Tag Archives for Idiocracy

Grant Morrison's SEAGUY returns April 1

seagsm_cv1

Promo copy from the publisher:

SEAGUY: THE SLAVES OF MICKEY EYE #1
Written by Grant Morrison
Art and cover by Cameron Stewart

In Seaguy’s cartoon future world, everyone is a Super Hero and no one dies. It’s absolutely perfect…Or is it?

In this follow-up to the cult 2004 miniseries, Seaguy resurfaces with a sinister new partner, a hatred of the sea and a rebel restlessness he can’t explain. Why are Doc Hero and his ex-archenemy Silvan Niltoid, the Alien from Planet Earth, whispering strange equations? Why is Death so useless? And can that really be the ghost of Chubby Da Choona mumbling uncanny warnings and dire prophecies of ultimate catastrophe?

When the grotesque powers lurking behind the corporation known as Mickey Eye and the Happy Group attempt to erase Seaguy’s entire existence, can he possibly get it together in time to save a world so far gone it can’t even imagine the horror lying in wait? Find out here in Morrison’s own personal reframing of the Super Hero concept for the 21st century.
On sale April 1 • 1 of 3 • 40 pg, FC, $3.99 US

Grant Morrison discussed SEAGUY (and the proverbial ‘whole lot more’) in an epic, cover feature interview with Jay Babcock in Arthur No. 12…which featured a cover by SEAGUY illustrator/co-creator Cameron Stewart, that is now the frontpage for Grant’s own website.

Copies of Arthur No. 12 are available via mail order from the Arthur store.

A note about Arthur Magazine's future from the editor/publisher.

Hey gang–

I am done with self-publishing Arthur, which I’ve been doing since July, 2007. It’s too much work for one person to edit, publish and manage a national magazine, month after month, year after year.

I am talking with interested parties regarding their taking over the Publisher role for Arthur Magazine.

Please stay tuned. And, subscribers: your subscriptions will be fulfilled when we resume publication. Thanks for your patience.

All love and R.I.P. Ron Asheton,

Jay Babcock
editor/publisher, Arthur Magazine
editor@arthurmag.com

Register to Vote Now … Or Face Horrible Moose-Bone Juju Forever

Tonight, the most spectacularly unprepared vice presidential candidate ever to foul a ballot — and yes, we’re including Dan Quayle — will get her comeuppance on national teevee. Barring some brutal and unforeseen brain hiccup on the part of Joe Biden (AKA “the candidate not running alongside an Evil Albino Scum-Hobbit”),  tonight’s debate will once and for all unmask Sarah Palin as a corrupt and witless hairdo — even for that great and quivering mass of Americans who understand little beyond sugary soft drinks, Rush Limbaugh’s Oxycodone-scented bellowing, and processed cheese.

Naturally, the Arthur D.C. Bureau is feeling a wee bit festive this evening, and so we’ll likely be having a cocktail or two with friends in front of a big-screen somewhere.

What will we be drinking?

White Russians. Sitting across the room from us. Close enough to see, but not close enough to know what they actually taste like.*

Whoops … Sorry for that. What we meant to say is this: Do yrself and the planet a big fat favor and register to vote. Find the board of elections wherever you live, whether city or backwater, and hustle on down there with yr ID, maybe even two. The cutoff date is drawing perilously near; the deadline for many states for the Nov. 4 election is Monday.

Look, the system’s broken blah blah blah. We know. But remember: Not voting this time around is just like handing that rotten old coot a copy of the Bill of Rights and pointing him toward the toilet. It’s different this time, for many more reasons than we have time to go into here.

Some of you aren’t swayed by appeals to yr civic duty, or even to reason, but we understand that, frequently having acted unreasonably ourselves. So we’ll ply you with alcohol: Any Magpie readers who provide proof of voter registration, in person, to the Arthur D.C. Bureau, between the time of this posting and Election Day are entitled to one (1) free drink.**  We’re not really sure whether this runs afoul of any election laws, but we haven’t talked to any lawyers today and we’d like to keep it that way.

All the best,

*  We will also be eating Freddie Mac-n’-Cheese, Baked Alaska and all sorts of Vietnamese food.

** Offer expires yesterday. Unless you actually are able to hunt the Bureau Chief down, in which case you deserve a drink.

"Assholes of the Week" by Paul Krassner

*Barry Bonds, not for breaking Hank Aaron’s homerun record, but for using Viagra that same night as a performance enhancer.

*U.S. policy makers, for requiring organizations to take a pledge that explicitly condemns prostitution in order to receive funding for HIV prevention projects. Researchers at Johns Hopkins University’s Bloomberg School of Public Health have determined that such condemnation isn’t effective in helping to control the global epidemic. They reviewed scientific evidence on strategies that effectively reduce rates of HIV among sex workers, and found substantial evidence suggesting that their empowerment, organization and unionizaton can be an effective HIV prevention. Rappers will be invited to submit pro-ho songs to promote such efforts.

*Jack McClellan, a self-styled pedophile, for exposing his persona rather than keeping a low profile, and posting on the Internet for his colleagues the locations where children congregate. His motivation: to advance his musical career, beginning with a three-minute video on YouTube featuring his rendition of “Thank Heaven for Little Girls.”

*Iran’s Press Review Board, for temporarily banning the country’s leading reformist newspaper, Shargh, which published an interview with an exiled poet, Saghi Ghahraman, famous for her explicit exploration of female sexuality. A Ministry of Culture official characterized her as “a counterrevolutionary figure known for promoting immoral issues.” In one of her poems, a girl makes love to her invalid grandmother. More than 100 Iranian newspapers have been shut down over the last several years, and journalists have been sentenced to prison for offenses including “propaganda against the regime” and insulting Iran’s supreme religious leader. Meanwhile, Ms. Ghahraman says she will appear on “The Daily Show” only if Jon Stewart promises not to interrupt her.

*Democratic presidential candidate Bill Richardson for saying, “It’s a choice,” when asked whether he believes people are born gay or if it’s a choice, and later weaseling out of his answer, but also the questioner, for perpetuating the notion that it should make any difference in sexual preference. What about bisexuals? Half-born and half-choice? Or transsexuals? Born as one gender physiologically but not psychologically, then choosing surgery to alter it? When it comes to abortion rights, nobody has to defend that position by saying that they were born with pro-choice tendencies.

*Republican candidate Mitt Romney, for defending his five sons’ decision not to enlist in the military by explaining that they’re showing their support for America by “helping me get elected.” His sons were all busy watching “Big Love” and had no comment; fortunately there was no draft in their living rooms.

*Loretta Sanchez, Orange County’s only Democratic member of Congress–although she voted against the war in 2002 and recently voted to begin pulling troops out within 90 days–for not supporting protesters, mostly members of Mililtary Families Speak Out, who want her to promise not to approve more funding for the war in Iraq. She said that the $145 billion was in the same bill that would provide money to build the C-17 aircraft, so “I’m not going to vote against $2.1 billion for C-17 production, which is in California. That is just not going to happen.” She was wearing a T-shirt proclaiming, “Constituents Uber Alles.”

*The government agencies that have allowed, by neglect, greed and corruption, this country’s infrastructure to crumble–exemplified by steam pipes in New York, a bridge in Minneapolis, the water system in New Orleans, a coal mine in Utah–while using American taxpayer money to deliberately destroy the infrastructure in Iraq, then using American taxpayer money to rebuild it. Welcome to the Age of Utter Insanity.

*Exxon Mobil, the world’s largest publicly traded oil corporations, for, among others, funding research aimed at disputing the scientific consensus on global warming as part of a campaign to mislead the public. “There has been an organized campaign, financed to the tune of $10 million a year from some of the largest carbon polluters,” says Al Gore, “to create the impression that there is disagreement in the scientific community. In actuality, there is very little disagreement.” The energy producers responded with Photoshop images of cavemen taking their pet dinosaurs for a walk.

*The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia, for an 8-2 decision denying those who are dying the right to obtain unapproved drugs that are potentally life-saving, even if their doctors say the treatment offers their best hope for survival. There was one exception, for a mentally ill man who is thoroughly convinced that he’s a fetus.

*Health insurance companies, for not coverering newly recommended vaccines for children, reportedly putting more than a million kids at risk. Since free shots are available to children who are uninsured or qualify for public insurance, concerned parents are now wondering whether it would be a proactive step to cancel their policies.

*The two-party system, for carrying out partisanship to this extent: The renewal of the State Children’s Health Insurance Program, which expires on September 30, is viewed as the most important health coverage decision in Washington this year, but the California delegation split along party lines, with all Democrats in favor and all Republicans opposed. Domestic terrorism in action.

*William Steiger–who has long ties to Bush and Cheney, and who, since 2001, has run the Office of Global Health Affairs, without any background or expertise in medicine or public health–for blocking a 2006 report describing the link between poverty and poor health, urging the U.S. government to help combat widespread diseases as a key aim of its foreign polilcy, and calling on corporations to help improve health condition in the countries where they operate. Why? Because the report didn’t promote the administration’s policy accomplishments. When asked if he has seen “Sicko,” Steiger assumed it was a documentary about the missing Marx brother, Sicko Marx.

* * *

ANTI-ASSHOLES OF THE WEEK

*California Secretary of State Debra Bowen, for decertifying the use of electronic voting machines in the presidential primaries to prevent hackers.

*U.S. District Judge Florence-Marie Cooper, for banning the Navy from using high-powered sonar in training exercises because it could “cause irreparable harm to the environment.” She rejected the Navy’s request to dismiss a lawsuit by the Natural Resources Defense Council arguing for broader safeguards to protect marine mammals from powerful blasts of mid-frequency active sonar that have been linked to panicked behavior and mass die-offs of whales.

*Sean Penn, for replying, when asked if he wants the United States to win the war in Iraq, “I think we’re past that point in human evolution where there’s such a thing as winning wars.”

——–
Paul Krassner is the author of “One Hand Jerking: Reports From an Investigative Satirist,” and publisher of the Disneyland Memorial Orgy poster, both available at paulkrassner.com.

The Music Military Industrial Complex, part 90000 (or Way to go, Samuel Bayer!)

If you are world-famous rock video director Samuel Bayer, what do you shoot after filming Nirvana’s “Smells Like Teen Spirit” as well as every single video from Green Day’s “American Idiot”? The obvious answer: shoot at those very same teens who buy those records and get a job with the US Army to direct their “Army Strong” recruitment propaganda. Watch the commercial on Sam’s website: https://samuelbayer.com/motion/us-army-army-strong/

Way to go Samuel, doing it for the kids never meant so much!!

For counter-recruitment ideas check out this pdf.

AND FUCK YOU TOO, MARK ISHAM!

From the Army:
“Renowned composer Mark Isham is the artist behind the stirring original musical score for the Army Strong campaign…. Isham, a top Hollywood film composer, has more than 70 film and TV credits, including memorable scores for such notable films as Eight Below, Running Scared, Crash, The Cooler, A River Runs Through It, Blade, Nell, Men of Honor and Miracle. He won an Emmy in 1996 for the theme he produced for the television show EZ Streets.”

From Mark Isham‘s site:
“He has collaborated with some of the top artists in the music business, and his classic trumpet voice has graced the albums of such diverse artists as Bruce Springsteen, Willie Nelson, Lyle Lovett, Ziggy Marley, Joni Mitchell, The Rolling Stones, Chris Isaak, and Van Morrison.”

"He is Twilight's Last Gleaming."

The government has commissioned living weapons of mass destruction to wage war on terror. The survivors return home broken, bitter, insane. Some form gangs, some go psycho. Some turn into ‘A’ list celebrities with ‘A’ bomb fists. The city is now a war zone.

San Futuro needs a Super Cop to enforce summary justice. His eyes will reflect the rocket’s red glare. He is Twilight’s Last Gleaming.

MARSHAL LAW

A bad choice is better than no choice at all.

**********************************

“Top Shelf is proud to announce that it has just signed Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill’s MARSHAL LAW, and will publish a MARSHAL LAW Omnibus next year — THE all-up one-volume, full-color, 500(+)-page definitive MARSHAL LAW collection.”

The path to Idiocracy, part 78

A gleefully ignorant public is easily frightened, over and over again.

From The New York Times:

President George W. Bush argued forcefully today that an Al Qaeda-affiliated group in Iraq is linked tightly to the central Al Qaeda leadership, and that for American forces to leave Iraq without defeating the terror group would be “dangerous for the world and disastrous for America.”

He made the remarks at Charleston Air Force Base in South Carolina, at a time of fierce debate in Washington over Iraq policy. Last week, a major intelligence report concluded that the international Al Qaeda organization of Osama bin Laden had successfully regrouped, probably in rugged northwest Pakistan, and that it is once again as strong as it was before the terror attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

In a half-hour speech clearly aimed at his Democratic critics, Mr. Bush said that those who argued that the affiliated group, called Al Qaeda in Iraq or AQI, was a local group with local objectives, and not a serious threat to Americans at home, were seriously misinformed.

“It’s hard to argue that Al Qaeda in Iraq is separate from bin Laden’s Al Qaeda when the leader of Al Qaeda in Iraq took an oath of allegiance to Osama bin Laden,” Mr. Bush said, referring to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a leader of the affiliated group in Iraq who was killed last year.

Mr. Bush called the two similarly named groups “an alliance of killers,” and said, “No enemy is more ruthless in Iraq than Al Qaeda.”

The president’s remarks focused almost entirely on links between the two groups and on threats they pose. His tone was particularly tough. Mr. Bush’s message did not vary much in substance from what he has long said about the groups, though he added some details, apparently based in part on newly declassified information.

Critics of the administration’s policy in Iraq, including some Democratic politicians, have said that Mr. Bush’s portrayal of the links between the Qaeda groups is overblown, and that the group in Iraq did not exist before the American-led invasion. The international group, they say, is the one that poses the much greater threat to the United States, while in Iraq, sectarian violence is a far greater concern than are foreign-led terrorist groups like Al Qaeda in Iraq.

Democrats reacted swiftly and dismissively to the president’s remarks. Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, accusing Mr. Bush of “flawed logic,” said, “The president is putting forth a false rationale for continuing the war.”

Holding up a copy of the latest National Intelligence Estimate on terrorism, released by the administration last week, Mr. Kerry said, “Our own intelligence community tells us today unequivocally that our presence in Iraq has created more terrorists, attracted more terrorists.”

Senator Harry Reid of Nevada, the majority leader, said that “the president’s claim that the war in Iraq is protecting us from Al Qaeda is as misguided and dangerous as the conclusions that drove us to Iraq in the first place.”

“Despite what the president would like us to believe,” he added, “it has been established that Al Qaeda had no active cells in Iraq when we invaded, and we have long known that we were not attacked from Iraq on 9/11. Saying otherwise does not make it so.”

Still, judging by recent opinion polls, the president has had some recent success in making a case to voters for continuing the war in Iraq. He has insisted both that success is possible and that failure would be catastrophic, in part because Al Qaeda in Iraq might then turn its attentions elsewhere.

For more on the “Fearmongering Your Way to Power” technique, successfully employed in recent decades by both far-right Islam radicals and far-right American neo-conservative radicals, watch Adam Curtis’s comprehensive “The Power of Nightmares: The Rise of the Politics of Fear” television program.