What's so good about the old days?
(Your soundtrack: "The Old Days" by Dr. Dog, free from Amazon.)

Remember the debate over what steampunk is doing if it's not offering a critique? Well, today Nostalgia: a Sport for the Privileged appeared at Racialicious. As someone who enjoys pulp and films noirs, this is something I've been grappling with quite a bit recently. (I also just read my first Christie, The Mysterious Affair at Styles, and there are still skid marks where my brain screeched to a halt after one of the characters said, so casually, n*****.) There's a supplement regarding the interwar period's racism, sexism, and homophobia in the works for Spirit of the Century, the pulp pickup role-playing game I like so much, but it is inescapably a privilege that my thinking beyond "More zeppelins! Gorilla piloting a biplane!" is, well, supplementary. (And on that note, I just bought the bitchingest straw fedora. Center crease with a front pinch, and none of that skinny brim nonsense.)

RM demonstrating business up top, party down below during the 06/09/09 show: