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Well,
a while back I mentioned that I had finally procured one of my most
sought-after comics for my collection and I promised to write a bit
more on that later. It's a good thing I waited a bit, because the
original deal fell through. I had won a copy of Flash #123 on
eBay for less than $100 (a lot less than $100, actually), which was
considerably lower than any price I had seen in recent memory. At the
2006 Buckeye Comic Con, I didn't find a single copy of this book under
$250...and the copies that are in better shape usually go for much more
than that. Now the book that I won was not in the best condition
(in fact, the cover was detached) but the book was complete with no
missing pages and it would have looked fine to display on my "Wall of
Fame." I paid quickly after the auction's end and soon after came
the big day in which the issue finally arrived in the mail. But when I
opened the package, I found Flash #137 instead of Flash #123.
Aargh! I contacted the sellers who confirmed that they had
mistakenly sent my #123 to they guy that had won the #137. I was
asked to send the #137 back and assured that as soon as they received
my #123 back from the other guy, they would send it on to me.
Weeks passed. I had returned the #137 very quickly, but over
time, it became apparent that the fellow who had gotten my #123 had no
intention of returning it. After some discussion with the seller,
I received a full refund for my purchase. Flash #123 had slipped
through my fingers.
Flash #123 September, 1962
I
knew there was at least one very big regional comic convention coming
up in Detroit, so I called an acquaintance a comic store in Dayton to
ask him to keep an eye out for an affordable copy of Flash #123 at the
upcoming event. My expectations
were high and I wasn't disappointed this time around, because just 2
weeks later, I got a call from the guy who told me he had procured not
one, but two affordable copies of Flash #123. He explained that
he had another customer who wanted the book as well, and that both
copies were in comparable condition and priced the same – and just in
my price range at that!
I
made it down to the store a few days later to check out both
copies. One was bagged and the other was a CGC-graded issue
(2.0), enclosed in a sealed case of hard plastic. The bagged copy
had a small piece missing out of the right bottom corner, but it looked
pretty good otherwise, and I decided to buy that one so that I wouldn't
have to mess with the sealed case on the CGC copy. Who in the
hell wants a comic book locked in a sealed case, anyway? I like
to be able to read my issues at least once before putting them away or
displaying them.
While
I was there, he also showed me a copy of "Is This Tomorrow? America
Under Communism" which is a 1947 comic book that fed on
America's rabid anti-communist hysteria that followed WWII. An
old Dayton, Ohio-based comic series called "Treasure Chest" ran a
similar batch of stories back in the 1960's or so. This stuff was
really xenophobic, over-the-top material. The guy from the comic shop knew of my
interest in this sort of thing and explained that he picked up the book
with me in mind. Of course, I couldn't help but take that issue
off his hands along with my Flash #123.
So Flash #123 is finally a permanent addition to my collection. Time to rearrange my Wall of Fame!
If
you live outside of Ohio, you might have a hard time appreciating just
how dirty the politics have gotten as we approach the mid-term
elections. This year's round of political fighting has
included what is probably some of the most lurid and salacious
mudslinging in the history of modern politics and with just a few weeks
left to go, there's no sign of things getting better. The
Cincinnati Enquirer — a newspaper from a very conservative city, mind you — recently published a rundown of some of the more scandalous allegations from the recent campaigns for Ohio offices. But even this list doesn't include highlights (or are they lowlights?)
Like Mike DeWine's accusations that Sherrod Brown didn't pay his
unemployment taxes over a decade ago (which was later debunked by the
media) and DeWine's use of footage from the 9/11 attacks in his
negative campaign ads.
And
then, there's what might well be the biggest story of all in Ohio's
2006 elections: As an uncanny climax of months and months all
sorts of drama and political intrigue, Kenneth Blackwell — the current
Republican candidate for Ohio Governor and current Secretary of State —
might soon have the opportunity to officially disqualify his opponent on what is virtually the very eve of the mid-term election. from Dayton Daily News:
Republican
J. Kenneth Blackwell and Democrat Ted Strickland tangled on a wide
range of subjects Wednesday before Dayton Daily News reporters and
editors, but one issue dominated: Blackwell's role in the legal
challenge to Strickland's voting status.
On
Tuesday, Monty Lobb, assistant Ohio secretary of state, instructed the
Columbiana County Board of Elections to hold a hearing on a challenge
filed Oct. 4 by Jacquelyn Long of East Liverpool. The
county board tied 2-2 last week on whether to hear Long's challenge,
which asserts that Strickland's actual residence is in Columbus, not
Lisbon where he is registered to vote.
Depending on how the hearing goes, Blackwell in his status as secretary of state could determine the issue.
Just what's at stake is hard to say. (full article)
What's
at stake is actually very easy to say: It is basically the death of the
electoral process in Ohio...and it's hauntingly similar to the complete
failure of the national electoral process that we experienced in the
2000 elections. Of course, Ken Blackwell is somewhat of an expert
in dirty politics, having personally delivered Ohio to Bush &
Cheney in 2004.
I am certainly no Ted Strickland booster (especially given his support of HR4437), but sometimes there is a very clear choice between the lesser of two evils. And Strickland is definitely the lesser of two evils this time around.
Renowned poet and activist Nikki Giovanni had some harsh words for Blackwell
at a recent public appearance in Cincinnati. Cincinnati media was
really up in arms over her comments for a while, but Giovanni has
(rightfully) refused to apologize. And why should she apologize for telling
the truth, anyway? The fact of the matter is, Ken Blackwell has
proven her assessment to be correct time and time again.
Thankfully, Nikki is not one to back down, though, and she will
continue to tell people what they need to hear, whether they want to
hear it or not. Further Reading Ohio politics: Corruptus in Extremis greeklish.org Republican Ohio Secretary of State boasts about "delivering Ohio" to Bush from Raw Print
Late
Sunday afternoon, we got a call from a family friend who was just up
the street from our house at a garage sale. She told me that the guy
had a lot of comics for sale and, of course, I was interested right
away. I didn't have very high expectations, though, as Sunday
garage sales are pretty rare and given that it was almost 5:00 PM, I
figured the guy's stuff must have been pretty well picked over through
the course of Saturday and Sunday. Also, people who try to sell
comics at garage sales typically have very unreasonable
expectations. They often try to sell newer or relatively common
issues at cover price or higher. There's too much general
awareness of the collectibles market these days to allow for many "Antiques Roadshow"
finds at garage sales. This has also led to a kind of odd
situation in which people assume that they possess something of
substantial value when it is, in fact, relatively common. With
comics, people go one step farther and try to present their collectible
in a way that makes it look like it is well cared for and
valuable. With comics, they usually put single issues in big
Ziploc freezer bags or plastic binder sleeves to make it look like
their comics have been effectively preserved. But I digress...
One from the new batch:
JLI #9, January 1988
Within a few minutes, I was at the garage sale checking out the guy's
collection. He had a couple of boxes of different comics with a
sign indicating they were 25 cents each. Most of the issues were
from 1986 to 1992, which was pretty decent stint in my early
comics-reading life. DC issues far outnumbered Marvel stuff, which was
another plus for me. There was some crap in the boxes too, like as a
handful of coverless issues and a couple of Stuff and FHM
magazines (the latter of which I quickly took out of the boxes and
handed to the guy saying, "I don't want these.") After a quick look
through the boxes, I started to stack them up neatly into one box and,
without knowing how many issues there were, I told the guy I would give
him $30 for them. There was a brief silence and then the guy
said, "Yeah, I'll take $30." I finished stacking everything up
into a copy paper box (and also the lid of the box, as there was a bit
more than the box would hold) and paid the guy, asking him if he could
break one of the twenties that I handed to him. I guess it was
kind of crappy for me to ask him to make change after he gave me such a
good deal. I think he was a little annoyed with my relatively low
offer, but it was cold and late in the day and I figured he just wanted
to unload them. The guy's wife wanted him to help me to the car
with my stuff, but both times she told him to help me, he just shrugged
and said, "He's got it." At least I didn't end up having to pay
him a tip for helping with the box.
I got home and sorted out the contents of the box, finding a few bonuses like an issue of Future
magazine and a few paperbacks like Beyond Infinity and The Edgar Cayce Reader, Volume
2. I got rid of the issues without covers and a few other
mangled or stained issues, leaving me with a total of 289 "keepers"
(minus a few that are doubles of issues in my collection. There were no
real "big finds" in the box, but I have a lot of good reading material,
including a lot of post-Crisis Superman issues, some early '80's
Superboy issues, a bunch of newer Flash, Legion and Justice League
stuff (love those Justice League International/Justice League Europe
comics from the '80's) and some Marvel stuff here and there.
This is the third time I have bought a bulk lot of comics for my
collection. The first time was probably about 10 years ago when a
coworker brought in a few boxes of comics that he was having trouble
unloading at comic stores and used book shops. I looked through
his collection while he went on and on about all the good memories
about buying and reading the comics when he was in the military.
After he was done talking, I offered him $30 for his entire
collection. Man, he was annoyed – but he took the money after
all. I guess that makes me some kind of jerk. Oh well. That
batch was similar to the one I bought this weekend, but a little
smaller and there were quite a bit more Marvels in that bunch.
Good bathroom reading, for sure.
Another time, I bought the full run of Marvel's "New Universe"
titles at a toy show. I think I paid about $20 for the whole
lot. I'm still not sure how many were in that batch and I have
never gotten around reading them all. Probably not my best bulk
purchase, but I hated to see them just sitting there all unappreciated.
Yesterday, I lifted the lid on the Spider House
for the last time this season. Although it has only been a few
months, this time around has been the most active and the most heavily
populated Spider House since I created it several years ago. This
experience has helped to point out a few significant design flaws in
the Spider House which will need to be corrected before the next time
around.
The most problematic of these flaws is the relatively "escape proof"
design of the "roof" of the enclosure. I designed the roof to
allow for airflow while minimizing routes of escape for "spider
food" like crickets and flies. The problem here is that once egg
sacs from female spiders begin to hatch, the "spiderlings" aren't able to
wander far from their place of birth and large numbers remain
concentrated in the corners of the house. At one point in the
summer, I had about 3 egg sacs hatch at once, which yielded a couple of
hundred baby spiders in the Spider House. It was kind of crowded
in there for a while. But in this kind of situation, spiderlings
ultimately became easy prey for the adults in the house, which is kind
of unfortunate. I know from experience that if egg sacs hatch in
an enclosure with air holes that are a decent size (big enough for the
babies to exit, but small enough to keep the adults in), the
spiderlings will eventually stray outside of the enclosure. Along
the way, they leave tons and tons of little webs behind, coating the
outside walls of the enclosure. It sounds creepy, but it's pretty
cool.
A few weeks ago, I went kind of crazy catching funnel weavers when I found a whole slew of
them hiding in a large plant in our front yard. A couple of these
spiders ultimately emerged as the dominant residents of the Spider
House, spinning webs all through the various levels of the enclosure
and making short work of their main competition, which were the large
brown and red garden spiders. I took a picture of the web network
in the Spider House as it looks today, but after a couple of months of
spider activity, one might well imagine that the scene is pretty messy
and nasty.
I probably could have maintained the Spider House a bit longer, but
there are still quite a few unhatched egg sacs left and I figure that
if I leave the enclosure open and effectively end the experiment for
now, I will let a few hundred baby spiders free. This way, I’ll
have some time to reflect on the lessons learned from this year's
Spider House so that next year's experience is even better.
A view from the inside (roof) of the Spider House. Those little dots are baby spiders... and, yes, they are alive!
It
is probably accurate to say that most of us in the West think of
India’s caste system as a thing of the past. Discrimination against members of India’s lowest castes is, in fact, technically illegal in these days. But the caste system
— along with caste violence of the most brutal kind — is very much a reality in
parts of today’s India. Consider the story of Bant Singh, who was
the victim of a brutal assault in January 2006. Bant Singh has
now lost both arms and a leg to a caste-related attack that occurred in
the southern Punjab district of Mansa back in January 2006. The
details of the circumstances and consequences of the attack are
discussed extensively in the Frontline article, “Casteist assault”:
from Frontline (“India’s National Magazine”):
On
January 7, Bant Singh, a resident of Jhabbar in the southern Punjab
district of Mansa, was surrounded by a group of Jat youths from the
same village. The upper-caste men brutally beat him with iron rods.
Three days later, after gangrene set in, doctors amputated his
limbs. (full article)
Bant
Singh continues to undergo rehabilitative therapy at a hospital in
Delhi, but he certainly faces an extrodinary battle that is complicated
by the social and economic conditions of the enduring remnants of the
Indian caste system. In a recent bulletin, Radhika Menon detailed
the ongoing struggles of Bant Singh and his family:
Medical Rehabilitation of Bant Singh While
Bant Singh continues to defy the fetters imposed by disability
following the barbaric assault, he is currently facing several
difficulties. He is unable to move on his own, a surgery is pending in
the leg that was left intact but dysfunctional. He has 8 very
young children to look after; his piggery—the work that had freed him
from the feudal bonds of being tied to the landlords' fields—has
collapsed and there are multiple medical complications. What needs to be done Bant
Singh's courage will be a source of inspiration to all but we need not
be mere spectators to the tragedy unleashed on him. We can express our
solidarity by helping him access the best possible medical
rehabilitation, so that he is back on his feet. Doctors have pointed
out that with the current developments in medical technology, it would
not be impossible to fix artificial limbs, both arms and legs, for him.
Given the nature of amputation and the extent of prosthetic aids
required, it is an expensive procedure but this is also necessary to
prevent his organs from getting atrophied. The
St. Stephen's Hospital, Delhi, is attempting to medically rehabilitate
Bant Singh. While this procedure has started, there is an urgent need
for funds so that the best possible prosthetic aids can be acquired for
him. We urgently seek your financial support for this purpose. Bant
Singh's rehabilitation would give all struggling people immense courage
and hope. We owe it to Bant Singh to enable him to walk again.
It looks like the Greek monopoly on feta cheese
is simply not enough to keep their economy strong. The celebrated
cradle of Western civilization and birthplace of reason and democracy,
has now written a new page in the annals of political economy. Under
pressure from the EU because of it’s budget deficit, the Greek
government has come up with a rather...um... innovative way to bring it’s GDP on to a more even par with its budget deficit:
Athens
has announced that its economy is 25% bigger than thought thanks, in
part, to the round-the-clock duties of the country's prostitutes, who
were known as hetairai in ancient times.
The
Greek authorities are revising the country's gross domestic product
(GDP) after deciding that the black market should be included in the
figures.
Manolis
Kontopyrakis, the head of the national statistics service, told
Reuters: "The revised GDP will include some money from illegal
activities, such as money from cigarette and drinks smuggling,
prostitution and money laundering."
Greece's
economic output was €180bn (£128bn) in 2005 and is expected to rise to
€194bn this year. The black economy is estimated at up to €60bn,
according to Reuters. (full story)
Bootlegging and prostitution revenue figures in the GDP? Let’s see if it measures up to what we know about GDP...
...(GDP) is a measure of National
Income. It is the total value of all goods and services produced over a
given time period (usually a year) excluding net property income from
abroad. It can be measured either as the total of income, expenditure
or output.
Hmm...I
guess the bootlegging covers the "goods" end of things. And
prostitution definitely involves "servicing" of one sort or another. But
a proposal like this has to be based on some sort of intensive field
research, doesn’t it? I wonder if Kontopyrakis paid for the research
with his own money or if he used government funds in his study of price
structures, exchange rates, and the like.
At
any rate, the silver lining in Greece’s cloud of vice and profiteering
might ultimately come with an even higher cost at the end of the day.
Not only will Athens have to contend with some unwelcome scrutiny from
the EU over their new GDP figures, they also will face the likelihood
of losing money should their inflated GDP numbers ultimately be
accepted by the EU.
The
country’s newfound wealth raised eyebrows in Brussels, because it means
Greece will find it easier to bring its budget deficit below the
European Union’s 3 per cent of GDP ceiling.
Having
previously been found guilty of underestimating the size of its budget
deficit, Greece’s new GDP calculation will be scrutinised by Eurostat,
the EU statistics agency.
"Member
states revise their figures regularly, but this is quite a significant
revision and needs to be checked," said a spokeswoman for Joaquín
Almunia, EU monetary affairs commissioner.
Mr
Almunia’s aides admit they were surprised by Athens’ announcement,
which was not discussed in advance with Brussels or other EU finance
ministers. Typically, such upward GDP revisions are of between 1-2 per
cent, although Greece and Italy have each previously made big revisions.
[...]
Among
the snags of becoming so much richer, Greece will have to contribute
more to the EU budget and could lose €470m ($597m, £318m) a year in EU
funds earmarked for poor countries after a review in 2010. (full story)
Best
of luck to the Greek government in this new wacky and sensational
scheme. It kind of gives new meaning to the phrase "fetishism of commodities," doesn't it?
Efharisto
-- once again -- to the superior intellect of Antonis, who is the
honorary Minister of Cultural Affairs for greeklish.org.
And
then, there's what might well be the biggest story of all in Ohio's
2006 elections: As an uncanny climax of months and months all
sorts of drama and political intrigue, Kenneth Blackwell — the current
Republican candidate for Ohio Governor and current Secretary of State —
might soon have the opportunity to 
