Wait, what? I thought you said something like "people will pay for the privilege to be mistaken for postal workers" but you obviously couldn't have said that.

You must have said something like "We're going to reduce costs for uniforms by contracting them out to a private maker" or something.

Right?

No?

You did say you were going to sell a line of official Post Office fashion?

No seriously, what did you say? I can't hear sometimes.

First the end of Saturday mail, now a new clothing line. The U.S. Postal Service is taking unprecedented steps to make itself relevant and profitable these days.

Oh, you wuz serious?

The cash-strapped agency announced plans on Tuesday to launch a new line of all-weather apparel and accessories sometime next year.

...

The Postal Service chose “Rain Heat & Snow” as its own brand name...

Only menÂ’s apparel and accessories will be available initially, but the agency plans to add a womenÂ’s line in the future, it said Tuesday.

That's crazy, delaying the women's line. I expect that women will demand these articles equally as strongly as men.

“This agreement will put the Postal Service on the cutting edge of functional fashion,” agency licensing manager Steven Mills said in a statement. “The main focus will be to produce Rain Heat & Snow apparel and accessories using technology to create ‘smart apparel’ — also known as wearable electronics.”

Betts said the Postal Service plans to sell its apparel and accessories in premium department stores and specialty stores...

This is not going to happen.

This whole plan is, like many plans, a list of things that aren't going to happen.

The Postal Service decided to launch a clothing line as a way to promote and strengthen its brand, as well as to generate money, according to Betts.

I predict this will "generate" as much "money" as the AoS t-shirt bonanza.

Posted by: Ace at 04:23 PM | Comments (254)
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Wow.

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Posted by: Ace at 03:32 PM | Comments (407)
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Did you know this was out? Did you know they did two hour-plus animated films (each about 70 minutes) which faithfully retell Frank Miller's 1986 The Dark Knight Returns?

I didn't. I only saw this on Amazon searching for something completely different, not even about Batman or superheroes. I think what happened was... the Colorado Batman Shooter. Because The Dark Knight Returns is a gory story asking all sorts of questions about power, force, anarchy, and one man's (possibly fascist) determination to make a difference, I think they might have sort of buried this.

(In fact, I think the Colorado Shooter got his kill-everyone-in-the-theater fantasy from this book, which does in fact have the Joker killing everyone in the theater at a David Letterman-like host's show.)

Short review: The animation is somewhere between the character modeling in the comic and, I think, Aeon Flux, if you remember the look of that. The shadowing, I mean, mostly. Not the ultra-thin character models.

Actually, that's the dominant look in most of DC's animated stuff.

As far as story: It's almost all in here. One major change was they cut Batman's voice-over "narration" (actually his journal entries) and a great number of good lines ("Rubber bullets... Promise") were contained in that, as well as Frank Miller's attempt at a Chandler-like noir poetry. So that stuff's gone.

That narration really sold it early on that Batman had lost a step. He was always commenting "Stupid old man" about his mistakes, or "This would be a good way to die... but not good enough." Without that narration, though, Batman just seems to come out of retirement without having lost a step at all -- thus sort of losing the main thrust of the story (Batman dealing with his faded power). In the comic book, Batman didn't really become Batman again until he defeated the Mutant Leader; in the animated version, he's Batman from Moment One. (See what I did there? And by the way, "the Mutants" aren't really mutants; they're a street gang which has decided to embrace the idea of devolution.)

If you're a casual comic book fan, I don't know if I'd recommend this. Be on alert, it is extremely gory and grim (the PG13 rating is a bit misleading, because you can't rate a "dark and ugly tone" of things). A few changes have been made -- wasn't it suggested the Joker raped and beat Selina Kyle into submission? Well, here it's some stupid "hypnotic drug" in Joker's make-up.

That said, despite some things being toned down a little, I was actually surprised how brutal it all still was. Things really kick up a level in Part 2, which features the Joker (portrayed here as something of a soft-spoken ambisexual) casually gunning people down at a fair, randomly. There's something chilling about that -- no Big Bomb that's going to "turn everyone's DNA into mutant DNA," no huge McGuffin... just a psychotic shooting teenagers in the back at a fair.

For fans of the work: Although there are some changes in it, most not for the better, it's pretty darn close to the comic. Barely anything has been taken out (except for the narration).

What is striking about this story is that it's so pure id. Frank Miller turned off all his internal editors. He didn't care that he was, for example, drawing some imagery that would strike bien pensant critics as overtly pro-fascist. He didn't care that he had Commissioner Gordon embrace the old Bircher-ish conspiracy theory that FDR permitted Pearl Harbor to be bombed. He didn't care that he'd annoy feminists by portraying aging Selina Kyle and Lana Lang as overweight and unattractive, nor that Batman's new Robin is a Hot Young Thing. And he didn't care that the possibly sado-homoerotic relationship between the Joker and the Batman climaxed in a pink... Tunnel of Love.

Really Frank Miller? Really?

He didn't care about any of that, what this meant, what that meant, what this implied, what this suggested. He just seemed to write from the id, and conjured up some sort of deranged nightmare version of Batman and his ugly world.

It was bracing then. It's still bracing.

But if you don't already know the story: Be aware, this is an attempt to do a sort of revisionist Batman story. So many elements will strike you as "Not Batman at all." Which is True. DC has officially clarified that this story is not part of the continuity of the Batman we know, but in fact takes place on an alternate earth casually called "The Dark Knight Universe."

But it is a surprisingly weird little tale. Definitely not your cookie-cutter standard Hollywood project, where everything is calculatedly inoffensive. It's interesting, because when a writer seems like he's willing to go anywhere, he seems dangerous, and that's kind of interesting for a change.

And the final fight between Batman and his true Arch-Nemesis -- Superman -- is great.

Oh Crap I Forgot: The book is set in 1986. So is the animated version. That means Reagan is the president, and he is depicted as... not a quite a dullard, but a sort of darn-tootin' damn-the-torpedoes addled old man.

I completely forgot this, until steevy pointed out Miller wrote this "while still a lefty."

So there is that "bias," if you want to call it that. I don't even think that it's bias-- this book has the sort of juvenile piss-on-everything tone of the angry teenaged semi-man. So everything gets pissed on, except Batman and his main allies.

Miller actually wrote the book as a reaction to his early midlife crisis-- when he turned 30, he realized he was now almost older than Batman, and apparently this made him confront the fact that he was no longer a younger man... I think that sort of Rage Against the Dying of the Light thing comes through, not just in the obvious plot of the thing, but in the feel of it. It feels like a lot of young-man's rage is being channeled.

Trailers... below. Remember, they did it two parts, to get that extra $4 out of you.

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Posted by: Ace at 02:41 PM | Comments (138)
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And other Deep Thoughts from our lightweight prettyboy.

Some good analysis from David Foster. Responding to Jonathan Chait's bafflement over why the wise, moderate Obama would nominate such a dangerous ignoramus, Foster answers:

[A]s far as old Bill Occam and I are concerned, the most plausible explanation for why President Obama nominated Chuck Hagel is that . . . he wanted to. He thinks Chuck Hagel will be effective in administering the national-security policy of candidate Obama circa 2007 or 2008, and even of President Obama circa 2009. And thatÂ’s the policy President Obama is interested in pursuing in his second term. In other words, the reason President ObamaÂ’s defense nominee sucks is that President ObamaÂ’s defense policy sucks.

While the earnestly consternated in the political middle don’t seem to get this, the Hagel cheerleaders on both of their political flanks do, and they’re super psyched about it. Where I see in Hagel a man whose ceiling as SecDef is ineffectual bumbler disliked by Pentagon lifers (and he has no floor), these nouveau-America-Firsters, left and right, see a man who will preside bravely over a gradual withdrawal of the United States from whole theaters of geopolitics — and they positively beam at the prospect. But they are missing something else. In their war fatigue, they have refused to reckon with Hagel’s record as a poor organizational leader and domineering, ineffective manager of people; with his amorphous views and tenuous grasp of policy detail; and with his unremarkable intellect.

They ignore all this because they naively and narrowly view Hagel as above all else an “anti-war” figure....

The alternative to Hagel isn’t “more war” or the well-groomed love child of Dick Cheney and the Jewish Lobby. It’s basic strategic competence. It’s a man equal to the dangerous world he’ll be asked to stand sentry over.

Maybe the best way to illustrate what the far left, far right, and dead center are missing about Hagel is with the following dilemma: HagelÂ’s foreign-policy views are clearly to the left of the presidentÂ’s rhetoric for the last couple of years. ThatÂ’s not even debatable.

I like how Foster cuts to the obvious. We don't do enough of that. There are so many commentators now, all vying to say something clever and counterintuitive, that the obvious (and usually accurate) answer is ignored 90% of the time.

That won't get you hits, after all. It's not clever. It doesn't demonstrate that you, the Maker of Theories, are clever yourself.

It doesn't advertise you.

Now, why on earth would Chuck Hagel insist that Israel negotiate with a group directly funded by Iran?

Well, Chuck Hagel's speaking gigs are funded by Iran, too.

That's not really clever. That's just the fact of it.

It's About Competence: And Hagel doesn't have it.

Posted by: Ace at 01:34 PM | Comments (238)
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Eh, I don't care about Kate Middleton, and I certainly don't care about this of a writer, but (redacted, here's the link).

I've actually now skimmed the offending article, which I only previously saw quoted, and I think it's the British tabloid media making a scandal out of nothing.

The essay is a sharp-tongued critique on the image-making apparatus of the royal family (and royals through history) as well as the image-making apparatus of courtiers and media. It's really not about Kate Middleton specifically, though that is a jumping off point for the essay.

Apologies, story retracted, sorry I posted this without reading the essay, which can be found here.

Note the essay is still negative and critical; and yes, she does bring up a lot of Stepford Bride imagery regarding Middleton. But the object is not really Kate Middleton, nor her looks.

Again, not exactly.

It strikes me overall as a perfectly fair essay to write -- bitter and tart, sure, but completely in-the-bounds -- and not one which should be jumped up into some Crime Against the State.

Posted by: Ace at 12:35 PM | Comments (362)
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Illegally, I should note, but the headline was already way too long.

EPA Region 8 administrator James Martin is resigning this week, according to a press release from Sen. David Vitter (R., La.). Martin faces a congressional probe for allegedly using a private email account to circumvent disclosure requirements.

Bob Perciasepe, the current acting EPA administrator, also used a private account to send emails to other EPA officials, Vitter said his office has discovered.

The Most Transparent Administration In History

I guess America really likes ploys on words.

Posted by: Ace at 11:58 AM | Comments (167)
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From @comradearthur in the sidebar: This is science now, right? Taking a poll?

Well, they took a poll. Global Warming lost.

This used to give Michael Crichton fits. Over and over again he would almost have a stroke saying This is not how science works. You do not take a "poll" to establish a proposition. The very idea that you are taking a poll of what people believe rather than what they have proven demonstrates, from the first words you've spoken, that they haven't proven anything.

It's a point so simple and foundational it's hard to get across properly.

Posted by: Ace at 11:43 AM | Comments (112)
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Outstanding.

Posted by: Ace at 11:09 AM | Comments (242)
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A lot of people complain of bread and circuses and cults of personality and endless diversions.

Let me tell you, I see this Tea Party thing as getting to be just that.

So, what we have here is a professional political fundraising organization accusing another professional political fundraising organization of not being pure enough.

This is childishness. This is turf warfare. This is Yankees vs. Mets, for adults instead of young boys.

At what point do I actually have to sign Loyalty Oaths?

Yay team, I guess? Will there be mascots and Foam Fingers at some point? Will they shoot out team t-shirts to us out of air cannons at rallies?

I don't feel like this is politics, or political philosophy, or anything. It seems more clownishly carnival-like at every turn.

I feel like we are collectively being exploited -- and permitting ourselves to be exploited -- by utilization the easily-activated human tendency to think in terms of teams and tribes, which leads to personalization of and emotional investment in subjects which are actually quite impersonal and which ought to be considered with the chilly remove of reason, not the rah-rah of the We'll Get 'Em Next Year zeal of the dedicated fan.

To some extent effectively relies upon just this -- and I wouldn't jettison it.

But this intramural stuff? Does literally everything now have to be Rah-Rah and Go Team Go?

Posted by: Ace at 10:34 AM | Comments (446)
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Reporters, both male and female, openly flirting with the president.

Oh, and then this just happened: David Axelrod formally joins NBC. NBC's been cozying up to him for five years; they finally got their man.

At the link, Chuck Todd explains patiently that the media has no bias whatsoever against conservatives -- it's just that conservatives are straight-up insane.

Posted by: Ace at 10:15 AM | Comments (166)
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