MY CRITICAL FACULTIES ARE IMPAIRED. I CANNOT READ. MY CRITICAL FACULTIES ARE IMPAIRED. I CANNOT READ.

I make a joke comparing Dawkins to the Borg, the Cybermen and the Daleks. ("He's like a rather ridiculous hyper logical robot in TV science fiction serial.")

Someone takes me to be insinuating that Dawkins wants to kill everyone who doesn't agree with him, as due to my use of the Dalek catch-phrase "exterminate". He goes so far as to invoke the blood libel, forsooth.

I read back over the essay, realize that gosh-dammit you could read it that way because I hadn't done enough set-up for the "Dalek" gag. If I had written "exterminate! exterminate" or "ex-ter-min-ate" instead of "exterminate" the ambiguity wouldn't have arisen. I clarify my point, and make an alteration to the text to fix it.

The original critic continues to repeat the original point (which I have conceded) as if nothing had happened.

Some time ago I wrote an essay called "The Impossibility of Argument in the Mind of Someone On the Internet". I do rather wish I'd stopped at that point.

Yes, indeed it is "only a joke"; and yes indeed you can say hurtful things under the cover of "joking". But respond to the joke I actually made, not the one that I have made it clear that I didn't make.  "Ha-ha Dawkins is a bit like a robotic sci fi baddie" not "Ha-ha Dawkins wants to kill everybody in the whole wide world."

Even if you think that the exact letter of the text could be read in the second way, it's not fair to continue reading it that way after I have explained how I intended it to be read. It means you are focusing, at best, on a stylistic problem (Andrew sometimes allows ambiguity to creep into his jokes) rather than on substantive point (Andrew thinks some of the new atheists are ridiculous because of their obsession with logic and nothing but.)

It is a little like arguing with a Dalek about religious texts.

"CHRISTIANS BELIEVE THAT NAUGHTY SCHOOL CHILDREN SHOULD BE EXECUTED."

"Er, no, actually, I have never met one who does believe that."

"CHRISTIANS BELIEVE THAT NAUGHTY SCHOOL CHILDREN SHOULD BE EXECUTED. IT SAYS SO ON PAGE 143 VERSE 16 OF THE APPENDIX TO THE APOCRYPHA".

"But they don't interpret that passage as meaning that, and never have done; in fact, they specifically think that those pages have lapsed."

"AREN'T YOU LISTENING? CHRISTIANS BELIEVE IN STONING NAUGHTY CHILDREN. IT SAYS SO IN THEIR BOOK. IT SAYS SO IN THEIR BOOK. IT SAYS SO IN THEIR BOOK."

See also: flying horses.

Not that the interpretation of my internet essays is as complex and controversial as Biblical hermenuitics, of course.

It just sometimes feels that way.

If we are quoting C.S Lewis, something which we hardly ever do in this forum, surely the relevant passage is from The Four Loves:

"Another time, when I had been addressing an undergraduate society and some discussion (very properly) followed my paper, a young man with an expression as tense as that of a rodent so dealt with me that I had to say, "Look, sir. Twice in the last five minutes you have as good as called me a liar. If you cannot discuss a question of criticism without that kind of thing I must leave." I expected he would do one of two things; lose his temper and redouble his insults, or else blush and apologise. The startling thing is that he did neither. No new perturbation was added to the habitual malaise of his expression. He did not repeat the Lie Direct; but apart from that he went on just as before. One had come up against an iron curtain. He was forearmed against the risk of any strictly personal relation, either friendly or hostile, with such as me. 

Behind this, almost certainly, there lies a circle of the Titanic sort—self-dubbed Knights Ternplars perpetually in arms to defend a critical Baphomet. We—who are they to them—do not exist as persons at all. We are specimens; specimens of various Age Groups, Types, Climates of Opinion, or Interests, to be exterminated. Deprived of one weapon, they coolly take up another. They are not, in the ordinary human sense, meeting us at all; they are merely doing a job of work—spraying (I have heard one use that image) insecticide."

Is Richard Dawkins Planning To Kidnap Little Sir Hugh Of Lincoln and Throw Him Down A Well?

No.

So, happy birthday then, Jack Kirby
You were born
97 years ago today.

You were the primary creative force behind
Marvel Comics

Although I think Stan Lee had some input as well
Particularly with respect to the
Dialogue
So I obviously hate you
And everything you stand for





(I wrote a book. George and Joe and Jack and Bob (and me))

I wrote an article. About funnybooks. Here it is: Are the "words" printed in a "comic book" actually particularly "important." I am still quite pleased with it, actually.

Two years later a man on the internet wrote a reply. 

Here's the very note. This is what he wrote. 

God almighty, this has to be the most misguided, wrong-headed, HATE-FILLED pile of nonsense I've seen online in months. Not only is it an insult to Jack Kirby, it'a slso an insult to Don Mcgregor. That's knocking TWO of the BEST writers to have worked for Marvel!!

One thing a lot of people seem completely unaware of. Jack Kirby ALWAYS wrote his own stories, from the beginning. Since the 1930s. It's only in the 1960s that he was prevented by a no-talent hack "editor" (and I used that word loosely) from writing his own dialogue.

Lee's dialogue on Kirby's stories is often like taking a beautiful, just-constructed building, and DEFACING it with spray-painted graphitti.

And you know what? When it comes to "humor", guys like Al Hartley & Ernie Hart were FUNNIER. And SO was Jack Kirby.

I was going to make a point about this, but I think I will sit in a dark room and listen to folk music instead.