If you've got a Livejournal feed of this blog, you've probably noticed a weird problem with an auxillary link showing up, lately. It doesn't lead anywhere, and it wasn't always there. I went into the style sheet and edited it down to a proper link to my frontpage, but the inevitable result was LJ's feed-reader interpreting the change in the style sheet weirdly and reposting all the blog entries from the last month or so. In a row.
Sorry about that. Won't happen again, unless the XML feed mutates a second time.
Anyway... Swastika Buddha.
I love these things. They're are all over Chinatown's gift shops in Chicago: Buddhas and various figures from Eastern mythology (luck gods, mostly) with little swastikas on their chests. Must be a real mindfuck for the Middle American, cornfarming set that finished up the horse-milking early for a day in the big city. CHRISTS-A-FIRE CLEM DIJOO KNOW THEM RED CHINESE IS ANTI-SEMITICAL TA BOOT?!
Eh. I guess I'm a somewhat passive supporter of the whole "rehabilitate the swastika" crowd, mostly because its acceptance back into the realm of common iconography is probably inevitable. It's a common design, pretty easy to spot in a lot of older Western architecture and fixtures, and it's all over the place in Asia. The world's gotten a lot smaller in the past few years, so regular exposure to swastikas that don't recall crematory ovens and goose-stepping will probably get more routine. The problem will essentially fix itself in a generation or two, whether or not I paint happy, dancing swastikas, doves perched in swastikas, and tattoo flaming vaginas on my forehead. Like some people.
Tomorrow: Police Auctions, or Mother of God I Can't Believe What They're Charging for a Goddamn Bicycle These Days.
