Tiny Little People Living In Boxes
2025/08/09
July 26th marked the 250th anniversary of national mail delivery in the United States, and the USPS (founded later, in 1971) has issues a special set of stamps to mark the occasion. I enjoy a good postage stamp, and Ware’s art might not have the iconic quality enjoyed by classic stamps, but the medium is ideal for Ware’s particular artistic perversion: tiny panels. What is a postage stamp, but a tiny little panel in which to cram a picture? I’ve read enough of Ware’s work to know that the USPS probably had to specify in their contract with the artist that Ware could not subdivide the stamp into even smaller panels, because I bet that was absolutely his first instinct. Ware’s comics are pretty much fractals; if you peer closely enough at his panels you discover that they subdivide into even smaller panels. Although this set of stamps fit together into a larger design, they also read from left to right as a comic.
BenDrankin
2025/06/15
I have not posted recently, so it only seems fair to my readers that I give some kind of explanation. There are many things that might derail your in life in your thirties, and I suppose that you can already guess a likely culprit. But the truth is that I have been caught in the great paradox of American consumerism.
Earlier this year I decided I needed to buy a novelty T-shirt that would allow me to show my love of this land called America. I had already seen the shirt I wanted in a store window and thought it wouldn’t be too hard to find it online.
Unfortunately, Google was offering me possibilities.
At first I wanted the authentic, original design, but then I was overwhelmed by the sheer potential of the choice before me. I had to make an aesthetic judgement and no matter how many designs I looked at, none of them seemed to be as grand as the design I remembered seeing in a store window.
That last one was never really in contention, to be honest. And the following is only a variation of another:
This one gives me the creeps:
I appreciate the following one because it references actual Bejamin Franklin lore:
I don’t even think this one is Ben Franklin at all:
This one at least seems to come with a celebrity endorsement:
And then I discovered this:
The only way out of this hell might be to buy them all.
Because of the Present Crisis
2025/03/08
There is piece in the March 3rd New Yorker The End of Children that discusses the pervasive global phenomenon of declining birthrates. Particular attention is given to South Korea, which is presented as the future we are all converging towards. Not just sparse of children, but actively intolerant of children when they are around.
The whole subject is fraught, for very good reasons. One paragraph contained the following sentences which aroused particular scorn from some.
For most of human history, having children was something the majority of people simply did without thinking too much about it. Now it is one competing alternative among many.
I think this is a good example of how an otherwise careful writer can suddenly commit an infelicity. I don’t think they actually mean to say that child bearing was done casually or thoughtlessly, or that the dangers of childbirth weren’t real and weighed on the minds of those involved. The more generous interpretation is that we weren’t so preoccupied with the meta-game of reproduction.
But I think even that is wrong. There is nothing unprecedented with a preoccupation with the question of our species reproducing. Take the following from Lucy Woodling’s review of Lower Than The Angels: A History of Sex and Christianity in the LRB.
St Jerome lambasted the young widow Furia, seemingly apoplectic at the thought she might remarry: she had, after all, already encountered ‘the miseries of marriage’, which he described as ‘unwholesome food’. ‘Perhaps you are afraid that your noble race will die out,’ he wrote, ‘and your father will not have a brat to crawl about his shoulders and smear his neck with filth.’ The family values of fourth-century Christianity were not all they might have been.
If you have spent any time with the New Testament you may remember the apostle Paul calling upon the unmarried to remain so.
Now about virgins: I have no command from the Lord, but I give a judgment as one who by the Lord’s mercy is trustworthy. Because of the present crisis, I think that it is good for a man to remain as he is. Are you pledged to a woman? Do not seek to be released. Are you free from such a commitment? Do not look for a wife. (1 Corinthians 7:25-27)
If the past 2000 years still feels a little recent, remember that in Exodus, Pharaoh became concerned that the Israelite slaves had become a little too numerous under Egyptian subjugation and decides to thin them out by slaughtering newborns. And if you want to look beyond the Bible, the general abundance of fertility gods and fertility cults suggest that we have always been a little nutty about the reproduction of our species.