Entercation & Communitainment
(with Matthias Regan)

Entertain your whole household when you want to
talk all you want about the things you want
The furniture in your house never matches the wallpaper, carpet,
the decorations or the older furniture & this value
is true to life. Talk all you want - you won’t
feel left out anymore
To get purchase on life talk on

Go ahead, grab a beverage Make a call or two
When you’re watching TV & you want to know more
An internet search engine gives you background on your favorite shows
I mean even your childrens favorite shows you care about

Help our athletes, Keep their dreams alive
Send them a personalized message today
Encourage them to go for the Gold Pass the pride Pass it on
Learn how to pass for free Fun Pass to take your family
Take them places where you know they like to go
Just look for the sign in the window of each participating merchant
& be sure to ask for your validation when you make purchase

Talk to your friends & Let the kids pick photos they can send
About the now new music video you saw. Then “go online”
To see who created your favorite TV show
Find out more fun facts about the actors who you really liked
inject fun into mundane household tasks

Use your phone if you want to eat Shop online while you sit
In traffic next time remember to check the weather
so you don’t get stuck & Skip work if its looks wet out
Wet pavements slow the traffic to a fucking crawl

Don’t waste a single minute Reward yourself
With great gifts Monthly savings with
Simplicity when pizzas arrive
You won’t be the one to miss out
Go ahead & get that beverage now
Because you know now you won’t miss a thing

2. ("Where do we stash the bodies?")

Players in the virtual world called "Second Life" spend much of their time customizing & building the world around them, designing clothing, items & rumors of buildings to live in. Now corporate sponsors want to connect with that world's residents, & they're willing to pay for it. A company called Electric Sheep (a reference to the Philip K. Dick short story that inspired "Blade Runner") is selling its services as a developer in the virtual world, customizing landscapes & constructing homes for corporations who want a presence in the world.

(What makes these corporations "sponsors" is one question etc.)

Last year, for example, Wells Fargo Bank wanted to build an island in "Second Life" where the bank's young customers could learn lessons about financial responsibility. That's where Electric Sheep comes in. The company, technically based in Washington D.C. but operating more often than not in the virtual world, has been booking six-figure deals from members of the Fortune 500 who want to engage their customers, though Electric Sheep CEO Sibley Verbeck would not name any of the corporate clients.

One organization that has hired the company for such a purpose is the New Media Consortium, a nonprofit group consisting of 200 members including Harvard, Yale, Princeton, many other top American colleges & universities & many museums. "We're building an experimental space in 'Second Life' to look at ways a 3D environment can be used to do real work," said Larry Johnson, CEO of the New Media Consortium, "to bring people together, to have meetings, for knowledge sharing, for learning & to do conferences."

You can hide out in that crawl space above the garage
You can hide up there get all nervous inside
The next person to bang the door & run
is going to get their head beat off
Start looking for a place to hide

More Captain

One of my favorite *What If?* comics involves a scenario where Captain America gets thawed out in the mid-80s (for "today," in this case meaning the 80s) instead of March 1964. As in the comics, Cap's role was filled during the 50s by an unnamed man who went nuts & accused everyone of being a communist, only to be placed in suspended animation. In the 616 continuty, this fake Captain America was not awakened until 1972 & was defeated then by the real Steve Rogers.

In this *What If?*, there was no Steve Rogers to expose the false Captain America. His paranoia about the communists led Cap to align himself with a right-wing group that eventually transformed America into a fascist dictatorship, with him as its figurehead. In 1983, a Navy submarine discovered the original Captain America still frozen in the same ice floe. After seeing what had become of his country, Captain America fought & defeated his paranoid double.

You were told that America is the greatest country in the world
You were told you that America could be refined like silver
Bang out the impurities & shine badge bright

Captain America's skepticism about the US is nothing new.
Even in 1986, during the "Born Again" story arc in Daredevil, Captain America seems to exude some sort of curiousity after having to arrest a crazy super-soldier with the flag painted on his face.

11 hours into your flight, youre plummeting to your icy tomb, just like Captain America after WWII.

I'm very fascinated by Captain America.

More Captain

I really, really liked how they did Captain America. His out of sink with reality was too cute, actually, about all his non-combat interactions were cute. On a side note, Captain America reminded me of Cloud minus the alien mind control freak whip & he lacked the slightly feminine appearance.

"Captain America, we need your help!"
"Plaintive, Captain America."
"Where are you going?"
"I threw a rock at him."

After that, Captain America spent some time in Afghanistan fighting terrorists.

DC Comics had a solution for this. During the war, they decided to craft their stories as such: Hitler is in possession of the Spear of Destiny. This is the spear Jesus was stabbed with when he was on the cross. In Hitler's hands, it caused any serious superhero that came within Nazi territory to go crazy/lose their powers/get brainwashed to the Nazi side. This meant that powerhouses like Superman/Wonder Woman/Green Lantern couldn't go into Germany and win the war. They'd have to settle for fighting Nazis in America. Weaker heroes, or ones without any superpowers, could get into Germany to fight the Nazis. Basically, anyone that could singlehandedly win the war was magically unable to enter Nazi territory.

"The events of history seem to be happening to him."
"Time to be eating the hot dogs of America."

More Captain

Really push to define the political stances of superheroes. Rarely an easy task. Earth-616 Captain America fit snugly in the New Deal Democratic mold: taming the great beast of government & using it to help people, no matter what their race or creed. A hero to buy off labor with. But just as Ultimate Spider-Man (Earth-1610) is making out with Kitty Pryde instead of Mary Jane Watson, Ultimate Captain America differs in his politics. More reactionary, more righteous, more violent. In short, a modern paleo-conservative.

You cld see the two Captains as heroes of their eras. Cap 616 was made
1941, in the wake of the New Deal, in a war of "superpowers" empire against empire
(in which at least two poles signed themselves as "for all") Ultimate Cap is in
the image of unipolar global conflict management
(monopoly dressed up in coalition blue
ultimate because unmoored at last from history
          final authority
an infant fantasy of the immortal
          : a guy draped in the American flag
                   leading a military detachment
          into a Mid East nation
                   for "peacekeeping"



Ult Cap was made in 2000
(cos Clinton got here first

the diff being between
the neo-cons & neo-libs
mostly of strategic affiliation
not of principle

2.

*What are continuities?* Most of the action takes place on a continuity
known as Earth-616. As far as how the world is going right now, it seems like
we’re on 616. It’s possible that they could come out later & say otherwise.

Time branches out, creating alternate realities at key points (moments
pass & generate conditions for the whatever-the-next at all levels
-- cat knocks down cup etcetera in the field of possible "responsibilities"
but add to these other, outset responses (mostly exclusive) so you get a world
in which China her financiers never foreclosed the bulk of U.S. debt, dragging
the whole shebang into panic, devaluation, & an economic coup etc.
in retaliation 5 yrs after the May '99 embassy bombing.

A continuity is not the same
as a dimension or universe; characters like Mephisto & Dormammu
hail from alternate dimensions, & the Celestials another universe,
but they’re down with the 616. As the present condition of nations is
of many antecedent changes, some extremely remote & some recent,
some gradual, sudden and violent etc. (sez Mr. Lyell
Those "realities" spawn other continuities at similar junctures:

Looking back into the chronicles of nations (Lyell sez
how the fortune of some battle or innocent development
has influenced the millions our contemporaries
when it has long been forgotten by this population



The enumeration

1. probably invented by the Time Variance Authority,
which keeps tabs on the continuities as they appear
2. The name used by the Dimensional Development Corp.
for the mainstream universe it hopes soon to open
to the market
3. There exist hundreds, probably thousands of continuities. A warp known as “The Nexus of All Realities” exists in a swamp in the Florida (Earth) of Earth-616. For the most part the generation of continuities doesn’t matter, as most beings are unaware of their existence, even at the moment their universe is born from another. “It is spring: life begins to assume its normal appearance as of ‘today.’ Only the imagination is undeceived” (Williams). There are, however, organizations that monitor & sometimes manipulate the continuities. These include the Time Variance Authority & Kang the Conqueror’s forces.
4. Incidentally, for the non-comics readers, 616 is code for
“will never have a boyfriend/girlfriend.”