At least I stopped short of buying a desert scarf, okay?

[bodlon]

If you've been waiting in the wings for reasons to accuse me of being a hipster, here's a tasty bit of ammunition: I carry a Moleskine. Sometimes more than one.

Looking at my shoulder bag, lately I've been carrying a Moleskine, a mini Moleskine, a notepad I made out of copy paper and a tea box, and spiral-bound notebook. Occasionally I add a composition book.

Somehow, this doesn't seem excessive to me. The composition book, mini-Moleskine, and spiral notebook are three different journals, each with a distinct purpose. The regular Moleskine and the notepad get used for a lot of things, but mostly making notes on things, to-do lists, and what can only be described as an emergency band name list. I plan, eventually, to flip the roles on the regular and mini Moleskines, perhaps. Or maybe not.

Also, I have a plan in mind that may necessitate the addition of yet another notebook.

I could absolutely be doing almost all of this work on my netbook. It would possibly even be tidier and easy to use. After all, I can't CTRL+F in a Moleskine to find the list of things I need to buy at the local organic place vs. what I need to buy at a supermarket, or who's named what in my notes about a possible story I want to write. Even scarier, if I forget something on my writing desk, or don't have my bag with me, or -- horrors -- if something gets lost or stolen, I have no back-up.

On the other hand, I won't have the same problem I'm having right now with, say, my phone or my iPod Nano, both of which have met watery ends this month. If a Moleskine slips out of my pocket into a bucket of water, it's going to be damp but salvageable.

Physically writing things down, too, has a certain power that typing them into my netbook doesn't. It's an analog process in ways that technologies are only just starting to mimic with any real success. When I write poetry, it's almost always on paper. I can make a to-do list, I want to be able to cross things off for real instead of highlighting something and setting the font to strikethrough, or even sliding my finger across a screen to simulate the motion of a pen.

It's like there's some part of me that doesn't get that the thing happening is a real thing. The good chemicals don't happen.

I wonder, sometimes, if some of this is generational. I was fourteen in 1994, when computing and online communications really started taking off. Most of my life before that was notebooks and hand-copying things. I would write and re-write longhand near-obsessively. I could fill a composition book -- a thing I adopted my freshman year of high school by way of imitating someone else in my writing circle -- with first paragraphs. The physicality of text was at the core of my formative experiences with it.

On the other hand, things like correspondence and prose come more naturally to me on a computer than on paper. Just like it feels wrong to me to use a computer to write poetry, writing stories -- even flash pieces -- longhand is generally not a thing I do.

I wonder, too, how much of my notebook need comes of being a tactile person existing in a nearly touchless environment. If there is no one to hug, or to fall asleep against on the sofa, at least I can have a mutual arrangement with words. There's just enough disconnect between words I make on a screen and words I make with my hands. It's the same thing that keeps me painting on canvas instead of in pixels. Some things I need to be able to touch. Some things can't be behind glass and still work for me.

Sometimes, when I blog a thing, I print it and staple or clip it into a physical notebook. I write on it. It becomes a different thing. Sometimes different is bad, or imperfect, or I make a mistake and have to print another copy and try again. Sometimes different is better. I don't always understand why.

It is, as I so frequently say, a thing.

~*~

I'm not going to get particularly deep into a conversation about the debt ceiling and shenanigans in Washington, but I will say this:

I would rather pay slightly more tax, or ensure that others pay a fair amount of tax, than watch my mother lose her income and health care. I also like things like roads and libraries, 911, public transport, and agencies that at least make a token effort at keeping the land, air, and water from being poisonous. I especially do not enjoy feeling like I am being held hostage for the convenience of people who are extraordinarily well equipped to pay taxes, or that that convenience trumps my family's ability to exist, in spite of the fact that we have paid into the system for our entire working lives.

If that is socialism, fine. I am a giant, fucking socialist.

~*~

The DC Comics reboot thing is starting to take on some pretty epic proportions.

I think it's a bizarre choice to go for the massive do-over option. It's a big gamble -- people have a lot invested emotionally and materially in some of DC's current lines, and if it's a bust, what are they going to do? Roll it all back? -- and a full-line reboot can only be effective once in a great while. Like, 25 years, minimum. It seems risky and gimmicky to me, and their line about making history with them is faintly ridiculous. Am I supposed to believe that getting in on the ground floor now is going to be as meaningful as it would have been in the thirties? Really?

And then there are the (in fairness not entirely new, but freshly exacerbated by the reboot) problems with DC having very few women on staff, and their general treatment of properties that focus on female characters. In particular, I'm thinking about the treatment this woman got when she asked about these issues in panels at SDCC.

I can't help but think that if Dan DiDio can be sitting at a table at San Diego Comic Con and suggest that there's a lack of female talent in the comics industry, the man needs both his head and his eyes examined. I mean, seriously. If LA Weekly can find them and not make some cutesy comment about girls liking comics too -- hi Jean! -- so can Dan DiDio. Plus, if one believes one can easily gather a group of equally talented men, how is it a leap to believe that there are other women with as much talent and creative potential as Gail Simone has?

I also can't help but feel extraordinarily squeamish about the crowd's response, even if it doesn't surprise me overall. (And in fairness to DC fandom, there are some folks out there making some pretty amazing statements, including this group of Justice League cosplayers who both warm my heart and remind me why I don't own anything spandex.)

On the other hand, I'm not sure I'm comfortable with a full boycott of the sort that Randall Milholland seems to be endorsing. I'm not prepared to punish someone like Paul Cornell, who seems like a genuinely worthwhile person, has written some amazing books, and will be writing the relaunched Stormwatch (which features Apollo and Midnighter, two of the most badass out gay superheroes on the planet). I'm not prepared to punish Gail Simone either, even if I'm really uncomfortable with DC's decision making process with Batgirl.

It feels like an unpopular opinion, but what I want to do is cast a positive vote with my dollar and buy the stuff worth buying and prove to DiDio and his ilk that these stories and writers can sell. Buying Stormwatch and not Suicide Squad feels like a stronger message than just not buying either of them. And really, I buy so comics so infrequently (mainly an income issue, but also a matter of having time to read them), it'll be interesting to do these things in real time instead of just buying random trades.

This post has been mirrored from Christian A. Young's Dimlight Archive. To see it in its original format, visit dimlightarchive.com