A new blog! But it's not here!

I have a brand new blog, over at http://anachro-anarcho.blogspot.com, where I talk about great political activists of the 19th century. I hope you will check it out.

Announcement

Hey guys, I have a new blog. It's over here: http://anachro-anarcho.blogspot.com/

It's my Steampunk Emma Goldman blog, and it provides a space for me to talk about amazing political activists of the 19th century. Enjoy!

A Recent Adventure: In Which Hurricane Irene Causes Me To Visit the Sheboygan Jail

It is a gray, horrible day, and I don't want to do anything. Also I haven't blogged in a long, long time. So I drank a bunch of tea and wrote about this thing that happened to me recently.

So, no shit, there I was, rural Wisconsin. That's right, the same place in rural Wisconsin where Bess and I had the encounter with the angry drunk bigot and the non-existant bears, and where we had the encounter with the snowbank and a lot of embarrasment. I was there with my family this time, and all was well. Well, I say all was well. All was well in Wisconsin. In New York, where I currently actually live, all was decidedly unwell, because there was, I don't know if you heard, a huge fuck-off hurricane called Irene coming. I was scheduled to fly home on the day that Irene was supposed to hit the city mega-bad. At this point I realized I had two choices. I could stay where I was, in rural Wisconsin, and go back to New York whenever the city settled down, or I could try as hard as I could to get in BEFORE the hurricane hit, and thus avoid both being stuck in Wisconsin for an indefinite period of time, and also being called a pussy by all my friends for being in the Midwest while they were going through a hurricane-apocalypse.

So I called the airline, spent four hours on hold, rescheduled my flight to the LAST FLIGHT TO NEW YORK which would be out of O'Hare, and which would happen in about twelve hours. Now, how to get from Ruralsville, Wisconsin to O'Hare? There weren't a lot of options. My dad drove me to Green Bay, where I rented a car, and proceeded to drive Chicago-wards. I was caffeinating and eating sour gummy worms, since I knew I was going to end up driving well into the night, and I find that coffee, Diet Coke, and sour gummy worms are pretty much all I need to stay up late. Well, that and good music. I was unfortunately unable to find good music, as at least two thirds of the radio stations in rural Wisconsin turned out to be Christian, and even when they stopped talking about God n' Stuff, they played the Worst. Music. Ever. Seriously, I am aware that some Christian music can be really good (that Handel guy had something going for him, I thought) but Christian radio stations are the worst. Anyway, finally while I was circling the radio dial desperately listening for something that didn't suck (for some reason, all I wanted to listen to by then was Bob Dylan. You ever get like that? I would've given a year of my life for a radio station that was just willing to play Blood on the Tracks on loop) when finally I heard the opening strains of American Pie, and decided fuck it, this is as close as I'm going to get. Unfortunately, that was the last half-way decent song that 60s and 70s radio station played for the next hour. I listened to Lean on Me. I LISTENED TO LEAN ON ME. God, that song is annoying. I nearly turned back to the Christian stations.

Anyway.

The road trip was going pretty much like that when I got a call from a friend saying "hope you're not driving hell-bent across rural Wisconsin, because they just canceled all the flights into anywhere near New York, as of right now." I was thwarted. And, as it turned out when I took a look at the nearest road sign, I was thwarted in Sheboygan.

Thwarted in Sheboygan is the name of my rock band.

Anyway, it was around midnight. No point going on to Chicago, and no point going back to Green Bay, as the car rental place would be too closed to let me return the car, and oh yeah, no way was my dad driving down from Ruralsville to get me from Green Bay at that time of night, so I decided to just stay the night in Sheboygan. I found a motel at the center of town, and was mildly perturbed by the sheer number of police I saw out. Seriously, I passed about ten police cars, all around the center of Sheboygan. Was crime so rife in this sleepy little Midwestern town, I wondered? Whatever. I booked a room in the motel, and promptly realized that what with the coffee, Diet Coke, and gummy worms, there was no way I was going to get to sleep any time soon. So I walked out of the motel, which was conventiently situated right on the Sheboygan town square (Sheboygan has a town square) and walked into the first bar I saw.

It turned out to be a strip club. I walked back out.

The second place, though, turned out to be a nice little localish bar with about ten micro-brews on tap. Sweet, I thought, and sat down at the bar. At this point I began to rock the New-Yorker-Stuck-In-A-Small-Town stereotype so hard it was embarrasing. If this had been a movie, I would've ended up married to a farmer and learning the value of slowing down and taking life as it comes. But then, I also probably would've been an ad executive or a high-powered lawyer (what the hell is a high-powered lawyer? Is that a special kind of lawyer, or does it just denote the fact that they are very important?) or something. But I was rocking the stereotype in that 1) I was weaaring a black dress, in a place where no one else was wearing black, or dresses. 2) I have purple hair. That's not really a thing in Sheboygan, I soon learned. 3) I tipped a dollar on my drink. That's also not a thing in Sheboygan.

In fact, it was so not a thing that the bartender's eyes got all big and he asked me where I was from. I told him, and insisted on tipping. I told him it was the custom among my people. I don't know what I meant by that, but he seemed happy with it, and he called over a regular to come and talk to this crazy chick from New York, which was cool. My backup plan had been to read Clash of Kings on my Kindle, but I ended up talking to the regular instead. He was a professional golf caddy. Apparently golf is big in Sheboygan.

An hour or so passed like that. The bartender decided my third drink was on him, and had just poured it when he suddenly came over and announced that, shit, the bar was closing.

The regular and I (by then the only two people in there) were puzzled. It was 1:30 am, hardly the time for a mandatory bar-closing time. But no, the bartender explained as he locked up. He had to close because he had to go. And he had to go because his girlfriend was in jail, and he had to go get her.

The regular seemed not at all surprised or perturbed. "I'll drive you," he volunteered. Then he turned to me. "You want to come?" he asked.

Have any of you met me? If so, you know what I said. Hell YES I wanted to go.

So that's how I ended up riding shotgun to the Sheboygan jail.

Riding Shotgun to the Sheboygan Jail is the name of my rockband's first album. Or my 700 page introspective novel. I'm not sure yet.

Anyway, we found the jail, which was actually kind of hard. Eventually we located it by looking for the building with the most flags. Once there we found Bartender's Girlfriend, who was standing around eating an apple as though that apple had insulted her mother. She was going seriuosly vindictive on this apple; just ripping chunk after chunk out of it with her teeth. Turns out, you see, that she had been arrested on marijuana charges. That apple had been the device she and her friend had been about to smoke out of. Once released, the cops had given her her apple back, and she had decided, with the flawless logic of one who has just been Fucked by the System that fuck you, the Man, she was going to eat the HELL out of this weed-apple.

She got in the car, was introduced to me (if she thought it was weird that her boyfriend and some guy from his bar, and also this girl she didn't know had just arrived to pick her up from jail, she didn't mention it) and told us the rest of her story. She had takent the heat for her friend, who was a school teacher. Quite noble and self-sacrificing of her, we all thought, so we told her what a great person she was, how little of a deal getting arrested one time on a minor drug misdeameanor charge is, and drove back to the bar, where the bartender let us in through the back and poured out more drinks so we could toast to his girlfriend being not in jail anymore. They were all very cool people, as it turned out, and I didn't end up learning any lessons or marrying any farmers.

At the end of the night, the regular walked me back to my motel in a most gentlemanly fashion. And that is the story of how Irene resulted in me visiting the Sheboygan jail.

Steampunk, Nostalgia, and Why I Don't Think They Mix

"I have no patience for nostalgia. You know, people say 'two dollars for a Mars bar! Why, I remember when-' What? You remember what? Fucking slavery, shut up." -Dylan Moran

A lot of people describe steampunk as a "nostalgic" movement. This, as you will already know if you've read the title of this piece, strikes me as stupid. I've actually heard the nostalgia thing more from people outside of steampunk trying to describe or understand the movement, but I've definitely heard it from a few actual steampunks as well, so this article will be about refuting the idea that steampunk is, or should be, nostalgic, both for outsiders trying to figure out steampunk, and for steampunks who may not be thinking things through.

Presumably, people figure steampunk is nostalgic because of the roots it has in the past; it does, after all, generally draw from a 19th century source, and the aesthetic definitely has a lot of 19th century influence. They say, and at least a few steampunks I've heard talk agree, that there is, in steampunk, a fundamental yearning for the values of the 19th century. You'll hear people talk about things like "simplicity" and "honor," whatever the crap those are supposed to mean.

But is historical awareness the same as nostalgia? I would answer that question with a resounding, roof-shaking "no." I personally feel that "nostalgia," in relation to an historical time period, can be one of the most poisonous concepts possible, dependent as it so often is on selective memory, historical whitewashing, revisionism, and a privileged view of the past.

The fact is, though, that both in and out of steampunk I do occasionally come across people who say things like "I was born in the wrong era!" or "I should've been born in the (insert year here)." Sometimes , I'm firmly of the opinion that such people are talking straight out of their asses, like when they say it at a 1940s vintage dance party. I mean, yeah, the 40s fashion, music and dancing is great, and I sure do enjoy a quaint, old fashioned cocktail, but...uh, I am very, very, very glad I wasn't alive in the 1940s. You're not? I tend to just assume that people who say such things in that context just aren't thinking, and I don't even bother to argue the point.

When it comes up in steampunk, though, people seem a little more committed to the era than they do at "vintage" events; they'll often have personas and costumes that they've put a lot of thought and effort into, which forces me to give their supposed longing for the past a little more credence. So when steampunks talk about nostalgia, I listen. And I come to a logical conclusion, which is this: anyone claiming nostalgia for the 19th century is a white, heterosexual, middle-to-upper-class Christian male. One who is naturally immune to cholera.

Are there things about the 19th century that are fun? Of course there are! But that doesn't mean that it was an inherently "good" era, or an era preferable to the one in which we now live. Here's an example from outside of steampunk that I think illustrates the point: I myself am a fervent 19th century sailing enthusiast; I love working on tall ships of that era. But I would certainly not describe myself as nostalgic for the tall ships of the 19th century. After all, one of the ships I worked on was a re-creation of a ship you may have heard of; the Amistad. Let that sink in, and try to reconcile it with the idea of being nostalgic for the age of sail.

Do I love the feel of a wooden deck pitching and rolling under my feet, do I love skylarking in the rigging of a topsail schooner out at sea while the sun goes down, do I love bonding with a crew while we work and live together? Yes, or I wouldn't do it for the very little pay most tall ships offer. Do I believe in the education program that Amistad America has in place to inform people about the slave trade, and the Amistad uprising? Yes, totally. But, uh, do I wish I had been on the actual Amistad when she made her voyage, the one that ultimately took her from Cuba to New Haven, and put her in the history books and Steven Spielberg films forever? No, not even a little bit. Are you crazy? It's a goddamn horror story. A horror story that must not be forgotten, one that must be told, remembered, and understood, but not something any sane person would be nostalgic for. Working on the Amistad was about appreciating the ship itself, preserving the arts and traditions that go along with working a ship like that, and about remembering and teaching the public about what took place aboard the original. Awareness of the past demands both, and I think that, ultimately, is the difference between enthusiasm for history, and nostalgia.

I think what it's important to remember about steampunk is that almost any aspect of 19th century history, particularly those aspects of the British Empire, or the United States that tend to get romanticized, have a lot in common with the Amistad. A beautiful setting, perhaps. A fascinating, wonderful old form of technology. And, underlying it all, the pain and suffering of an oppressed people. Properly telling the story involves telling their story as much as it does focusing on what people might love about the era; if the modern day Amistad sailed around talking about daily life on a 19th century Cuban coastal trading vessel (which is what the ship was prior to 1841) with no mention of anything else, that would be doing a massive disservice to history, and be incredibly disrespectful to the people who were taken aboard the ship as slaves. It'd be a hell of a lot easier to be nostalgic about, but it would be a lie.

I don't think I should have to list here the various oppressive, horrible things about the 19th century. That's not really the point of this post; anyone even vaguely acquainted with the history of the 19th century already knows that some awful, awful things happened, many of them things whose effects the world still lives with today (slavery, imperialism, the oppression of women, etc). My point is that these are things that should not be ignored so that we can enjoy our nostalgia in peace and good conscience, they are things that should be remembered, explored, deconstructed, and understood. Playing with the past is a great way to do all that, and steampunk, with its openness to alternate histories and willingness to both celebrate and condemn historical figures and actions, as appropriate, offers a unique tool.

Those who would aim for nostalgia should think hard about what their idealization of history does. It ignores the crimes of the past, which is not only disrespectful to the memory of those who suffered and died as a result of 19th century imperialism and oppression, but it tells their modern day descendants that you feel they do not matter. Celebrate the British Empire while ignoring what it did on the Indian subcontinent, and you tell any Indian or Pakistani person who wishes to get into steampunk that this is a genre and a subculture that is willing to ignore them, that affords them no more respect than the British did their ancestors. Romanticize American westward expansion without acknowledging the genocide that was committed in the process, and you tell Native Americans that their culture, and their history can be forgotten in service of your preferred story. Idealize the morality of the Victorian age, and you tell women, and LGBT people that their rights and humanity are so unimportant that you are willing to ignore what life would have been like for them under the system you think of as "the good old days."

People who are into nostalgia will sometimes accuse those who try to get them to reign it in of being killjoys. I believe the term on the interwebs is "harshing the squee." I do not wish to harsh anyone's squee. For those who find their squee harshed by awareness of the full, complicated history on which they draw, think how any group marginalized by your willful blindness to their perspective must feel. Your squee is not the only squee that matters, and your nostalgia might be fun for you, but it lasts only as long as you refuse to examine it, and as long as it lasts, you are limiting the scope of people who can enjoy steampunk, and limiting the usefulness of steampunk as a way to explore history.












(And here's the part where I do a shameless piece of self-promotion. I'm organizing a pro-labor flash mob and rally at the Steampunk World's Fair this year. The idea here is that our understanding of the past can help us make the future better, and that recognizing the oppression of the worker that came with the Industrial Revolution, and carrying forward the energy of the labor movement that came out of that oppression can help us as we continue to fight for rights in the modern day. If you're coming to the SPWF, and you appreciate all that unions have done to make life livable, you should absolutely be coming to these:

The flash mob: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=140376736032332

The rally: http://www.facebook.com/event.php?eid=123821261029999 )

MirMir Has A Story on the Internet

Yes, that's right, everyone! A while back I wrote a story, and recently it appeared on Yesteryear Fiction. It was serialized in nine parts, the first of which you can find here.

Just work your way forward from there, if you feel so inclined. Hope you enjoy! The story is called What You Are I Was.

Help Me, Blog Readers! You're My Only Hope.

I have found myself having a very awkward conversation, more than once, and found I do not know what to say. I figured that since everyone who reads this blog is intelligent, witty, and generally fantastic, I would put this problem to all of you.

I meet someone. They might be male, or female, but they are always heterosexual. Somehow, early on in conversation, the fact that I am gay comes up. There are a number of reasons that might happen; if I'm talking to a guy and he seems to be hitting on me, chances are I'll bring it up just so that if I have to announce it later, it won't seem like I'm lying as a way of brushing him off. Sometimes it comes up because I'm in a group with my friends, and one of them mentions it in passing, or makes a joke about it. Or brings it up for some other reason. (There was one truly great moment where a shipmate of mine was concerned that a very skeevy, very drunk guy was paying undue attention to me, so he casually said something like "MirMir, can I borrow your pocket knife? Thanks. See, she has one of those because she carries tools around, because she's always prepared, and because she's a lesbian. A gay lesbian. A gay lesbian who will not sleep with you, no matter what, so back off, or I will hit you." It was pretty hilariously unsubtle. And just as hilariously ineffective at making the guy lose interest, but I'm getting to that). And sometimes I just happen to bring it up. It comes up.

Then my brand new acquaintance goes "oh, really?" and asks an unbelievably invasive question. I have gotten, from people I have just met, people whose last names I do not know, people with whom I have had perhaps a few minutes of prior conversation, all of the following questions:

"How did you first know you were a lesbian?"
"Have you ever tried sex with a guy?"
"Don't you ever want cock?"
"When did you first start sleeping with girls?"
"Have you always been a lesbian?"
"Do you use strap-ons? Do you like using them, or having them used on you?"
"So...what do lesbians DO in bed, anyway?"
"What do you like about women as opposed to men? Is it, like, a feminist thing?"
And my favorite, most absurd one EVER (and phrased exactly like this, I couldn't make this up) "Do lesbians enjoy butt play?"

I'm not shy or introverted or a prude, or anything of the kind, but I feel weird having complete strangers ask me questions about my sexual preferences, and about when I lost my virginity, within the first few minutes of our acquaintance. Who DOES that? When was the last time you met someone, and it occurred to you within five minutes of conversation to ask them about when they lost their virginity?

Now, I get what's sometimes happening when the asker is a straight guy. He wants to hear a sexy story about sexy lesbians doing sexy things. And when it's a straight woman, I think a lot of the time they are simply curious. Maybe that's the case with some of the straight men, too. I understand that the idea of homosexuality is mysterious and strange to some people, and I understand that they want to learn more about what makes gay people tick. I even accept the idea that this is a good thing, generally. But the way for people who are unfamiliar with the concept of homosexuality to get more used to the idea, and to understand it better, is for them to see homosexuals as people, not as walking encyclopedias of gayness. They need to afford homosexuals the same respect they afford to heterosexuals, and assume that casual conversation is not the venue for trying to get a full sexual history. They need to not assume that because someone has something that makes them different, that they are automatically subject to the scrutiny and questions of any random stranger.

Some of the questions aren't just rude, they're downright invasive. "Have you ever had sex with a man?" That's not necessarily a safe or innocuous question considering the percentage of queer women who have been raped. And that's just one extreme example of why that's a terrible question to ask a stranger. On the other hand, like I said, I think the intention is not bad; there's just some thoughtlessness happening.

So that brings me to what I need from all of you. You see, I have been trying really hard to think of what to say in response to people who ask me these questions. Saying "I'm not comfortable discussing that with you right now," makes me the rude one, and moreover, it increases the weird mystique that these people already have about the whole idea of homosexuality. Turning the questions back on them, and asking the same questions about their sexual history is a good idea, but I feel like they won't get what I'm doing with that, and will misinterpret it as a desire to stay on the subject. I need a reply that will:

1) Make it clear that their question is not really appropriate, without making me seem like a prude.
2) Make it clear that I am not offended by their question, but that I prefer not to talk about this right now.
3) Be funny.

Or is turning the questions around on them a good option? I feel like it will be misunderstood. Your thoughts in the comments, please? You're all brilliant, witty, etc. Pass this on to the wittiest person you know, see what they come up with. I need some help here.

The Boycott of Thor: Why it's the Funniest Thing White Supremacists Have Done Lately

You may have heard this already, but some white supremacists have decided to boycott the movie Thor, the latest film from the Marvel universe. They are doing this because one of the characters in the movie, namely Heimdall, a Norse god you probably haven't heard of (I hadn't) is going to be played by a black man, namely Idris Elba, an actor you probably have heard of, because he's been in some really good stuff.

So what are a few brain-dead white-supremacists doing about this outrage?Like I said, they 're boycotting the movie. They're doing this as though they really think that the marketing minds at Marvel Studios were sitting up late into the night going "oh god! I hope we get the white supremacist demographic! What if the racists don't like our stuff? I don't mean the regular, borderline racists, the kind who call anyone darker than themselves 'Mexicans' or even the outright racists who won't admit they are, but still insist that there's something 'un-American' about President Obama. I mean the real, hard-core, cold-blooded evil neo-Nazi douchebags who use racial slurs you thought everyone had forgotten existed in the early eighteen-seventies. Will THOSE GUYS want to see our movie? I wouldn't know what to do with myself if they didn't." Yeah, white-supremacists. You show those Marvel guys. Show them you don't want to see their stupid movie. I'm sure they'll be up all night crying that they lost about fifty ticket sales, but gained a reputation for being a film reviled by total ass-hats.

What's been really great about the reaction to the boycott is the way every article condemns the boycott, but then comes up with a few more good reasons that the white-supremacists should be boycotting anyway. They're all like "well fine, don't see this movie because of Idris Elba! Assholes. But you know, you should've already been not-seeing it because of Natalie Portman." You know you're in an unpopular demographic when you decide to boycott something, and everyone encourages you to stay the fuck away from it, and actively comes up with reasons why you should.

My first reaction to this whole thing was basically "awesome! I love it when people I don't like don't like things that I like!" I'd have been way more upset if white supremacists had decided that Thor was going to be their big movie of 2011. I would have found that kind of upsetting. I was prepared to let my reaction go at that, because I love Marvel comics and hate white supremacists, so anything that would keep the latter away from the former just seemed great to me, but then my curiosity got the better of me, and I actually checked out the website boycott-thor.com (they had to put the dash in there because boycottthor involves three T's in a row, and that just looks silly. Three K's in a row probably look just fine to these guys, but that's neither here nor there now, is it?)

And I'm glad I did check out the website, because it did a few very difficult things.

1) It made me laugh at white supremacists. Admittedly, that's not really so hard to do at all, so I lied about it being difficult. If you ignore their stomach-churning vileness, they're actually kind of funny, when they're not being violent.
2) It made me like Stan Lee more. Stan Lee is not only the grand-daddy of contemporary graphic novels (he basically came up with the idea of the complex, human superhero, whose humanity was more important than his or her powers) but he's a ton of fun in interviews, takes an obviously great delight in his fans, in the cameos he does in his movies, and in attending cons, and is never, never rude to people who ask for autographs, which for a guy like him is kind of amazing. He is grandfatherly and charming. He says "Excelsior!" all the time. Yet this website about what a dick white supremacists think he is made me like him more. MORE THAN I ALREADY DID.
3) It got me really excited about Thor, which up until now had, for me personally, been the least-anticipated superhero movie since the Fantastic Four.


So this website. The homepage is just a bunch of linked articles, with headlines like "Marvel has a history of publishing extremist "Black Power" comics" and whining on and on about how it's ok for people to talk about black pride, but people who talk about white pride are labeled as assholes. If you've ever been on a white supremacist website (what? I can't look away! They're like car accidents. Car accidents full of absolute morons. Car accidents full of violent, hateful absolute morons who think I control the world economy and probably wish me harm.) you've seen this sort of thing before, so I'll skip it and concentrate on the central point of the website. Actually, there are two central points.

1) Idris Elba as Heimdall = Not Okay, Man.
2) Marvel itself is kind of suspect too, now you that you come to mention it.

They have an open letter to Marvel Studios, which basically says, if I may sum up, "The great god Heimdall, who is very important to Nordic or possibly Germanic people, since we use the terms interchangeably even though that's clearly idiotic, is being played by a black guy in your movie. That is bad. It is a deliberate insult to all white people everywhere. Being white is just so hard. Why are people being so mean to white people? I crave attention, even the negative kind, like a small child throwing a loud, floor-pounding tantrum in a supermarket out in the hopes that someone will acknowledge its existence."

The thing is, obviously I haven't seen this movie yet, but I think Elba's going to be kind of awesome in the role; the whole Asgard set looks kind of freaking sweet, and I like the helmet they gave Heimdall. Anyway, these white-supremacist guys don't like the idea of a black guy playing a Norse god, but they try to make their point even more specific by pointing out that Heimdall is described as "whitest of the gods" in the original Norse mythology. They seem to think that this proves that the movie-makers cast him as black just to fuck with them. Now, I'm guessing the casting was intended to suggest that that description of "whitest" doesn't refer to skin color, which is kind of a boring thing to assume it does mean, but, perhaps, to his birth, which like Aphrodite was out of the foam of the sea. Or to his mythological association with rams. Or maybe the filmmakers went with the alternative translation of that line, which would make Heimdall the "brightest" of the gods. Whatever; obviously, there's no reason to think Heimdall should be black. But the only reason to assume he should be white is that when the people were coming up with their myths, they had only ever seen other Nordic people. For a modern cast, it makes total sense to pick whichever actor will be most awesome in the role.

Their problem with it, they claim, is that it's an insult to Heimdall to make him black. Obviously, they don't want to come out and say that, since that tends to alienate everyone who doesn't already agree with them, so instead they try to make it seem like this is about, you know, accuracy. Right. The accurate depiction of a god. The accurate depiction of a comic book character based on a god. Yeah, accuracy is vital here, guys. That's my favorite aspect of the whole thing. I mean, if Norse mythology is so important to them, why are they even ok with the fact that there are comic books about these gods? Comic books that were written, because, as Stan "the Man" Lee has said in interview, he wanted a hero who was even stronger than the Incredible Hulk, and all the Greek gods were too well known, so he read about the Norse gods and decided he liked the idea of a superhero who had a hammer? I mean, that's the source material for the movie; it's not like they're adapting the damn Edda here.

They do grasp for some logic, though, when they try to be like "this is just like when everyone was mad about the casting of Avatar: The Last Airbender!" No, no it isn't, white supremacists. The mis-casting of Avatar stole some of the best roles for Asian actors and gave them to white actors for no reason at all. The casting of Heimdall takes one role away from an all-white pantheon. Cry me a river. There are plenty of roles out there for white people. Who would these boycott guys have cast? A muscular blond guy? Yeah, god knows there aren't enough roles for muscular blond guys in movies. There's just no valid comparison between the casting of this movie and the casting of Avatar.

The website only gets really funny when you look beyond its stated purpose. See, it's not just out to attack the movie Thor; it's out to take down Marvel. Their sidebar reads:

"Marvel has a history of advocating for the left-wing. In early 2010 they even used their Captain America comic to attack the TEA Party movement. Marvel front man Stan "Lee" Lieber personally funds left-wing political candidates. Now Marvel has inserted left-wing social engineering into European mythology, casting a black man to play a Norse deity."

First of all, yes, Marvel does have a history of advocating for the left wing. Like in the 1960s, when the X-Men were used as a platform to advocate for civil rights, both through really heavy handed storylines about bigots who didn't want mutants "in our schools," and even more heavy handed notes by Stan Lee himself in the margins saying "you know what ticks me off? Bigots. Segregation is the worst." Just, you know, as an example. Now, they don't actually USE that example, because they know that anyone who thinks advocating for civil rights in the 1960s was a bad thing is already a member of their stupid group. So instead, they point out that they just used Captain America to attack the Tea Party.

Now, I've never been a big fan of Captain America, myself. But I just became one.

Then they get to Stan Lee. These refer to him as "Stan 'Lee' Lieber."

Ok, bit of Nerdic mythology for ya: Stan "The Man" Lee was born Stanley Martin Lieber. So calling him Stan "Lee" Lieber isn't really accurate. If you wanted to give his original name and his current name, you could maybe say "Stanley 'Stan 'The Man' Lee' Martin Lieber." Which is getting a mite awkward to say, I feel. The point is, Stan Lee is his legal and professional name, and calling him by the name he has chosen not to use is a dick move, especially when the goal you're aiming for could be accomplished a lot more efficiently by just calling him "Stan 'Total Jooooo' Lee." I mean come on, white supremacists! Yes, Stan Lee is Jewish. What do you want, a cookie for figuring that one out? Listen to him in interview, he's got an accent you could spread over a bagel! I award you no points and no prizes for figuring that one out, except the "Total Dick Move" prize for using the name he has chosen not to use, which is rude.

As for the rest of their statements here...I'm not sure how having a black actor play a Norse god is left-wing social engineering. I mean, I'm having trouble imagining any left-wing person whose politics depend on the idea that the Norse gods were black.

Regular person: The Norse gods are cool.
Scary Left-Wing Social Engineer: They were black, you know.
Regular person: Really?
Scary Left-Wing Social Engineer: Totes.

If anyone has ever actually heard anyone have that conversation, do please let me know.

The biggest mistake this website makes in terms of trying to tell us how much we should all hate Stan Lee is in posting a video of him. This video, they claim, shows him speaking with Hilary Clinton, and committing felonies.

Firstly, as anyone who has EVER seen Stan Lee speak know, if you're trying to discredit him, showing him speaking is exactly the wrong thing to do. He is, and I say this as a student of the English language, with a full understanding of the meaning of every word and phrase at my disposal, an absolute sweetheart. You watch him, and you feel like your grandfather just gave you a nickel for your birthday, told you a story about the good old days and taught you how to bait a fishing hook (neither of my grandfather either did any of those things, actually but I'm speaking in archetypes here). Discrediting Stan Lee by showing a clip of him talking is the rough equivalent of trying to discredit a puppy by showing how it rolls over on its back so you can scratch its tummy.

So the video shows Stan Lee, and some other dude, on the phone with Hilary Clinton, I guess talking about how Stan is going to show up as a celebrity guest at some fundraiser she's doing. For most of the first few minutes, Stan is sitting there, playing with a binder clip he picked up off the desk, which I guess is some kind of crazy-sinister move if you're a white-supremacist, since it implies a familiarity with paper, and therefor, reading. And knowledge. Then there's what I assume is the big felony moment of the video: Hilary Clinton jokingly promises Stan Lee the post of Secretary of Defense. So that he and Captain America can protect the country together. With the X-Men. And Stan Lee replies "well, I can promise you the mutant vote!"

Yeah. That was some shady, back-room political dealing there, white-supremacists. I mean, I'm aware that these guys were either born without a sense of humor or had it surgically removed shortly after their birth so it wouldn't become an embarrassment to their families , but even that doesn't explain this. What in the flipping Hell-ass is wrong with them? How stupid do you have to be to think that Hilary Clinton is seriously offering an 80+ comic book writer the post of Secretary of Defense in exchange for him bringing in the mutant vote? (Note to white supremacists: the X-Men comics are fiction. Mutants are not a thing. You can put down the anti-mutie signs now.) Wow. Just wow. I mean, it almost gives me hope to think that these are the forces of extremist racism in America; a bunch of dumb assholes who worry about who's going to play a character out of a Marvel comic book in what looks like it's going to be a really long extended explosion of a movie, and who wouldn't know jokey banter if it came up and wrote "Excelsior!" on their foreheads.

So, ultimately, what do we have here? We have a bunch of white-supremacists, who have decided that Norse mythology is really important to them. I can definitely think of a few friends of mine of Scandinavian origin who wish these asses would leave their culture alone. And now they've claimed jurisdiction over the adaptation of a comic-book co-created by Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, and are treating the adaptation of that SUPERHERO COMIC BOOK with as much seriousness as they would an actual cinematic adaption of their mythology. And the fact that basically everyone else in the movie will be white (unless Nick Fury is in this one. Is Nick Fury in this one? I hope so. It is very nearly scientifically impossible to have too much Nick Fury, at least, as played by Samuel L Jackson, not so much when he's played by David Hasselhoff. I still can't believe that happened) besides this one guy just isn't enough for them.

Ugh. I meant to talk about how funny this whole thing is, but all this stupidity is actually just kind of frustrating. I vote we send Ultimate Marvel Nick Fury to kick their asses. And for those who would argue that sending a fictional character against real dumbshits is a bad idea, I would say that these guys don't deserve the time and energy of a real person. I don't propose that anyone with better things to do kick their asses. But alternate universes and suchlike being what they are, I'm sure Ultimate Nick Fury's got the time to spare.

As for me, I think I've spent enough time on them; I'm looking away from the car accident now. And really looking forward to watching Thor.