Op-Ed: Cycling

Posted on October 19, 2012 by The Old Wolf

An article at CNN today proclaims “Armstrong doping scandal casts shadow over cycling.” Without going into a long, drawn-out analysis, of which you can find many on the web, I present here a few thoughts on the subject from no less a reliable source than my own rather limited brain.

Doping appears to have been endemic to cycling for a long time. That said, it should be remembered that banned substances don’t make you a superman, they just give you a competitive edge in a sport where seconds count. A lot of people made some lousy choices “because everyone was doing it,” but nothing should take away from the fact that Mr. Armstrong and his colleagues were incredible, driven athletes who spent agonizing hours, months, and years in training and against incredible odds.

Sponsors are fleeing in droves, if only to protect their own bottom line from the taint of guilt by association, but they will be back when the sport has cleaned house.

Livestrong has done incredible things in the support of those suffering from cancer. The errors of the man should not take away from the successes of the foundation.

Cycling will survive. The microscope now trained upon the sport is a sure guarantee that steps will be taken to purge the doping culture, dial back the expectations about 10%, and rebuild the sport on a clean footing. Rabobank stated, “We are no longer convinced that the international professional world of cycling can make this a clean and fair sport. We are not confident that this will change for the better in the foreseeable future,” but that’s corporate weasel-speak for “we’re covering our own asses.”

Ceteris paribus, there may not be another Lance Armstrong waiting in the wings at the moment, but given the history of sports in general, I have no doubt there will be another champion before too long, one who can make both spectators and sponsors sit up and take notice. It may be a long road back, but long roads, with lots of hills, are what these athletes are used to.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Funny business: Because they’re free!

Posted on October 19, 2012 by The Old Wolf

Ever since everyone in my elementary school class was taught how to read The Herald Tribune (go ndéanai Dia trócaire air), way back in 1961 or so, I have loved the daily funnies. I remember waking up early when I was in high school, heading for a local coffee shop, and starting my day with a cup of coffee and The Waterbury Republican.

There were all kinds of funnies, and I had my favorites, which I assiduously saved for last each day.

Ferd’nand by Mik (found at mydelineatedlife.blogspot.com)

Dondi, by Irwin Hasen. Found at Mr. Blog’s Tepid Ride

And my all-time favorite:

Rick O’Shay, by Stan Lynde.

Other strips, the soap operas like Mary Worth and Apartment 3-G, did nothing for me and I just skipped over them.

Remember that, there’s going to be a test.

Finally, when the newspapers ceased to be practical because of the internet (around 2002 for me) I became a fan of webcomics.

Webcomics are great. They are directly responsible for my hooking up with my wife, whom I love with all my heart and soul (even though she scared the living daylights out of me this morning at 3 AM and we hates her, hates her, hates her forever precious), and I’ve had to be selective about which ones I read, because there are thousands of them out there, and so many of them are top-drawer.

Some strips have discussion fora attached, one of which was how I met above-mentioned beloved wife (who is still in the doghouse). Most forum participants enjoy discussing and speculating about each day’s strip and upcoming plot possibilities, as well as an entire universe of random topics that crop up; indeed, a forum can become a living community. But there’s a strange phenomenon that afflicts these virtual villages: some people take up residence for the express purpose of being critical of the subject matter. Like the poor degenerate I mentioned in this post, they plunk themselves down and blow raspberries at the strip and its creator, day after day, without end.

Now, some of these people are just trolls, but there seems to be another phenomenon operating here. Like people who leave a religion and then spend the rest of their lives complaining about it, these netizens seem incapable of finding joy in anything positive, but must needs expend their energy complaining about something they hate. For the love of Mogg and his entire holy family, with thousands of webcomics out there, where is the value in reading something that annoys you? Coming back to my newspaper days, I can equate this phenomenon with my taking the time to hand-write a letter to the editor complaining about how boring and insipid I found Mary Worth, and threatening the artist with bodily injury and death. Every day.

A particularly egregious example of this sort of inanity is found at the “Bad Webcomics Wiki” (no link provided):

Essentially it’s nothing more than one man’s cesspool of hate and piss; the author is flat-out miserable, and assuages his pain by inflicting his misery on the rest of the world.

It’s not only the forums, either – artists get direct hate mail from readers, and it appears that this was even the case before the advent of the internet. Gary Larson’s The Pre-History of the Far Side contains some absolutely choice correspondence from people who found his cartoons offensive in some way or another. His response, in addition to mocking them in a published work, was

Teresa Burritt, the authoress of the offbeat Frog Applause, regularly posts hate mail from people, and recently blogged about it; I count a number of cartoonists among my personal friends, and some of them have shared correspondence with me that would either curl your hair or amuse you no end, depending on how you looked at it. Most of these artists take this sort of impotent vitriol in stride, and either ignore it or make a point of mocking it publicly to further enrage their detractors. Others I am acquainted with have a hard time with the sound and fury, and I hope they can get to a point of tranquility where they don’t allow the noisy idiots to dampen their spirits.

This whole essay was spawned by today’s Sinfest, by Tatsuya Ishida,

and another creation by Paul Taylor, author of the inimitable Wapsi Square:

The whole point here, which I recommend warmly to everyone who ever read a webcomic that they didn’t care for, is this:

Life is far too short to waste your time on such negative energy. If you read something you don’t like, for the love of Mogg’s holy grandmother, just ignore it. Better yet, find something positive to do – anything at all – and do it. As Artemus Ward said to the orfice-seekers pestering Abraham Lincoln:

“Go home, you miserable men, go home & till the sile! Go to peddlin tinware — go to choppin wood — go to bilin’ sope — stuff sassengers — black boots — git a clerk-ship on sum respectable manure cart — go round as original Swiss Bell Ringers — becum ‘origenal and only’ Campbell Minstrels — go to lecturin at 50 dollars a nite — imbark in the peanut bizniss — write for the Ledger — saw off your legs and go round givin concerts, with techin appeals to a charitable public, printed on your handbills — anything for a honest living, but don’t come round here drivin Old Abe crazy by your outrajis cuttings up!”

A better sermon I have never heard.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Comments are closed for this topic.

Stuff

Posted on October 18, 2012 by The Old Wolf

I’m a packrat. I freely admit it. However, lately I’ve come to start calling myself an “archivist” – it sounds much more respectable; and there can be value in preserving things for posterity.

A recent series of photographs by Huang Qingjun, however, makes me wistful for the simplicity that some people live with. Well, almost.

Said Huang:

“The idea for the series about people’s material goods, now called Jiadang (Family Stuff), came in 2003 with some photos he took for the magazine Chinese National Geography. But the project didn’t really get under way until three years later, when Huang started travelling around China looking for suitable places and people.

“Most people thought what I was proposing was not normal. When I explained I wanted to set up a photo, that it would involve taking everything out of their house and setting it up outside, that took quite a lot of explaining,” he says.

“But almost all of them, when they realised what I was trying to do, they understood the point.”

These captivating images raise the question: How much 家当 (jiadang) do we really need? So many of us are accumulating things far beyond our needs, in a mad rush to die with the most toys. While I could surround myself with gewgaws and gimcracks (especially in my kitchen) until I had no more place to live, I do understand that 99.9% of it would be useless if it ever came to living without electricity or in, say, 350 square feet of space.

Leonardo Da Vinci once said that simplicity was the ultimate in sophistication. Less stuff means less work taking care of it, dusting it, and moving it; less money spent on acquiring it; and more time to pursue the only thing we can really take with us – relationships.

Am I going to “sell all that I have, and give to the poor” tomorrow? No, not bloody likely – I’m an addict and I know it. But I will be more careful in future, and will bend my will toward offloading as much of it as I can possibly bear to part with.

My thanks to Huang xiansheng for a wonderful glimpse into an unburdened life.

Read more and see more images at the BBC.

The Old Wolf has spoken.

The Troll, 1820’s version

Posted on October 14, 2012 by The Old Wolf

Some time ago I posted about internet trolls, familiar to anyone who frequents forums and discussion groups. Indeed, one of the net’s most prolific and unsavory trolls was recently outed by Gawker (I’m not posting the link because it’s a pretty sordid story, but it’s out there if you’re interested.) Today I happened across a description of this kind of behavior from the early 19th century, which I thought was interesting – Trolling is not new, and apparently the only thing that has changed is the medium.

This litigious humour is bad enough: but there is one character still worse — that of a person who goes into company, not to contradict, but to talk at you. This is the greatest nuisance in civilised society. Such a person does not come armed to defend himself at all points, but to unsettle, if he can, and throw a slur on all your favourite opinions. If he has a notion that anyone in the room is fond of poetry, he immediately volunteers a contemptuous tirade against the idle jingle of verse. If he suspects you have a delight in pictures, he endeavours, not by fair argument, but by a side-wind, to put you out of conceit with so frivolous an art. If you have a taste for music, he does not think much good is to be done by this tickling of the ears. If you speak in praise of a comedy, he does not see the use of wit: if you say you have been to a tragedy, he shakes his head at this mockery of human misery, and thinks it ought to be prohibited. He tries to find out beforehand whatever it is that you take a particular pride or pleasure in, that he may annoy your self-love in the tenderest point (as if he were probing a wound) and make you dissatisfied with yourself and your pursuits for several days afterwards. A person might as well make a practice of throwing out scandalous aspersions against your dearest friends or nearest relations, by way of ingratiating himself into your favour. Such ill-timed impertinence is ‘villainous, and shows a pitiful ambition in the fool that uses it.’ – William Hazlitt, “On the Conversation of Authors,” 1820

Found at Futility Closet

The Old Wolf has spoken.

Brand Retconning

Posted on October 12, 2012 by The Old Wolf

Over time, a number of corporate logos and personages have undergone subtle and not-so-subtle shifts in image to reflect changing social attitudes. Retroactive continuity (retcon for short) is the alteration of previously established facts in a fictional work, most often used in the comic book universe. What follows are a few brands who have re-worked their logos or spokespeople.

Aunt Jemima

This is one of the first brand updates that I recall being aware of.

This ad was from 1909. and Auntie looks like Al Jolson.

This 1925 ad shows a “mammy” looking more like an animated cartoon caricature, more clearly visible in the enlargement below.

The Aunt Jemima I remember looked cuddly and plump and just like the nanny you’d love to have:

And mm-mm! Don’t she make dat good fried chicken, too. The company was obviously trying to present an image of down-home, antebellum comfort, which in the 50’s still seemed totally à propos in the American psyche. As it happened, I did have two African-American nannies when I was growing up; Edith did make killer fried chicken, and also taught us how to make our own soap with animal fat and lye which had been leached from ashes. Nice lady, and sharp as a tack.

There was another one that I recall – she looked a lot like the plump Jemima, but wasn’t anything like the image. I don’t recall her name, but she chased me around the house with an ashtray, and that was the last time I ever saw her.

In 1968, Auntie got a makeover – she shed a bunch of weight and they lightened her up considerable. By the 60’s, the civil-rights movement was in full-swing, and the black mammy image wasn’t going to go over well with a large part of America’s population. Still, there were conflicting attitudes within the black population as well: hair straightening and skin lightening were popular, as though it somehow made a difference in social acceptance or self image.

Finally, in 1989 Aunt Jemima shed her scarf to reveal a natural hairdo and earrings.

A brand is a powerful thing. People have been buying Aunt Jemima products for almost 120 years, and a company would be loth to give up that kind of brand exposure. It seems to me, though, that clinging to the name and logo, even though updated, falls into the same zone as naming sports teams things like the Braves and the Redskins; it might be time for a complete rebranding, much the way Esso became Exxon, or U.S. Steel became USX. (Not that the letter X has any special value – I don’t know how likely I’d be to buy Nxxoxxi Pancakes. I make my own from scratch, anyway.)

The Campbell Kids

This one is unusual. The original kids were designed by Grace Drayton in 1904, and they were strong with the force through the 20’s, when their popularity tapered off. In the 50’s the kids were revitalized, had their own TV show, and have been part of the Brand ever since. The first image is from 1930, the second from the 50’s, and the kids are just as plump and well-fed as a Reubens painting. In 1984, the kids got a baryatric re-work, as seen in the third image above – but it’s not easy to find any pictures of the re-designed twins out there – it’s almost as if they have been scrubbed from the net.

Quaker Oats

Larry, the smiling Quaker so familiar to oatmeal lovers, was given a makeover in 2012 in order to keep the 135-year-old Quaker brand “fresh and innovative,” according to the company. The changes were subtle – a bit less hair, about 5 lbs off the face, and a few wrinkles gone – but he does look a tad younger and healthier than he used to.

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All of these changes make a certain type of sense. Racial attitudes change, and people are becoming far more health-conscious. But the next one seems to come from somewhere out beyond Pluto (which is still a planet), if you get my drift.

Minnie Mouse

Apparently, Barney’s department store is not satisfied to use Minnie Mouse as she normally looks in a Lanvin dress… so they’ve resurrected Heroin Chic for the occasion.

What? The? Hqiz?

This insult to the whole concept of body image (apparently only 5’11”, size zero looks good in Lanvin) has prompted a petition over at change.org entitled “Leave Minnie Mouse Alone,” which at the time of this writing almost 90,000 people have signed. From the petition website:

According to sources cited on the non-profit National Association of Anorexia and Associated Eating Disorders website:

47% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported wanting to lose weight because of magazine pictures.
69% of girls in 5th-12th grade reported that magazine pictures influenced their idea of a perfect body shape.
42% of 1st-3rd grade girls want to be thinner.
81% of 10 year olds are afraid of being fat.

Girls have enough pressure to be thin, now the beloved Disney mouse of their childhood has to add to the message that the only good body is a tall, size 0 body? Enough already. Let’s give girls a chance to celebrate the actual bodies they have instead hating them for not fitting into a Lanvin dress. Then maybe enough girls will get together and demand dresses that look good on their actual, non-digitally altered bodies and designers will just have to become talented enough to design a dress that looks good on them.

For what it’s worth, Minnie is not the only character to be violated in this manner:

Daisy Duck as a starving Barbie

Goofy looking like nothing more than an “Axe” model.

Really, Barney’s. How in thunder did something like this ever pass muster? And who at Disney greenlighted this use of their characters? I can only think that the executives themselves were smoking something.

The Old Wolf has *gag* spoken.