'll allow myself to start swearing again!