Me, after reading the first half of the bug#66390 thread

“There’s only madness down that road.”

My solution to the url.el parts of Vasilij Schneidermann excellent writeup would, as always, be:

diff --git a/lisp/url/url.el b/lisp/url/url.el
index b4ece5faeb..8ea491efb0 100644
--- a/lisp/url/url.el
+++ b/lisp/url/url.el
@@ -191,7 +191,8 @@ url-retrieve-internal
       (setq url (url-generic-parse-url url)))
   (if (not (functionp callback))
       (error "Must provide a callback function to url-retrieve"))
-  (unless (url-type url)
+  (when (or (not (url-type url))
+            (not (member (url-type url) '("http" "https" "file"))))
     (error "Bad url: %s" (url-recreate-url url)))
   (setf (url-silent url) silent)
   (setf (url-asynchronous url) url-asynchronous)

(Along with making redirects saner, of course.)

Random Comics

Here’s some comics I’ve read the past couple weeks.

I’ve read a couple of Rick Tremble’s books before, but they’ve been smaller in format.

This is magazine size, and the pages just overwhelm the reader. When you have this much text (and you mostly have fixed-sized panels like this), it helps with readability to just use a smaller page format — a couple panels per page would make it less daunting.

But it’s pretty engrossing nonetheless — this book mostly deals with Trembles’ travails with various landlords over the years, and it’s interesting and frequently very amusing.

I’ve read most of Copra before, but in pretty much random order, depending on which issues I’ve happened upon in comics shops and the like.

This book collects the first dozen issues in a larger format (and on very shiny paper), and it’s a lot of fun finally reading this stuff in the proper order. It makes sense now! I mean, I enjoy being confused, but it’s a relief to finally understand things, too.

I really like Fiffe’s artwork, and his storytelling chops are just amazing, too. Reading this book was so much fun.

The only problem with this collection is that there’s no subsequent collections! I want to read them all like this now!

This book is by Marion Fayolle, which is a name that’s unfamiliar with me.

It’s called Les amours suspendues, and I’ve read nothing like it before. Instead of taking things from movies, it’s a more ballet-based comic. (I guess Neil the Horse could be considered to be a dance-based comic, too, and while it’s brilliant, it’s not this extreme.)

So this tells the story about a man who keeps flirting with various women, and it’s about the images we create of other people, and self delusions, and … It’s a lot!

It’s great. It’s so original and compelling, but this strange storytelling approach really works. Is it perhaps influenced by Éric Rohmer? Probably not, but it fascinating and compulsively readable.

It won Prix spécial du jury du Festival international de la bande dessinée d’Angoulême 2018, which is totally understandable. It’s been translated to German, Italian and Chinese, but not English.

Here’s a scathing review:

I like World War 3 Illustrated, this sounded like it was in that vein…

… but this just didn’t grab me.

The art style seems annoying somehow (is it all done on a tablet?), and I just couldn’t make my way through it, so I ditched it after 40 pages or so.

This is Karla Paloma’s first book…

… and even after having read most of the book, I was somehow thinking this was a Swedish comic, because it just looks very Galago-ish, if that makes sense. I was going “but hang on, this is in Danish, isn’t it?” and indeed it is. Duh.

It’s very punk. The stories are a kind of mix of what I assume are autobio-ish bits (the setting, mostly), because it feels very true. But the stories are completely wild and strange and fun — think Julie Doucet.

It’s fun.

This, on the other hand…

It’s about growing up gay in Brazil, and it reads like a comics memoir — for worse and for worse. That is, it’s a jeremiad about how everybody’s mistreating the poor little boy, who’s done nothing wrong. And of course he hasn’t, but that approach is kinda *rolls eye*. C’mon. Give the kid some personality, at least.

(And I also find the artwork and storytelling style offputting.)

But it’s not autobio or even bio — it’s just a collection of horrible things. Did they really give boys in Brazil in the 70s pills to make them throw up, along with gay porn, so that that would work as aversion therapy? If so: Very creative! Very Clockwork Orange!

And of course electroconvulsive therapy, and later he becomes very religious, and etc etc etc.

It doesn’t really even work as propaganda — the book is just too annoying.

Or as this person puts it:

This is intelligent, meaningful and importantly, in the right hands it could change lives.

Or:

The art is fantastic, and you immediately notice the colour scheme at play. It’s clever and brilliantly done.

Or:

There are some excellent character moments in this comic; some are good, some are not – this is life and the harsh realities of the life that is depicted in the story.

Anyway!

That was… My Week In Comics.

Book Club 2025: The Paris Review #34

Well, that prize doesn’t seem like a scam at all.

This issue (from 1965) has a pretty interesting interview with de Beauvoir.

And a portfolio of drawings for statues by Jean Tinguely.

Nice picture of the artist, but where’s OSHA!?

The longest piece in this issue is Jacksongrad by Harry Mathews, which is the first third of the Tlooth novel: “This novel begins in a Russian prison camp at a baseball game featuring the defective Baptists versus the Fideists”. It’s all quite amusing and all, but it feels a bit like sawed-off Pynchon. V was published two years before this, and I wonder whether Mathews read that and went “sure! I can do that!”. But can anybody?

On the other hand: I know nothing.

There’s a bizarre short story by Peter Ellis called A Cat in the Metro. It almost seems like an in-joke of sorts, or a pastiche, or a parody? The language just doesn’t jive. The author notes just go “Peter Ellis is a student at the University of Pennsylvania. This is his first published work.” I can’t find any subsequent work, or find out anything about him, really, but it’s not an uncommon name, and at least two other authors have that name.

The Paris Review #34 (1965) (buy new, buy used, 3.5 on Goodreads)