Four for Friday.

* Rabbits are terrorizing the public parks of Stockholm, so Swedish officials have decided to kill them and burn them as fuel. That's socialism for you.

* The One Comic Joss Whedon Reads: The Walking Dead, of course. See also: The 5 Hardest Parts of Being a Joss Whedon Fan.

* The Nation looks at Corzine's resurgence in the context of his apparent left turn.

* Some days I kind of like this Obama guy.

A memo from Adelle DeWitt concerning client acquisition and retention.

The salience of this particular moment fades a bit as we get further and further from Friday's spoiler-line, but I feel compelled to comment briefly on the conversation between Marathe and Steeply that begins on page 638. How can I, or anyone who has chosen a life in academia, read this week's material without feeling interpolated by it? How could any academic, would-be or otherwise, avoid asking him- or herself more than once just what it is that separates us from Steeply's M*A*S*H-obsessed father beyond the razor-thin veneer of professional legitimacy? It's my job, allegedly, to develop intricate and sometimes bizarre readings of pop-culture artifacts, which means it's perfectly okay for me to (still) spend all my time reading science-fiction novels and watching science-fiction movies just like I did when I was twelve. Heck, I wouldn't be doing my work if I didn't! And if I can just trick somebody into paying me to do it I'll never have to stop.

Herman Blume:What's the secret, Max?
Max Fischer: The secret?
Herman Blume: Yeah, you seem to have it pretty figured out.
Max Fischer: The secret, I don't know... I guess you've just gotta find something you love to do and then do it for the rest of your life. For me, it's going to Rushmore.

Intellectually, of course, I've always been able to recognize the tragic irony of this exchange—Rushmore, you'll remember, doesn't offer a post-graduate year—but I wonder sometimes whether deep down I've ever really come to terms with it.

Is this addiction? Does pursuing a academic career studying literature and pop culture—a preoccupation which over the years has diverted me from any number of more financially lucrative pursuits—mark me as the writerly equivalent of a functional alcoholic? Do I even qualify as functional? And it occurs to me now, reading this section against not only my own life and those of my grad student associates but against the life of anyone who has ever been a "fan" of anything—anyone, that is, who can recognize themselves in the way Steeply's father looked at M*A*S*H—that the danger DFW is highlighting is central to the construction of modern subjectivity. If everything is at least potentially bad for us—even/especially the things that give us pleasure, the things that make life appear to be worth living—just what is it we're supposed to be doing? Where is the authentic, healthy, free life, if there was ever such a thing to begin with? When even the things we love conspire to destroy us, what is left?

Fan-made trailers for movies that don't exist: Green Lantern and Thundercats. Via MeFi.

The people vs. George Lucas.

MetaFilter has a huge, link-filled look at the explosive growth of the 47-day-old 'Dr. Horrible' fan community.

And two from Boing Boing: Joss Whedon fans, thinking ahead, are already organizing their "Save Dollhouse!" campaign in anticipation of the show's inevitable cancellation, and Cory Doctorow links to this neat slideshow of abandoned office space from bankrupt companies.

“I was a geek in high school. I was part of the science fiction club. It was all guys. I wrote stories for ‘zines. They were only available at the cons, or by mail. It was all very underground.” This is a typical story; the old timers nod their heads in proud recognition. The girls and the boys mixed uneasily, the fanfiction often separating their fannish inclinations. Many fans say that the creative output of the women has always far outpaced that of the men. The nature of the production was different too: much of fanfic was and is overtly sexual, often in ways that subvert the dominant culture.

Take, for example, slash fiction—the fanfic that puts two male characters in a sexual relationship, denoted by a slash mark (for example: Spock/Kirk). Slash is a large part of the fanfiction phenomenon, and one that has been studied intensely by a variety of university researchers. “It makes for a lively conference presentation,” one sociologist tells me dryly. Researcher Kristina Busse writes regularly and cogently on the often uneasy state of relations between male/female and professional/amateur in fandoms, citing the uniquely collaborative nature of fanfiction creation and consumption as creating a nurturing female space (although she does say that this analysis only tells ‘part of the story’).

Move Over Alpha Geeks, Here Come the Fangrrls. Via MeFi.