January seems like a long time ago.

February 19, 2025. Day .

Hello subscriber! It’s the middle of the month, which seems like as good a time as any to rap at ya, even though nothing is new in my world except WE ARE IN THE MIDDLE OF A FASCIST COUP LED BY A NAZI.

So, in a fairly literal version of rearranging the deck chairs on the Titanic, I’ve chosen this chaotic and tumultuous time to launch a website for my web design and development business, Happening Interactive. I have enough work at the moment but I want to maybe get some more in case Elon goes after my grant-funded, university-based work (for the University of California system, no less).

I’ll be adding stuff about website pricing etc. pretty soon, when I decide what the pricing will be. If you need a website for something, now would be a great time to drop me a line and say hi.

I haven’t entirely given up the practice of art, or arts ‘n’ crafts, or whatever you call what I do. I guess I just call it “making things”. So since everybody loved the drawing I did of this lady singing a Pixies tune at karaoke, I made a thing. This is kind of a prototype, but I suppose I’d sell it. The mic cable is just a dressy shoestring!

I still have this wall-mounted karaoke singer, too.

And of course I keep drawing these things:

I’ll have a new booklet or ‘zine of these pretty soon. If you don’t have one or both of the previous two, just drop me a line.

Reading

Edwin Mullhouse: The Life and Death of an American Writer 1943-1954 by Jeffrey Cartwright by Steven Millhauser

One of my favorite books, and I realized I hadn’t read it since I was in college, though it feels like I just finished it. Many, many people do not like this book, but I’m fascinated with it. (It also has a lot of effusive fans.) I feel like, to be reductive, it’s Millhauser’s best, and each subsequent book is a little less good, until he wins the Pulitzer for Martin Dressler, which I don’t remember being anything great. But what an imagination he has, and what recall!

The Stories of John Cheever
They’re sometimes what you think they will be, but other times not at all. Some of the best stories about losing your identity, your self, in the course of a regular life. Dramatic and full of detail. I’m still in the 1940s!

Watching

A Taxing Woman (Japan, 1987, dir. Juzo Itami)
Once you get past the frankly strange 80s synthy montage music that is even playing quietly in scenes with dialogue, it’s a great movie.

Now that we live in a fascist dictatorship, I noted the movie has a bit to say about fascism, in the form of a yakuza (Japanese mobster) who simply invades the tax bureau office and threatens them if they don’t stop their investigation.

As the yakuza threatens the bureaucrats, the dialogue stops, and Itami simply cuts from his scary face (think of a Japanese Danny Trejo), back to one of the tax bureaucrats, a six-foot tall bumpkin who has the audacity to laugh at him. Itami just cuts back and forth, not fast, and it’s terrifying. It seems really real now, now that we have thugs invading the bureaucracy we pay for and threatening people. Like laughing could get you targeted and killed.

A thing to remember is: Juzo Itami’s movies are light comedies. But the Yakuza killed him. They threw him off a building, and got away with it too.

Or so they say. Most contemporary accounts claim it was suicide. Maybe the Yakuza were just taking credit for violence they had nothing to do with. At any rate, he died in a fall from the roof of a building.

I’m unsure what lesson to take from this, but I hope I would be as brave in the face of threats from thugs as Itami. I really can’t be sure I would.

I took these screen shots from a copy of A Taxing Woman stored on Internet Archive. You can watch it there for free. Please support them—they’re a beleaguered organization who do good in this world, preserving and sharing valuable history that commercial publishers can’t or won’t.

Thanks for reading. I’m filled with apprehension about living in a dictatorship—I’ll be jailed, I know it—but I also have hope, and I feel that resisting, even if it’s just saying NO, is the right thing to do.

As you probably know, I don’t believe the 2024 vote count was correct. I don’t believe America voted for this—how could they? I think the Republicans stole the election. I can’t believe the Democrats didn’t demand audits, but you knew they wouldn’t. And now here we are, siding with Russia against our allies in NATO. We need some new Democrats who will not sit down and have a nice lunch with their “colleagues” (fascists, don’t forget) across the aisle.

Congressional Democrats (and independents): Please impeach the president. I don't care if you don't have the votes. Lay out the charges against him, make him try to defend himself. Just interfere. Just throw things in his path. He’ll get tired.

That’s all from me, so, with that, one last cartoon:

Thanks for reading. Say NO to fascism.

newsletter dioramas fascism A Taxing Wmoan Juzo Itami Edwin Mullhouse Steven Millhauser John Cheever short stories resistance impeachment