For those who have watched, this simple phrase will immediately bring to mind Rejected, Don Hertzfeldt’s Oscar winning short cartoon film. Taking the form of a series of short promo cartoons supposedly created for cable networks, each succeeding segment gets weirder and more disturbed. This cartoon continues to be influential today, as Wikipedia notes:
Rejected has a cult following and has grown into a pop culture icon that is frequently quoted or referenced.In 2009, it was the only short film named as one of the “Films of the Decade” by Salon.com. In 2010, it was noted as one of the five “most innovative animated films of the past ten years” by The Huffington Post.[4]
Hertzfeldt’s almost childish style combined with absurdist, edgy content has made him a top name in animation and a major influence on modern cartoons, particularly the kind of shows one sees on Adult Swim and its relatives. As Ad Week points out, his outspoken hatred of the advertising industry meant it was only a matter of time before they ripped him off for Pop-Tarts.
What are your favorite cartoons? If I can, I’ll use your suggestions in future installments.
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Update: There were 14 arrests of activists from CODEPINK at the White House for protesting Guantanamo on the 100th day of prisoners’ hunger strike. Protesters had deliberately staged themselves on a swath of pavement directly in front of the White House where tourists are allowed but protests are banned. I’ve replaced the livestream link with an archived video from @UnToldCarlise‘s stream.
Prisoners in Guantanamo Bay have been on hunger strike for 100 days now, drawing activists to protest for freedom and justice both online and off. @UnToldCarlisle is livestreaming from the White House, where acts of civil disobedience are expected soon.
Meanwhile, a “twitter storm” has begun under the hashtag #GTMO17, making it one of the top trending topics this morning.
The agency said in a press release, that “the efficacy of this intervention has not yet been demonstrated in controlled clinical trials. Such controlled trials are needed to demonstrate the safety and effectiveness of FMT products for C. difficile infection.”
…
Some doctors consider it an annoyance that the FDA is attempting to regulate the new procedure, and argue that bureaucratic hurdles will only make it harder for patients who need the therapy to obtain it.
The FDA has designated Fecal Microbiota for Transplantation (FMT) therapy an “investigational new drug,” meaning that physicians who apply to the federal board may perform the procedure, but some doctors feel that their access to a promising treatment is being overly complicated by the new rules.
Disgusted by the rape and the lack of outcry in its aftermath, McKee spent weeks calling and emailing national journalists, urging them to write about the assault and the lawsuit against her blogger friend, who had hammered away at the football team and the community for their silence.
After striking out, McKee eventually stumbled upon #OpAntiBully, an Anonymous subgroup that goes after cyberbullies. Members of the operation had recently orchestrated a dramatic takedown of a clan of high school Twitter trolls who’d urged a suicidal 15-year-old to cut herself and drink bleach. McKee was deeply impressed. “People from Anonymous came and kicked their ass,” she recalls, speaking out about her involvement for the first time. “And I’m thinking, this is what [the rape victim] needs.”
So McKee nervously reached out to the Anons on Twitter. “I thought they would either get involved or get pissed, and my online life is over,” she told me. But where she expected a bunch of impetuous hackers, she instead encountered people who were willing to listen and to trust her—especially after she shared her own stories of being bullied and abused.
On December 10, she became the first second person to blast out the now-famous Twitter hashtag #OpRollRedRoll, a reference to Steubenville High’s beloved Big Red football team and its fansite, RollRedRoll.com (Update: McKee says the first tweet of the hashtag was from @KYAnonymous but isn’t visible because his account is suspended).
“Once it became an Anonymous op,” McKee says, “it was no longer in my control. It was kind of like being a baton runner and handing it off to the next person.”
Tonight’s musical selection is from nerdcore rapper MC Frontalot and some of his friends. It’s a sendup of classic 80′s anime like Voltron called “I’ll Form the Head” from the album Solved.
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McLaren created innovative animation techniques such as drawing directly on film stock.
Blinkity Blank is an award-winning film by pioneer animator Norman McLaren, best known for his work with the National Film Board of Canada, which has funded many great works of animation over the decades.
Created in 1955, the film uses the innovative technique of scratching designs directly onto film. From the National Film Board description:
This experimental short film by Norman McLaren is a playful exercise in intermittent animation and spasmodic imagery. Playing with the laws relating to persistence of vision and after-image on the retina of the eye, McLaren engraves pictures on blank film creating vivid, percussive effects.
McLaren also left some frames blank, which he described as ‘sprinkling on the empty band of time.’
Given the prolific nature of National Film Board animation, I am sure we’ll visit the work of their animators again on Cartoon Friday.
What are your favorite cartoons from any country? I’ll use them in future installments if I can.
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There was a time not so long ago when the most contentious issue in Dryden, New York, was hiring a new dog catcher. Situated in New York’s Finger Lakes region, Dryden is a rural town with a population of just 14,500 spread over 94 square miles. It’s “a little more progressive than your average upstate town,” explains town supervisor Mary Ann Sumner, because it gets some spillover residents from nearby Ithaca, a college town. “But we’re still just an upstate town,” best known for dairy farms and cornfields.
But everything changed in August 2011, when Dryden became one of the first towns in New York to ban fracking. Natural gas interests swiftly sued, putting the once sleepy spot in the middle of a nationwide debate over gas drilling. Last week, after a spending a year and a half in court fighting to protect its ban, Dryden became the first town in the state to prevail over the gas industry—in a case that could set a precedent for other towns that are trying to keep frackers out.
If you’re a geek like me, you really want to see the photo in this tweet. Make it so!
Tonight’s musical selection is Brown Bird performing “Thunder and Lightning.” If you’re near Austin, Texas, you can see them perform Saturday.
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Rosemary Lehmberg was released from jail this morning.
Travis County is home to Austin, Texas and well over a million residents. The county’s district attorney, Rosemary Lehmberg was released from jail about 1am this morning after serving half of a 45-day sentence for driving under the influence of alcohol.
From the Austin American Statesman:
Lehmberg, who was sentenced April 19, served half of her jail term under a law that gives two days credit for every day served for good behavior. Travis county jail records no longer showed Lehmberg booked by 3 a.m. Thursday.
Predictably, in this Republican-led state there have been calls for her resignation from the right, even satirical bumper stickers that lampoon her behavior on the night of her arrest. Looking deeper, the situation is far more complex.
First, while the office of Travis County District Attorney is elected, if Lehmberg resigns than Republican Governor Rick Perry will appoint her interim replacement. But more so, many reports suggest that Lehmberg is suffering from an illness — alcoholism — which may benefit from treatment rather than further punishment.
Ours is a culture (including a cop culture) rampant with binge drinking – and it too often has deadly consequences – but if everyone who received a first-offense DWI also lost his job, the drinking wouldn’t stop, and the unemployment rolls would be staggering as well.
…
[O]ne can only wonder what might have happened to Bob Bullock or Ann Richards (or a host of other officials) had the Internet been available to chronicle and repost their every bibulous indiscretion. Anonymous trolls would be demanding their immediate ejections from office, and editorial writers (hardly squeaky clean themselves) would be anonymously chiming in. Yet we have long known that alcoholism is a treatable disease, and that reflexively treating alcoholics as criminals only fills our prisons without addressing the underlying problems.
Though the kind of reckless behavior Lehmberg engaged in is never acceptable, KVUE suggests that grief exacerbated her behavior:
Sources confirmed Lehmberg was distraught the night before her arrest on April 12th after attending the funeral of a dear friend and employee.
Investigator Lorraine Kerlick died in a motorcycle accident April 7th. Friends say Lehmberg appeared extremely emotional and depressed at the funeral.
Lehmberg, who was released before 3 a.m. Thursday, also thanked the Travis County jail staff for their ‘professionalism and dedication’ in a statement issued shortly after 5 a.m.
‘In the coming days, Rosemary will be making arrangements to seek professional treatment and better understand her behavior,’ the statement said. ‘She will also meet with members of her staff with whom she been communicating throughout the last 3 weeks.’
But just because she’s a drunken mess of political entitlement doesn’t mean Lehmberg doesn’t have a role to play when she gets out of jail. The Travis County district attorney heads the Public Integrity Unit, which by law has jurisdiction over corruption in state government. Unless the Obama-appointed U.S. attorney decides to make a federal case out of something, the only one who can prosecute any of these Banana Republicans in elected state office is Lehmberg.
And if she resigns, Rick Perry gets to appoint her successor, explaining why local Democrats want her to stay on the job.
But should she? Making corruption charges stick is hard enough with one’s credibility intact. Ronnie Earle found this out when he tried to prosecute Kay Bailey Hutchison. It’s hard to imagine Lehmberg withstanding the political backlash that comes with trying to hold powerful public officials accountable. It says a lot about Texas ethics when the only check on political corruption is currently sitting in jail after pleading guilty to drunken driving.
Ken Anderson, District Attorney before Lehmberg and now a state district judge is facing charges of corruption. Ross Ramsey of The Texas Tribune argues that state officials are no longer untouchable:
Texas DA’s used to be indestructible. The political potshots at long-serving former prosecutors like Dallas County’s Henry Wade, Harris County’s Johnny B. Holmes Jr. and Travis County’s Ronnie Earle were part of their jobs. But each left on his own.
…
Times have changed. In the 1980s, crime was the major issue in many local and state elections. In the early 1990s, the people who won those elections went on an epic prison- and jail-building spree.
Voters are worried about other things now. Wrongful convictions and prosecutions have shaken public faith in the criminal justice system.
Michael Pollan's newest book urges Americans to reclaim cooking for health and sustainability.
Tonight’s video selection is a little spicy — what do old people think about gay sex? The answer may surprise you. Or at least make you laugh and smile!
I just started reading Michael Pollan’s Cooked: A Natural History of Transformation on Kindle. Even though I’m a kitchen devotee already, it’s inspiring stuff. There’s a chapter devoted to each of the “elements” of cooking — fire (cooking), water (cooking in pots), air (baking) and earth (fementation). Check out this long interview with the author on Democracy Now! if you missed it the first time around.
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Members of GetEqual TX are blocking a major roadway in downtown Austin at 11th and Congress, directly in front of the Texas Capitol. They continue to demand passage of the “Fair Employment Act,” which would make it illegal for Texas employers to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity. With only a couple weeks remaining in the legislative session, time is of the essence.
Update: Apologies for those who tried to follow this earlier, we had a coding error so that it did not pull my tweets correctly. Here is an updated version of the post!
Five were arrested at the Texas Capitol on May Day morning last week as GetEqual TX staged a sit-in at four Texas State Senators offices. Activists hope to pressure legislators to schedule SB237, the “Fair Employment Act,” for a vote. If passed, it would make it illegal for employers in the state to discriminate on the basis of sexual orientation or gender identity.
Activists for any group that wants to lobby the legislature are under added pressure because the state’s bicameral house of government meets for only 140 days out of every two years, and only a few weeks of the 2013 session remain. These sit-ins come after an escalating series of direct actions.
Tiffani Bishop, the Central Texas Lead for GetEqual TX told me:
We’ve literally exhausted all other options. We’ve marched, lobbied, petitioned, visited their offices personally, and called their offices every single day for the last 2 months. At this point, nonviolent civil disobedience is our only option.
While nationally, media attention and lobbyist efforts seem focused on the issue of marriage, in a majority of states the ability to find and keep employment for LGBTQ workers is threatened on a daily basis. According to statistics provided by GetEqual TX:
- An estimated 431,000 members of the Texas workforce identify as lesbian, gay, bisexual, or transgender.
- 26% of transgender Texans report being fired solely based on their gender identity.
- 12% of lesbian and gay Texans report being fired because of their sexual orientation.
- 37% of gay and lesbian Texans report being harassed at work due to their sexual orientation .
The day began early as over a dozen activists gathered in a parking garage near the Texas Capitol at 8am and were immediately spotted by a bicycle-mounted Texas State Trooper. By noon, the five activists had been arrested and the rest dispersed.
SB237 remains unscheduled, with Senator Brian Birdwell, R-Granbury publicly opposed to the bill; other members of the Committee on Economic Development refused to comment for this story. GetEqual TX members met Monday and plan to continue direct actions.
Delving deeper into what happened between that morning gathering and the protesters release that night on personal recognizance bonds shows how the best plans of activists go awry during chaotic protests, and yet also the impact of direct action.
Inside the Capitol
A line-up of GetEqual TX activists near the Texas Capitol before protests began.
Original plans had been for ten activists to risk arrest inside the State Capitol. But one of the most effective nonlethal weapons police can use against activists is intimidation, whether subtle or overt.
It’s difficult to tell whether information leaks and some questionable choices in “security culture” — the term activists use for how to communicate and plan sensitive information about their direct actions — or just extreme alertness on the part of the troopers, who have the whole capitol complex wired with cameras resulted in the sudden appearance of troopers from the moment the group gathered. Multiple patrol cars were also spotted around the parking garage.
Isaac Brown and JoeAnthony Rodriguez (Veteran in Uniform) speak with Ben Stratmann while Chaplain Robert Hall records.
Though the bicycle trooper ostensibly came by to warn us that smoking was not allowed on the rooftop parking area, he had also radioed our location back to his superiors and the message was clear — they were aware. As GetEqual TX protesters stood in front of the Capitol giving statements about their actions, another bicycle trooper was watching from the background — she’s visible in the video at the top of this post. She introduced herself as “Cathy” and said her job was to ensure “everyone had their voice heard.”
Whatever advance intelligence they possessed, troopers made little attempt to prevent protests from beginning. Two groups occupied the offices of Senator Birdwell and Senator Bob Deuell, R-Greenville. When Deuell’s staff refused to negotiate with protesters, loud chanting began with almost a dozen activists crowded into the office. Next door, in Birdwell’s office, staff seemed to disarm the activists with politeness.
Birdwell’s Chief of Staff Ben Stratmann told me:
I know there were SB 237 protests and arrests next door to our office and in some other Senate offices, but we didn’t have any protesters in Senator Birdwell’s office. I had an opportunity to speak at length with some extremely polite gentlemen about their support of the bill.
These are the same polite conversations that activists have been having for months. Sometimes too polite — a staff member told GetEqual TX’s Iana Di Bona that Birdwell opposed SB 237 because it would make it harder for employers to fire a gay person that didn’t do their job.
In email, Stratmann denied that this statement represented Birdwell’s views:
Scandal got where it is by ramping up its storytelling to the point where nearly every episode contains what would be a full season’s worth of twists on other shows. Furthermore, Rhimes made the very smart decision to treat the first 13 episodes as a separate season of their own, then treat the so-called back nine as another arc. This decision brings with it some freedoms that cable dramas’ shorter episode orders boast over network dramas. But the series also taps into something indefinable in the political zeitgeist: As The West Wing defined the long twilight of the Clinton years, Scandal is the George W. Bush/Barack Obama TV show we didn’t know we needed. At its best, it plays like a slightly sci-fi dramatization of Glenn Greenwald’s blog, with soap elements added, as well as a hefty dose of romantic tragedy. In Scandal, there are only two things that hold true: No American institution—not governmental or corporate—has your best interests at heart, and human relationships are a kind of beautiful addiction, irresistible in the moment but spiraling outward to infect all they touch.
The first season of the show barely garnered good enough ratings to make it to renewal, but in the second season Scandal has become one of ABC’s top shows. It’s done this by creating powerful conversations on Twitter, according to policymic:
Scandal (@ScandalABC), one of ABC’s top rated dramas, which airs on Thursday evenings (10pm EST and 10 p.m. PST) is a great example of a show that has capitalized on the Twitter opportunity. On September 27, 2012, during the premiere of the show’s second season, ABC launched Scandal’s live-tweet campaign, offering its fans engaging, real-time conversation, updates and information. Scandal fans, also known as “Gladiators,” have been taking to Twitter ever since to interact with the entire cast and each other. According to the Hollywood Reporter, Scandal fans produce 2,200 tweets per minute when each episode first airs. Even the show’s lead writer, Shonda Rhimes (@shondarhimes), her writing team (@scandalwriters), and the show’s make-up team (@scandalmakeup) are joining in on the online conversation.
Scandal’s creative hashtagging style is proving to be effective as well. According to the same Hollywood reporter article, Scandal represents an average of five of the ten trending topics on Twitter feeds on Thursday evenings. Scandal’s social team releases theme-based hashtagsregarding specific upcoming episodes and/or story plots. The #WhoShotFitz campaign was launched during season two and instantly spread throughout twitter feeds, inspiring different theories, predictions and ideas around the assassination attempt of President Fitzgerald Grant, Tony Goldwyn’s character. When the show finally revealed the identity of the assassin, the network launched the #FreeHuck campaign immediately after to keep the online buzz going. Scandal has a created a natural rhythm of back and forth between new plots and storylines and fan feedback.
I confess I haven’t watched the show yet — but the buzz is making me reconsider. How about you? What TV shows are you watching?
Tonight’s musical selection is “Laser Beans” by Total Unicorn.
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MyFDL is the community site of progressive political blog Firedoglake. Anyone can participate by writing a diary, commenting on others’ diaries, or joining groups to find other people in your area. Content posted to MyFDL is the opinion of the author alone, and should not be attributed to Firedoglake.
