Geoffrey sent this picture with the note:

“first try on of the new mask. extra creepy. kind of mexican-wrestling rorschach. i’ll send you a better one when i have the full costume on. just thought this one was funny enough to share.”

Props for copying the Rorschach shape from a specific (and dramatically important) panel of the comic. That’s from page 23 of issue 12, where the R-man’s leaving Adrian Veidt’s Antarctica hideout.

You can’t have verisimilitude without the ‘tude.

Check out this out: That’s Jesse as you-know-who. (He’s either here or here… MySpace is f***ing with my browser…) I think we have an early favorite, people. Comments? Observations? Trash talk? Let’s hear it…

On a somewhat related note: Is anyone dressing up on Halloween as a snakehead fish? I say somewhat related because the snakehead is kind of like the freshwater version of Rorschach… meting justice to transgressive carp, bass, and catfish. His motto is “run a gambling den, lose a fin.”

Also, the mullet is the fish version of Dr. Manhattan.

All right, now three people–Spacejunk42, Geoffrey, and Shawn–have written to say they’re dressing up as Rorschach for Halloween, and they’re using my instructions for making a Rorschach costume. Which is cool!

But give something back to the Surly Robot. Send me a picture of yourself as Rorschach! Also, if you get laid the night you wear your Rorschach costume, you have to send a picture of the girl in her costume.

True story: I wore my Rorschach to my friend Krantoor’s party, which ended early. So I’m walking home as Rorschach and I pass this house where there’s a party going on and it sounds great. At the time, I was making an effort to crash at least one party every year, so I said what the hell.

Well, let me tell you… chicks dig Rorschach! Not enough to go home with me, but still. The attached photo is of some of the women I talked to that night.

To state the obvious: If a guy’s wearing a Rorschach mask, a girl can pretty much project on him anything she wants to see. That’s good news for you, younsters.

Send me stories, pictures, and tips for making a better Rorschach costume. It’s on!

The man who wrote The History of Public Access Television says that history may be coming to an end. Here’s his take on the three-way dance between access, government, and telecommunication companies that may spell the death of this beautiful, quirky institution.

Threat to Access”
By Bill Olson
May 17, 2007

You might recognize my name as the person who wrote an essay called “The History of Public Access Television. (www.geocities.com/iconostar/ history-public-access-TV.html). Sadly, that history may be coming to an end, thanks to efforts by AT&T to do away with local franchise agreements.

Currently in Wisconsin, AT&T has 16 lobbyists working the statehouse, trying to pass the bills written by their corporate lawyers. AB 207 & SB 107 were written to make it easier for phone companies like AT&T to offer “video services” (cable TV) by doing away with the requirement to negotiate franchise agreements with local governments. It would also do away with PEG (Public, Education and Government Channel) fees, requirements to serve an entire community (including impoverished neighborhoods) and a host of consumer protections.

AT&T has failed to pass a national bill along these lines, so now they are going state by state. They have already facilitated the passing of similar legislation in 11 states, and if they haven’t come to your state yet, they will.

AT&T is so intent to abolish public access TV in Wisconsin that it has singled it out for special requirements engineered to make this valuable service impossible to operate, including that we broadcast no fewer than 12 hours of new locally-produced programming every day, the elimination of PEG fees and that we pay for the equipment to send our signal to the cable companies.

For us, any one of these would put us out of business.

In Wisconsin, AT&T and its supporters have kept the bill on the fast track as much as possible. Less than two months after the bills were introduced, they were up for a vote. We could’ve been abolished in early May 2007. Our supporters in the legislature tried introducing amendments and tried to slow the bills down by sending them to the Joint Finance Committee.

Voting was along party lines. In both houses, all the Democrats voted to send their bill to the JFC, and all Republicans voted against it. The Assembly is Republican controlled, so the bill stayed there, and in fact, they recently passed it. The Senate voted by three votes to send their bill to the JFC where it’s not expected to be taken up again until after dealing with the state budget. We’ve been told we probably have until September.

One can’t really say that the Republican are the villains and the Democrats are the heroes; since the phone companies are organized and the cable companies aren’t, many liberal groups support these bills. And AT&T, apparently dismayed by the party-line voting, has recently hired their 16th lobbyist – Joe Wineke, the state’s Democratic chair.

Republican Assembly Representative Terry Moulton introduced an amendment that was added to AB 207 before it passed. Mr. Moulton as been saying and writing that he has saved public access TV with this amendment, but he only created a 3-year delayed reaction. Three years after the bill is signed into law (if it’s signed into law as currently written), public access TV will be put out of business.

So there is some hope: We have until September (possibly) to defeat or change the law. We are currently circulating a petition to urge legislators to add amendments that would reduce our revenue from PEG fees, but keep the fees in place, keeping us alive. The local city council (we broadcast live city council meetings) unanimously passed a resolution supporting us. We have supporters, we have a little time. We’ll see what happens.

* * *

Bill Olson
www.BillOlsonVideo.com
(715) 835-6446
iconostar@yahoo.com

Damn, I am so sick of you people asking to see the first issue of “Poo-Flinging Monkey.” Here it is, you greedy bastards. Now quit bugging me.

Further proof that I was born to play Rorschach in the upcoming Watchmen movie. This is a shot of me in character as Burgler Sam Sam the Mugger during the shooting of “Mug,” a video project by my friend and Hoppervideo.net auteur Rob Parrish.

I’ve got experience playing guys who wearing stocking masks. Why wouldn’t I get the part of Rorschach?

Shortly after this picture was taken, Arlington’s finest arrived in three squad cars demanding to know why a guy in a stocking mask was standing in the middle of Glebe Road videotaping passing cars (actually, only pretending to videotape passing cars, but they couldn’t know that). Rob explained the project, and the cops were cool about it. “I’m all for free speech,” said the officer who spoke to us. “Besides, a real terrorist wouldn’t walk around in a stocking mask.”

I have to say, we’ve got a pretty good police force here. They’re on the ball, but not in your face. The only time I’ve seen them freaking out was on 9-11. And considering that one of the hijacked planes crashed in their jurisdiction, that’s pretty understandable.

You remember Rorschach from the Watchmen? silly question–of course you do.

Well, Trent sent me a link to the first picture of Rory from the upcoming Watchmen movie. Check it out:
http://movies.ign.com/articles/771/771947p1.html

The article says the part of Rorschach hasn’t been cast yet, which means I still have a shot. The photo here is me in my Halloween costume, circa. 1992. It’s the role I was born to play!

My luck is nothing if not consistant. Case in point: I find a comic book blog I really, really like called “Seven Hells.” I crack up reading the Seven Deadly Signs of villiany series, and I find out that the blogger, Devon Sanders, works in D.C. at Big Monkey Comics. That’s just across the river! Cool!

Then, the punchline–he just this week put “Seven Hells” to rest. D’oh!

Still, I’ve got a backlog of nearly two years to work my way through… Maybe Devon will come out of retirement if enough of us leave comments on his blog (hint hint).

Lefty bloggers enjoy pointing out the factual errors in Ann Coulter’s writing. Now I know why–it’s easy and fun! Coulter parts ways with reality with such frequency, you don’t have to get very far into her columns to find a glaring inaccuracy. Take her December 27 installment, which begins:

(NOTE: This is an updated version of a column by Ann Coulter that first ran six years ago in December.)

President Bush’s Kwanzaa message this year skipped the patently absurd claim of years past that: “African-Americans and people around the world reflect on African heritage during Kwanzaa.” Instead, he simply said: “I send greetings to those observing Kwanzaa.”

Her updates must not have included any fact-checking. The President’s 2006 Kwanza greeting begins:

I send greetings to those observing Kwanzaa.

During the seven days of Kwanzaa leading up to the New Year, friends and family come together in a spirit of love and joy to honor their rich African heritage, reflect on the Seven Principles, and give thanks for the blessings of freedom and opportunity.

Yes, Bush has dropped the patently absurd claim that people “reflect on African heritage,” asserting instead that they “honor their rich African heritage.” Thank you for clearing that up, Ann.

This is just the first 60 or so words of a 900+ word column. I could continue hunting for misleading and/or inaccurate statement, but it’s too easy. In fact, I think that’s exactly what Coulter wants. Every hour that liberal writers spend picking at her columns is an hour they don’t spend doing anything useful, like canvassing, fundraising, or community service.

Fellow bloggers, don’t fall into the trap! Walk away from Coulter’s insidious electronic flypaper. Be free! Hug a child! Live, damn you, live!

UFO lovers may get the cold shoulder from the NSA (see last entry), but the French government will soon give them a kiss on either cheek. According to Reuters, the France’s version of NASA is going to publish an archive of 1,600 UFO incidents online. Sacré bleu!