Attackerman

That Purple Stuff, It's For Your Own Security

Download Mixtape Free | LiveMixtapes.com Mixtape Player

As you might imagine, I had great great fun at Danger Room today reporting this story. (Why is the Game mixtape here? Because I've had no success downloading it, so I figure screw it, might as well host. My blog my business.)

Also, randomly, Wired.com switched to Disqus for its comments system and every once in a while I see someone lament that the bugs have eaten someone's apercu or mot juste or Ackerman-you're-so-fucking-stupid. I'd like to reassure everyone that the right people are looking at the problem. By way of compensation in the interim, I offer you this line, free of charge: "We used to fuss when Trollout dissed us/ No posts, wond'rin' why Disqus missed us." You're welcome.

The Dark Knight Must Return

In the course of a multipronged Twitter discussion with Jamelle Bouie, Adam Serwer, Dave Roberts and Scott Madin about the next Batman film... well, it would be too much to say a consensus of fanboys was reached. But look: how great and necessary would it be for Christopher Nolan to skip from Batman-the-martyr-on-the-run at the end of The Dark Knight to shooting us thirty years into the future of a blighted Gotham for an adaptation of The Dark Knight Returns?

I read Adam's post on the inclusion of Bane in the next Nolan film and sigh. I'm too lazy to Google this, but isn't Nolan also talking about the Riddler or the Penguin and shit? The corny, purposeless villains? What a way to disrupt the energy that Nolan's reboot has done to the character and the mythology of Batman. Please: we need an aged, obsessive, pathological Bruce Wayne -- Mickey Rourke, man -- who doesn't call himself Bruce in his thoughts. Nolan to direct the first three acts; Darren Aronofsky (Jamelle's idea) to direct the fourth.

We Want The Airwaves Back

OK, no more fucking around. I've been a terrible steward of my own blog for six months now. This has to change. Have you ever felt exhausted with everything you used to write, bored by everything you think, disinterested in anything you might want to say? To the point where an activity you used to love made you anxious? And on top of that, you were trying hard to excel at a day job that you kind of revere? Only the more you pushed, the less you felt like you measured up?

I'm going to take this like exercise: it will only happen when I force myself back into it. Thanks for reading for the past half a year. It couldn't have been pleasant. Now is when I repay you.

 

Welcome to Attackerman 3.0

So: here's the rollout of the next generation of Attackerman. We're going back to a stripped-down format, less formal, less torrid. My eternal thanks to Firedoglake and Jane Hamsher for supporting me and this blog for the past two and a half years; to ThinkProgress and Faiz Shakir for supporting me and this blog during its 1.0 incarnation; and to the Washington Independent and now Wired (in particular my friend-and-now-boss Noah Shachtman) for not being bothered that their reporter kept a frequently obnoxious personal blog.

Some in the blogosphere have bemoaned the professionalization of the enterprise over the past several years. It was surely inevitable: blogging lends itself well to iterative online journalism. But in this case, we're going to unwind that professionalism -- you can find that from me at Danger Room -- formatting-wise at least.  I haven't yet figured out how to get the timestamps off of Pacific time, for instance. If you'd like to help me make the thing look as cool as it did at FDL, great, I'd appreciate the assistance, but otherwise, let's stay amateurish. Who knows what'll happen when I try to upload a video.

What should you expect here? To modify the old tagline: National Security; Punk Rock; Real Talk. (I write much less about Iraq these days, but miss the subject, so check out this excellent Jack Healy dispatch from Khanaqin.) Much of the last two versions of Attackerman were built around anger, though, and I'm not as angry as I used to be; credit for that goes to my wonderful fiancee. Still, the world is still an evil place, so expect whinging, complaining, venting and all that, built around a general national-security interest. If it doesn't fit on Danger Room for whatever reason, it might end up here.

Still, this is going to be a pretty slow beginning for the next couple of days -- we're amateurish again, so I don't have to feel guilty about a low volume of posts, right? -- as I've got something personal I need to deal with, and we're still in the holiday season, after all.