How is this guy married?

If you've been reading my blog, you may remember where I talked about the verdict in the latest Gaiman v. MacFarlane case, here. If not, you may want to go read that post for context.

MacFarlane is one of the founders of Image comics. Another one of the founders is Erik Larsen, who earned his fame largely the same way MacFarlane did - being the art guy on the front-running Spiderman title. After the biggest artists in the biz left Marvel to form image, he settled into doing the Savage Dragon, a character of his own creation, and he's been doing it faithfully ever since.

Once upon a time, I rather liked Savage Dragon. A superhero who's also a cop? Without it being a secret identity? So, a super-cop? Well, sure Robocop did it first, but it was still territory that was mostly untrod at that point. The comic eventually left this original premise though before that happened I'd long since lost interest in the title. At some point, his protagonist's backstory was explained (apparently he's an intergalactic conqueror tyrant with amnesia - who knew?)

Larsen's often lauded for his energetic, out-there imagination. The sort of imagination that can think up such amazing villain concepts as Dung.

Yep. Somehow, the guy gets lauded for this sort of imagination. And I guess it is kinda impressive, if you're, I dunno, 14 years old and still think farts are really funny.

Anyway...

Besides his crazy imagination, Erik Larsen's also known for putting his foot in his mouth. So after the verdict was handed down regarding his friend and business partner Todd MacFarlane, Larsen just couldn't keep his big mouth shut:

"it seems patently unfair that Neil could claim ownership of "Spawn on a horse" much less that an all woman jury, charmed by his English accent and sad story would award him that.


...


The McFarlane/Gaiman thing still burns me up in the basic unfairness of it all. As you said, "Had the judge asked them, I'm sure the all-female jury would have been happy to give Neil the rights to Spawn, Todd's house and cars, Madonna's uniform from A League of Their Own and the Mark McGuire baseball and anything else Neil expressed an interest in" and that's not right."

Seriously, I couldn't make this shit up. Well, I could, but why would I when Erik makes sure I don't have to? He's basically blaming the verdict on them wimmins being all swoony over Gaiman's accent.

Way to be classy there, Erik.

An Early Census Salvo, Blog Stats, and Awesomeness

The Federation of Francophone and Acadian Communities of Canada is making legal manoeuvres to get the courts to undo the changes Harper's made to the census. As the group claims:

The federation argues that Ottawa's move violates not only the Official Languages Act, but also the Constitution's Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

It says that without reliable data about the francophone presence in Canada, the quality of government services in French could suffer.

No kidding. I'm not sure that's going to work for the court - without the census, government services all across the board are going to suffer. But it's true that French-Canadians will probably see some of the worst of it (right after the immigrant communities, First Nations, students, the disabled, the elderly, etc., etc.) Which, again it's worth pointing out, is exactly the sort of thing Harper wants to happen with this move. It's certainly not to make a stronger census, for reasons I went into previously; in fact, Industry Minister Tony Clement, who's in charge of StatsCan and has been put in the unenviable position of having to champion this move, previously pleaded with Harper not to do this.

The FFACC is doing this legal action as a last resort - as they said, they "tried everything, everything we could, short of kidnapping people, to meet them."

WELL YOU DIDN'T TRY HARD ENOUGH! Stopping short of kidnapping? Show some dedication, you pantywaists! You want results, don't you?*

*ahem*

Anyway. I've also put a statcounter on this blog, mostly out of curiosity. It's only been up a day, but already I've come to the realization that my blog is... considerably more popular than I'd expected. I figured my only visitors would really be the few friends and relatives I've shared the url with, but that doesn't nearly explain the number of unique IPs that have been visiting this site.

Who are you people? How did you find this blog? And why are you all so quiet?

The title of this blogpost also promised awesomeness, so here you go: The trailer for the newest season of the Venture Bros. "I miss my breasts! Inside me is a woman screaming to get out!"


*Note:  I ask these questions out of levity. I'm not seriously suggesting that anyone kidnap Conservative politicans and hold them in a locked room, forcing them to watch Gigli over and over again until they agree to govern responsibly for a change. Probably.

Wait, You Mean There's an Actual Godwin?

So I guess the FBI's mad at Wikipedia right now. Why? Because on the Wikipedia page for the FBI, they have a picture of the FBI seal.

And they're threatening legal action if it's not removed.

I'll give you a moment to digest that idea.

Funny as that is on its own (government heraldry is not a class of protected image in any way, shape or form - nor should it be for reasons that should be obvious), it seems in the Cease & Desist letter to Wikipedia, they actually redacted the parts of the law they were citing (18 USC 701) that were inconvenient to their interpretation.

I'll give you another moment.

Wikipedia's lawyer, one Mike Godwin, has responded to their threat and put his response up on the interwebs for anyone to peruse. A choice bit I'm rather fond of personally:

It’s clear that you and Mr. Binney took the hint, although perhaps not in the way I would have preferred. Entertainingly, in support for your argument, you included a version of 701 in which you removed the very phrases that subject the statute to ejusdem generis analysis. While we appreciate your desire to revise the statute to reflect your expansive vision of it, the fact is that we must work with the actual language of the statute, not the aspirational version of Section
701 that you forwarded to us.

I've got a big rant on Law Enforcement and media technology that I've been allowing to bubble in the back of my brain for a while, and now seems an okay opportunity to go into it... But, nah. I'll wait until another time. Instead, I'd like to talk about Mike Godwin, Wikimedia's lawyer.

Apparently, this is not just any old lawyer - this guy is the Godwin from which Godwin's Law gets its name. (For those of you who don't know what Godwin's Law is, it's a rule about internet discussions that goes as follows: "As an online discussion grows longer, the probability of a comparison involving Nazis or Hitler approaches 1." A commonly-cited subrule also states that the party that invokes the Nazi comparison is probably the one who's just lost the debate in question.)

Interestingly, Mike Godwin was also, once upon a time, first staff counsel for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, and his first work was the case against the Secret Service on behalf of Steve Jackson (of Steve Jackson Games), whom he knew from his days on an Austin BBS. This was the infamous incident involving the raid on SJ Games' computers back in March of 1990, due to a misunderstanding on the parts of the completely competent Secret Service guys, who thought that GURPS: Cyberpunk held detailed instructions on real-life computer hacking and credit fraud.

I had no knowledge of most of this stuff an hour ago (well, I knew about the SJG raid), but now that I know it my life feels one step closer to being complete.

...

Oh, and I finished another character design. Here ya go, you quiet readers you.