Why Scrooge McDuck is better than Bill Gates

Rant alert: some ranting may appear in the content below.

Okay, that title may seem off-topic. After all, as the book How to Read Donald Duck: Imperialist Ideology in the Disney Comic points out, Disney comics are all about imperialism, and we know that Wunderkammern are not. Right?

Well, not necessarily. Looking at the Age of Exploration, and how it ushered in both science (in its modern form), and imperialism of the worst sort (read: Conquistadors, Dutch East India Company, British Empire, and our good old American "military advisors"), it is clear that there is a flip side to the kind of wonderous mentality I have talked about in previous posts. After all, some of the most interesting things found in Wunderkammern were things co-opted, wrested or wheedled from people in other parts of the world.

However, as a longtime reader of Donald Duck and his elder (and weirder) relative Scrooge, I beg to qualify.

When I was a kid my father collected comic books. Not a lot of them, but he had a few, some of them really interesting. He let me read his Donald Duck comics, mostly written by Carl Barks, which was probably a mistake, as they were no longer pristine after I had read them twenty times. I will say, though, that they certainly made an impression on me.

Many of the best stories are about Uncle Scrooge's quest for owning the most valuable things in the world. So in that sense, they are indeed imperialist, and assume a sort of outdated sense of the white duck's right to take things from other, differently-colored, less "developed" people around the world.

However, there is something very important to be said for Scrooge: when he wants something, he goes there himself to get it, even though he is an old duck with a fabulous fortune at his command. His adventures are what make him worth reading about.

Now, I need to take a moment here to talk about pulp fiction. The (non-sexual) pulp fiction, by definition, was full of wild adventures, explorations, discoveries, and tales of strange occurrences. There is an interesting reverse correlation between the exploration of the (un)known world and the rise of pulp fiction: the more we knew about our world, the more wild the stories in the magazines, as if people's imagination craved more the less there was to wonder about. (the Hollow Earth book, in a previous post, has a nice section on pulp fiction, by the way). In general, pulp fiction was for adults; but some of the best comics of the day followed the pulp format, including, in a slightly classier and more humorous way, the Donald and Scrooge comics.


As in pulp fiction, Scrooge's amazing geographic discoveries are mostly not-real or thinly disguised (though he does visit the Yukon to find his lost stash). But, like a true pulp hero, he goes into it willing to lay his own safety on the line for greed. And, unlike the standard pulps, which lack a sense of humor, we know all about his personality: he is a cantankerous, greedy boogerhead who chisels his own nephews and often screws up. He is, within the comic format, pretty realistic - and we like him because he's so annoying, greedy, etc, and therefore real.

Bill Gates, on the other hand, is anything but a pulp hero, annoying or not. He is a total cipher. We wonder, in fact, if he could possibly be not-real, like Scrooge's locales. He's probably as rich as Scrooge; you know that old adage that if Bill dropped a $500 bill it would not be worth his time to go back and pick it up (of course, if he were Scrooge, he would go back for a dropped dime)? He doesn't seem to be as greedy as Scrooge, but who's to say? Maybe his wife knows. Ultimately, he seems nice enough. And, well, terribly bland.

Which brings us to this: Bill Gates, while smart and pretty savvy, was also lucky. He came along at the right time. He worked pretty hard. But he's a new breed of wealthy, nothing like the old dubloon-wielding explorers who went out in search of their fortunes: he happened on his wealth. I get the sense he doesn't really know what to do with it. Look at pictures of him: have you ever seen anyone so boring?

But Scrooge - Scrooge is hands-on. Like Indiana Jones and his pulp treasure-hunting ilk, he is larger than life. He actually bathes in cold cash (don't you kind of wish Bill Gates did that?). He loves his money, not for what it will buy or what it means in the larger context; he just loves it for itself. He is a collector, obsessed with his collection. He almost can't help himself; his office is a Wunderkammer devoted to wealth. He is incredibly superstitious, and has numerous lucky talismans that he guards jealously. He is a believer in wonders.

I have a weird vision of Bill Gates, in his inevitable unimaginative checked shirt, trying to rescue the Lost Crown of Gengis Khan from the Abominable Snowman. Do you think he would escape? Or convince the Snowman that he had caused a miracle? Would he throw down bundles of rubber and bounce from one to the other to escape Mombie the Zombie? No, he probably wouldn't believe that Mombie was a zombie. But then, if Bill Gates were Scrooge McDuck, Mombie would be wearing a tie, and be a tax-collector.

Bill Gates is the personification of How to Make Being Rich the Most Boring Thing In the World. Face it: people think that being rich is fun (imagine yourself bathing in that money!). And, if you're creative, you'll be thinking that "fun" would be a lot like Scrooge McDuck's adventures, except maybe with some interesting ways to give money to crazy artists or something. But the truth is, as a modern rich person, you would need to hire an army of accountants to find things to do with your money. Hell, you probably never even see your money in cold, hard cash (remember Harry Potter's bank vault?). I'll bet Bill Gates hasn't seen more than $2000 of his money all in one place before. His kind of money is invisible to the naked eye. It's conceptual. It's being groomed and moved around and taken care of by experts, so that it will keep growing - exactly like modern science: compartmentalized, optimized, and managed. All Bill Gates has to do is sit around and give talks and start foundations which largely run themselves, and maybe decide if his advisors have good advice.

Perhaps I am influenced by my upbringing, drinking Horatio Alger with my mother's milk, believing, like Nathaniel West's Lemuel Pitkin, in my divine right to be rich (60% of Americans believe deeply that they will be extremely rich someday). We can be anything we want, if we just work hard enough! Get dirty, put your nose to the grindstone. Got to get in there and roll up our sleeves, put some elbow grease in; then we'll make it big. I'm going to be President when I grow up!

But... it's hard to admire a stuffed shirt. Think about it in terms of storytelling: which is more exciting, a movie about a bank heist, where people walk off with a suitcase full of money, or a movie about boardroom politics? Why is Pirates of the Caribbean, and pirates in general, so popular right now (hint: treasure caves, cool clothes, physical danger)? Why isn't it cool to comb your hair and sit in an office moving money around? Yawn.

Have you ever seen a picture of Bill Gates with his sleeves rolled up and a shovel in his hand? Have you ever seen him get dirty? I can't even imagine it. Scrooge McDuck, on the other hand, gets dirty, and wet, and hit on the head, and schemed against, and lost, and all manner of explorer-type predicaments. And: he swims in his money. In fact, his money vault is nearly 100 feet deep. He still has every coin he ever earned - and he can recognize each of them, tell a story about it. Which to me is the ultimate goal: my ideal home is one in which every little thing, every dish and every object on the shelf, has a story behind it.

Now maybe because Scrooge get all the episodes of his life published for everyone to read, we know of all his trials and tribulations. Bill Gates is invisible, hiding behind security gates (sic) and darkened car windows (although, would you notice him if you saw him on the street?), so it is assumed he is as boring as he looks. I don't know anything about his life, do you? For all I know, he goes out into his garden and digs when he's mad at his wife, or keeps chickens that he loves and who poo on him when he picks them up. Or perhaps he secretly goes to central America and builds houses for poor people with his own hands, for sport; or spends his free time looking for leprechauns.

But I seriously doubt it.

Odds and Ends, Bits and Bobs

All kinds of things have been trickling through, and I've had no time, no time.

Firstly, let me announce to you that another member of the Blackheart Gang has been interviewed, and you can read said excellent interview, as well as see new/old footage, over at Siouxwire. Many thanks, Siouxfire, for the heads-up.

Another thing: I have discovered there is indeed a pre-existing theory that minds do work holographically, not only in the way they use interference patterns to store memories and images, but in the way that the brain can continue to function almost fully when only a portion of itself is intact. Karl H. Pribram came up with the theory in 1969 when holography was recently (re)discovered; holographics seemed to address many of the issues he was working with at the time. His book, Languages of the brain: Experimental paradoxes and principles in neuropsychology (Prentice-Hall, 1971), was a big deal. A lot of his ideas continue to have influence to this day, though my friend and former roommate informs me that brain theory has moved on to a more evolution-based structure (pathways and emergent behavior) nowadays. It seems, though, that in the artificial intelligence arena there are still people looking at the holographic model as a possible framework for intelligence building.

For an excellent discussion of Pribram's ideas, check out this description of Pribram's Holonomic Theory of Memory. Or, if you want a sample (with bibliography) of Pribram's more recent thinking, try this article: An Instantiation of Eccles Brain/Mind Dualism and Beyond, which is a curious blend of neuroscience jargon and raconteur-ish anecdote, and might be hard to wade through. Interesting, though.

I also wanted to show you a picture or two of the Holy Right Hand of St. Stephen, on display in Budapest (and brought out once a year to great fanfare, according to D). D describes the relic as wonderful:




Curiously, I had also come across another picture of a hand-relic (St. Basil's), but I decided to save that for another post about incorruptibles, which will be coming soon. Keep reminding me.

By the way, if you want to buy your own relic, here is a place I found where you can buy such things as these, among a very few other things:




Unfortunately the site seems to be perpetually in transition, and I'm not sure if you could contact the person even if you wanted to. Still, you can drool...And, of course, here is a somewhat interesting article from the Washington Post about people who are trying to stop the sale of these kinds of things on the Internet.

Lastly, a little taste of the promised Martyrs of Nature reliquaries (the others must be taken from storage to be photographed, and may take a little while):

Mouse relics

In any case, with the holidays I'm sliding backward. More soon - I promise.

Automat for the People

Think of it: a Cabinet of wonderful food.

I know, I know, it's a weird idea, that an automat might be considered a kind of wunderkammer. The idea has such strong identifications, depending on your generation. For younger people, who never went to one of the old automats, it's kind of cool. So much so that a new company called BAMN! is starting a trend (?) by bringing automats back - in, of course, a more modern, hip way.


For those of the middle generations, that is to say, people born 40 to 60 years ago, the memories of automats are likely to be ones of bad food, glaring lights and chillingly impersonal decor.

However, this was probably due to the things being on the wane: the food was less fresh, there being less turnover, and it being the 1950's and 1960's, brutal modernism was all the rage. Not, unfortunately, designed to make you want to stick around.

Those people who are elders now, people born early enough to recall the Depression and World War II, will have a different impression entirely. To those people, the Horn & Hardart chain, which at its height served 800,000 people a day, was a place to go to get in out of the cold, a place where coffee was good and cheap and you could get hot, fresh, handmade food for literally pennies, without having to deal with a waiter.

...Perhaps people in the early part of last century were less picky and more hungry than they were later on. Or perhaps labor was cheaper and behind those banks of little doors were real cooks making real food (as opposed to corporate employees paid minimum wage to churn out prepackaged dross). It's hard to say.

I have to admit to a fascination with automats. I went to one once, when I was a little kid, and I never forgot it. There was something weird and magical about these little compartments of food, food that replaced itself. You could see the people behind there, but they were this vague shape, and it was like a separate little world back there. As far as I was concerned, the glimpses of people I saw lurking back there were simply the inhabitants of that world. The little compartments worked by themselves, replacing food like the tables in a Harry Potter feast.

You can see why Americans were so taken with the concept: peek in the little windows, put in your nickel, open the door and it's yours. All they needed were little Surprise Drawers down at the bottom which furnished you with an unknown treat, or secret "free" compartments, in which you could have the contents if you could find the hidden door, to complete the experience of foraging in some kind of crazy Museum of Food (both these images, by the way, were some of the many that came into my dreams for years after my visit to the automat).

The Smithsonian has a 35-foot section of the original 1902 Horn & Hardart automat in Philadelphia, which is " beautifully ornate with its mirrors, marble and marquetry" and I'm sure is about as close to a Cabinet of Curious Food as you can get.

The question is, will the BAMN automats have what it takes? Or will they be simply updated vending machines? I'd like to see an automat with paneling, plush chairs and a secretive atmosphere. I don't mind the peculiar adventure of rummaging in little boxes and cubbies and drawers for my food, as long as it's good and fresh. In fact, I think I'd kind of like it - especially if they came on plates, with cutlery, and the long banks of compartments were beautifully made.

Strange Attractor

Many of you may already know about Strange Attractor, but I just stumbled across it in my wanderings, and I feel it my duty to mention. From what I've read, Strange Attractor began as a sort of crossroads of what they term "Unpopular Culture", and have over time become their own press, now producing an online print journal by the same name. Their blog, Further, is a worthwhile place to visit, full of posts about literature, UFO's, online access to interesting stuff, and just anything that might be odd and worthwhile.

Not only is the site beautiful but the actual journal, which I have not paid to download yet, looks really wonderful, with the latest issue covering things like a transgender spirit possession festival; the joy of zootoxins; psychonautic misadventures in time; 12th century Arab alchemists on the edge of knowledge; Joseph Williamson, Liverpool’s tunnelling philanthropist; and much, much more. Each issue is a veritable tome of "exquisite high strangeness." Marvelous.

I recommend you get your calling-card out and go for a visit.

Reliquaries: Saints Preserve(d for) Us!

Reliquary of St. Anania, Rome. St. Anania is said to have been the disciple who baptised St. Paul the Apostle.

I first discovered reliquaries on visiting Italy, years ago.

Since then, I've seen a lot of reliquaries, in France and other countries, but it was that first time, in the Cathedral Museum in Florence, that I saw the best reliquaries of all. There was a hand-shaped reliquary containing an arm-bone (of St. John the Baptist?), which pointed at the sky just like John the Baptist is always shown doing. There was a philatory (a transparent reliquary) which contained all the bones of another saint, whom I've forgotten, but the bones were stacked in an asthetic way and wound with gold and pearls in a shrine (reliquary shaped like a house) made of glass and gold. There were dozens of the usual cross-shaped reliquaries and lots of wonderful, dangly, crown-shaped ones.

"Casket of Teudericus" reliquary from the second half of the 7th c. (?) (Canton Valais: Saint Maurice Abbey treasury). This reliquary is a product of the monastic workshop of St. Maurice d'Agaune. Signed by the artist and dedicated by the Priest Teudericus to the monastery. Gold cloisonné, gemstones, and cameo on wood. 5.25"

For a nice, clear explanation of the reliquary concept I'm going to quote the Virtual School, a defunct part of the EC's European Schoolnet site, which is a portal for lower education in Europe. It has the most dazzling array of useful information I've come across. If you want something explained well and simply, I have not found better than European Schoolnet; unfortunately, I never seem to come across what I need except by accident.

Reliquary of St. Louis of Toulouse. Silver, France, 15th-17th century, Musée national du Moyen Âge, Paris, France.

Here we go:

"Relics are holy objects associated with holy people, and is prevalent in Judaism, Buddhism and Christianity, among others.

"In a world where people believed that evil and the Devil existed all around in the natural world, it was comforting to believe that good was also something that could be seen and touched. The motivation for most pilgrimages was to see and touch something holy and consequently benefit from being in contact with good.

"Brandea were the most common kind of early Christian relic in the centuries immediately following the death of Christ. These were often ordinary objects which had become holy by coming into contact with holy people or places. These might include, for example, pieces of tomb, a handkerchief of a saint or dust from the Holy Land.The advantage for pilgrims was that they could and did make their own brandea; by rubbing a piece of cloth against a holy tomb or by filling a small flask (ampulla) with holy water, they could take the holiness home with them.

"Early relics were often carried in small, purpose built containers called reliquaries which were hung around the neck, almost like good luck charms.

"Bodily relics were particularly important because the spirit of the saint was said to actually remain in the bodily remains. Wherever the body (or body parts) went the (holy) spirit was sure to follow. There were some religious critics who suggested that the cult of relics owed more to pagan traditions than Christian teaching, but such was the popularity of the relics and the miracles that surrounded them, it would have been very difficult for the Church to resist even if it had wanted to.


"In converting pagan people the Church needed every trick in the book. In the 13th century, even the great medieval philosopher and saint, Thomas Aquinas, produced a threefold defence of the cult of relics. He argued that, firstly, the relic acts as a physical reminder of the saint, making it easier for people to understand the importance of the saint. Secondly, because the saint worked miracles through the body, the body remains holy and is therefore valuable in itself. Finally, because miracles occur at sites with relics, God must approve of the preservation and worship of relics.

Foot reliquary of St. James, Namur, France
"The only way of guaranteeing yourself a widely acknowledged, 'authentic' relic was to steal one. Many of the most famous pilgrimage sites in Europe included stolen relics in their collection. The theft was easily justified. Often the idea for the theft came in the form of a dream or vision, which was widely considered to be the way God and saints communicated . Often the saint itself decided. If the saint allowed itself to be taken without punishing the thieves and if the saint continued to produce miracles, then clearly he or she was happy in their new home."


If you've ever read P.D. James' A Morbid Taste for Bones, you'll know that many saints' bones were essentially stolen from their home tomb to begin with, regardless of the locals' feelings about it.

Strangely, Galileo's middle finger is displayed at the Science History Museum in Florence inside a beautiful reliquary (below). Does this mean he was a Science Saint? He was definitely a hero and a martyr to his beliefs, and it's interesting that he is celebrated in the same way as a religious figure. The finger was detached from the body by Anton Francesco Gori (how apt a name) on March 12, 1737; it is not clear whether this was a sanctioned move or not. And, of course, given the way he got in trouble for bucking the establishment, I find it intensely ironic that it was his middle finger they saved.


In any case, if you ask nicely I might show you some of the reliquaries I've made. There are quite a number, mostly (with one excellent exception) celebrating, not saints, but animals, which at one point in my life I was seeing as Saints of Nature, martyrs to the Cause of Progress - particularly those killed by poison and other dangers of modern life (and then mummified with time). Bwa-ha-ha. My thoughts have evolved, but the reliquaries remain.

Inner Earth

I just found this book last weekend and have been reading it, on and off, since then. It's, as a friend of mine would say, "a damned good read."

Beginning with Edmond Halley in 1691, and continuing on through Poe and Wells and on into L Frank Baum, only to take a turn into pulp with Edgar Rice Burroughs and others, this fascinating book covers the history of envisioning the earth as a hollow sphere. Such people as Halley, who edited and published (not to mention correcting proofs of) Isaac Newton's Principia, were quite serious about their proposals that the earth is not only hollow but a series of concentric spheres, in Halley's model turning independently on a north-south axis, probably with life inside and some kind of light like the sun itself.

So deadly serious were these people that one man, Captain John Cleves Symmes, handed out printed circulars of his own composition in 1818, stating that if anyone would fund him, he would go to an opening he (by unknown means) postulated lay near the poles, and lay his life on the line to prove to the world there were other places within. Symmes took his request for funds and sponsorship to congress, and was repeatedly turned down. He continued with this obsession until the end of his life, lecturing and writing articles for the papers. When he died his son took up his cause, and a book was written about his theories.

The stories go on and on, including Jules Verne's idea that the Aurora Borealis was really light coming out of a hole in the earth in the arctic; Cyrus Teed, the man who was known as Koresh, who claimed he discovered the Philosopher's Stone and who started a cult based on his ideas for saving humanity by "moving inside"; and innumerable utopias, romances and other fiction that began more and more to use the hollow earth idea as a pasteboard for the authors to communicate their ideas.

Richly illustrated with images that we would all love to have large to hang on our walls, the book is worth a look; I keep it by my bed and read bits of it before I go to sleep, in the hopes that it will bring me interesting dreams.

Some Artists

Well, I stumbled onto my account at Technorati, which I had forgotten about (shows how much time I have to look around these days), and lo! Several people had actually linked to me whom I had never heard of, and in looking at their sites I was pleased to find they went under the heading of "beautiful things". It's a wide world out there and I'm glad to get to see some of the good parts.
For starters, Blue Tea was showcasing (among many other amazing Book Art people) Su Blackwell, who makes art by cutting and folding books. Some of the images she creates are really dynamic and moving. A lot of them seem to be children's books. She works with books that are no longer readable for whatever reason, and works within the book's subject matter, either directly or metaphorically. And a lot of the books are framed in boxes, which of course sets off drool bells for me.


But what I particularly like about this aspect of her work (she does other stuff as well) is its delicacy, the slight feeling of claustrophobia, as if these characters, this landscape have been trapped in the book all this time and now are suddenly released. A number of her compositions have an urgency about them; the choices she has made for the cut-out people from the illustrations seem to lean toward people on their way somewhere, about to discover something, or perhaps escaping from something. And the landscapes speak of a bleak mystery, a rising, an awareness of the air. Very cool.


In my wanderings I also came across Aria Nadii,
another self-described "book pirate" who creates layered compositions from images found in books. Many of the works are quite wonderful. And if you like her stuff, she has a whole page of really beautiful images for people to take and use as avatars (go to her blog to see them). Her blog is full of nice details of what it's like to make art while keeping on with the daily making of a life. I look forward to seeing more of her stuff.