Radzilla

Of Works, II

2012-01-23T03:34:00.001-08:00

The Gears

One moment we’re riding our bike and the next we’re on our back, trying to figure out how the sky got down there. Nothing hurts, until we try to move, then everything hurts, so we lie on the ground until we can handle breathing again. We sit up and assess the damage: the front wheel of our bike is toast. It looks like a strangely stylized letter D. Thinking without thinking: Destruction. Dimwit. Derriere. We stand, heft the frame onto our back, and start walking home.

We’d been staring down, straight down, at the shadow of the gears on the ground, cast by the sun, animated by our legs. Chain dragged along by teeth, turned by our feet. A point of rotation: man/machine meet and work and flow into one another.

Go fast enough, you can’t tell them apart anymore.

We didn’t see the tree root, ancient, gnarled beyond belief.

Demolition.

Later, we’re in the tub, soaking our everything. Still thinking: Damp. Drown. We fall asleep in the water, near hot enough to burn, wake up when it's tepid. We dry and dress and go to the garage, and take another look at our bike. The chain has flown off the rings, the front wheel is a total loss. We get our tools, and unfasten the wheel, then pull off the tire. We hold the bent wheel and think: dismantled. Defaced. We set it aside and pull a spare off the wall, attach a new tube and tire, then start inflating it. As we work, our hands go through the motions without direction, and we think about the last thing we saw before the sky. A moment, frozen but fluid, where all we see is a shadow, chain and legs spinning together, running together. Our hands finish their work and the new wheel is on the bike. We slip the chain back onto the teeth of the sprocket, then spin the pedals backward while we soak the chain in oil. It dribbles off the chain in fat black drops, then clarifies, becomes amber rain. We wipe off the glut and run the chain through our hand, curved links blurring into one texture. We hit the garage door opener and clean off our hands with a rag while it slides up. The sun has nearly set. We take our bike onto the road and pedal madly, working the gears in a frenzy, take it almost to the top, then look to our right: the low sun casts our shadow onto a retaining wall, a solid surface for our speed, and we watch the gears whirl, just stare, our mind is blank, looking for that moment again, legs berserk. We feel like it's so close, almost tangible, ready for us to reach out and grab it—the wall comes to an abrupt end, and we squeeze the brakes hard, hard enough to leave a dirty black streak on the pavement. We turn around, get up to speed again, but the sun has set and we see nothing but concrete. We ride back to our garage, and as we pull in, we see the bent wheel on the floor. We think: Dismount. We pick the wheel up and hang it on the wall.
-----

That's all for now.

Of One Year Gone

2012-01-16T05:03:00.000-08:00

2011 has slithered off into the nether regions of history and I, for one, am glad of it. For me, it was a year marked mostly by heartbreak (at my friends shuffling out of my life for one reason or another) and frustration (at the incessant fuckmuppetry of humanity in general and our government in particular).

It isn't that nothing good happened; it's that those moments were mere punctuation in the novella of raucous bullshit that was 2011.

I've been in the habit of watching the Daily Show for a few years now. I should probably stop, because the cost of being informed (even by fake news) is unending rage. There is no good news to come from our capital, be it state or nation. Politicians are the idiot alchemists of humanity, turning success into failure and inevitable triumph into sure defeat. We ended Don't Ask, Don't Tell, a policy which is eminently disgusting. I will let Admiral Mike Mullen, then-Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, speak on this: "No matter how I look at the issue…I cannot escape being troubled by the fact that we have in place a policy which forces young men and women to lie about who they are in order to defend their fellow citizens…For me, it comes down to integrity – theirs as individuals and ours as an institution." Emphasis mine. This is a no-brainer. There is no valid argument against it, none whatsoever. And yet it required a hard-fought battle in our cretinous Congress. In fifty years, when the greybeards are still giving us the benefit of their ripe stupidity, children will read about this in school and be mystified that anyone was ever able to look at the idea and think, "Yeah, that is both just and fair." That is, assuming they teach it at all; this country has a disturbing habit of pretending that the uglier parts of our history didn't happen.

We learn nothing.

The Arab Spring was truly heartening, but in this country, people seemed obsessed with deciding whether to ascribe responsibility to Bush or Obama. This is a stupid question, so obviously stupid that I'm forced to wonder if it's all a big joke (a recurring theme of the last decade, by the way). Are we so arrogant, so starved for success, that we must claim victories from thousands of miles away as our own?

Even the death of Osama bin Laden, what should have been a catharsis for our nation, seemed to divide us. You do not need for Bush to have been responsible (as he clearly wasn't; he repeatedly said that they weren't even trying to get him); you only need someone to have been responsible.

"Mess with the US, and we will shoot you in the head, then throw you in the ocean."

That should be enough.

Like the Arab Spring, the Occupy movement was encouraging. I thought, for a moment, that this might be my generation's Vietnam protests. I dared to hope that, unlike that movement, our leadership might listen. And when the media reluctantly covered the story, they claimed that the movement had no message. I would suggest that only someone with a horseshoe-shaped divot in their skull could honestly have this opinion. I want to grab hold of Bill O'Reilly's reptillian neck and squeeze and squeeze, shaking him crazily, screaming, "How can you make that claim? Were you struck by lightning? How is it possible for a person to be so willfully obtuse?" Achewood will serve; this is the shortest possible way to explain what the Occupy movement is about, in the tone most appropriate to this most braindead question:

What followed, after the movement exploded, was a blatantly unconstitutional series of police breakups. Some of them persist; here in Seattle, they soldier on, though the group has been completely co-opted by our homegrown anarchist kooks. Early on, when forced to abandon Westlake Park, Mayor McGinn offered to let the group camp in City Hall. The group declined for reasons I'm not aware of, but I don't think it's unreasonable to suggest that it probably had something to do with the vague distrust of The Man that is the hallmark of anarchists the world over.

They recently held a vote endorsing the use of violence in their protests.

I am no longer hopeful.

2011 was the year before a presidential election year, which brings with it a particularly sinister brand of insanity. The media spent the year pretending that Mitt Romney won't win the nomination, giving the spotlight to a cavalcade of crazies, not one of which has convinced me they know which end of the spoon to use. Excepting Jon Huntsman, who, in a thinking universe, would win the nomination without hardly trying. He is the only one in the clown car who seems to have any idea how to drive, the only one who isn't proudly hostile to science, to the very idea of thinking. If memory serves, he just came in third in the New Hampshire primaries. Mitt Romney came in first; the media tried their hardest to act like this was surprising, like the wealthiest, most business-friendly candidate has a chance of losing without any hilarious flameouts. Romney, more than any past candidate for any election I can think of, represents the politician stereotype: a rich old white male who says whatever he needs to say to whoever he needs to say it in order to get elected. I doubt very much that even in his heart of hearts he knows why he wants to be president, or what his opinion on, say, abortion really is. Newt Gingrich, that perrenial bogeyman, has tumbled into the national spotlight once more. I have little to say about him except that I find it both hilarious and disturbing that he is the GOP's semi-official Smart Idea Guy. One example is enough: Newt Gingrich has suggested that a good way to combat poverty in inner cities (by which he means, a good way for black people to combat poverty) is for schools to employ their students as janitors.

The rest of the field is utterly unworthy of specific mention. Suffice it to say, they are uniformly stupid and possessed of nothing less than the most spectacular hypocrisy.

Tim Kreider, cartoonist, polemicist, and one of a handful of men I would want to have a drink with, has suggested that Plato was right, and the best form of government is an oligarchy of philosopher-kings. But he acknowledges that there aren't any left; "Johnny Cash and Carl Sagan are dead." We lost one more this year with Christopher Hitchens' passing. I did not always agree with him; in his old age, he became uncommonly hawkish. But it was always obvious, even to his worst enemies, that he was a thinking person, and a complicated one at that. This is what we need, and I fear that his passing has left us with precious few.

Locally, we privatized our state liquor in the dumbest possible way. For consumers, liquor will wind up costing more unless you've got a Costco card; that company wrote the legislation and in so doing included exemptions for themself from the extra costs that will be levied against anyone else who wants to buy or sell liquor. The state will lose money. Consumers will spend more. This during a billion-dollar budget shortfall, which has succeeded a year with a multi-billion-dollar budget shortfall. And we are currently under the effects of Tim "Piece of Shit" Eyman's legislature-neutering antitax initiative. What's particularly frustrating about that vile parchment is the fact that everyone in Olympia knows it's unconstitutional, that they could ignore it if they wanted to. But they do not, because they can point at it as an excuse for accomplishing nothing.

Meanwhile, the state supreme court has ruled that the legislature is failing to meet their constitutional obligation to adequately fund basic K-12 education. Shocking.

But onward, to the good, that little punctuation, then ever-so-quickly we'll be back again to my bread and butter.

When the year started, I was optimistic. My associate's degree was nearing completion and I seemed to have a good shot at getting into my university of choice. As it turned out, I was right; the acceptance letter from the UW was the high point of the year. Winter and Spring quarter at EDCC went quickly, filled as they were with the sort of class that you take when you've gotten most of the required, instantly-forgotten wankfest classes out of the way.

I wrecked my car shortly before finishing at EDCC. I see this less as a spot of frustration than as a mixed blessing--not having to pay the costs of driving is nice, but not having transportation in the heart of suburbia essentially means that you can't leave the house, at all, ever. Luckily, the bus stopped close enough to my house to get me to school. I tend to space out while I'm driving, anyway. I'm better off; so is everyone else on the road.

The UW is incredible. I take classes with interesting people who want to learn, who do not look at school as a chore to be gotten out of the way. I overhear arguments about Nabokov and feminism.

And I live in Seattle. I love it here, so much. My bed is under a skylight; most nights, I fall asleep in cloudcover, lit a soft orange. Our days are mostly half-lidded, never really waking up, until one morning you go outside and the sky is so blue you can hardly stand it, and you stare at it as you walk to the bus stop, just wanting this one moment to stretch out forever.

Life is not without its comforts.

And I need them. I started the year with two of the best friends I've ever had, the only friends I've had that I truly felt like I belonged with, and now I haven't got either. I'd hoped we'd be friends for life, and when the year began it seemed like this wasn't unlikely. But one of them seemed dead-set on forgetting about me; I couldn't handle the heartache, and I walked away. The other walked away from me. Hardly an hour goes by in which I don't think of them.

I miss them both so much.

Such is life.

Lately, the music I listen to seems always to be about We: We Built Our Own World; We Broke Free; We Still Kill the Old Way; We Both Go Down Together.

We Carry On.

That's all for now.

Of Vegas

2011-11-19T02:13:00.000-08:00

When I finished Fallout: New Vegas, I spent a lot of time thinking about what my motivations were for playing. I realized, about halfway through the game, that I had subconsciously developed a narrative for my character, independent of the framework of the game proper. I started the game and set out on the main quest reluctantly; as I walked through the wasteland to the Strip, each step came down with the force of a heavy sigh. I did not want to be involved with the machinations of this man who'd shot me in the head. I wanted to be left alone, and so it seemed that in order to live my life peacefully, I'd have to do what I could to stabilize the region. To that end, I aligned myself with House. I did not want to involve myself with the NCR, as they merely wanted to reinstate the broken democracy that led the world to its current state of decay. Caesar's ideology was intensely repugnant; I cannot abide slavery. I think of the idea of owning people and something inside me recoils and snaps, hissing and spitting. I could have seized power for myself, I suppose. But no. No, I did not want the responsibility, and in the vacuum of my inevitable abdication, there would have been only more strife.

House, then. The autocrat whose motives are pure but cold. Yes, he'll do me fine.

As I wandered through the waste, righting wrongs and making the world an incrementally better place, I made it a point not to take followers with me. I did not want the company, did not want to be put in charge of anyone. I would do well enough on my own. I forsook even the company of Mr. New Vegas' voice of liquid charisma, turning the radio off altogether after the fifth time I heard Ain't That a Kick in the Head.

I did, eventually, take Lily with me, because she was a giant psychotic supermutant grandmother. Which was pretty endearing.

I approached Caesar's camp as twilight set in, killing all the guards before any of them even knew I was there. In the end, Caesar's Legate was no match for me at all. I killed him with six .50 caliber armor-piercing rounds before he could even touch me. Shortly thereafter, the NCR's General Oliver stupidly felt it would be wise to turn down House's order to withdraw from the dam and the region. He drew steel, but with a literal army of bloodthirsty robots on my side, I didn't even have to.

Lily and I parted ways. She returned to Jacobstown and, eventually, went West to California. I took my weapons and my tools, then set out into the desert. The sun was not setting; I left at night, and only the coyotes and radscorpions saw me walk away from the city, bathed in its orange, neon glow.

***

My goal in playing was to create a circumstance wherein the character I played could be left alone. I'm not entirely certain why things played out this way, though it's definitely something unique to New Vegas; in Fallout 3, I made it a point to participate with whatever civilization was left, attempting whenever possible to encourage people to work together. In New Vegas, though, I took only the quests that seemed to help the region as a whole—I'm sorry, madam, that some people owe you money, but I can't be bothered to help you.

The key difference, I think, was the inclusion of the Survival skill. In Fallout 3, you can only survive through participation—in trading, in work, in society. You will not survive otherwise. New Vegas, on the other hand, gives you all the tools you will need to wander off into the desert and never see another living soul ever again. Food, water, shelter—it's all out there, if you want it, if you can find it.

Fallout 3, then, represents civilization as the inevitable triumph of humanity. Despite the setting, a post-apocalyptic wasteland created by the shortcomings of mankind, it manages to paint an overly simplistic version of civilization as an unmitigated good, pitted against the savagery of near-feral slavers and tribals. Fallout 3 can end only with the victory of the Brotherhood of Steel and the inherently co-operative, militaristic society they represent.

New Vegas, much like real life, is harder, more complicated and more nuanced. None of the three main power groups in the game are perfect. None of them could categorically be called “good” in any moral sense. Even the “evil” one, Caesar's Legion, still has some qualities that make a good case for siding with them: unity, purpose, and the promise of eventual stability. The game leaves it up to the player to decide, at any given moment, which of his or her limited options is best, and while the argument can be made that this illusion of choice is the essence of the art form, New Vegas takes this idea in a unique direction. This, I think, was the fatal commercial misstep of the game: they created a situation where non-participation was a very real option.

That's all for now.

Of the 53%

2011-10-10T00:09:00.000-07:00

I have spent my adult life thus far working to feed, clothe, and house myself.

I have faced hardship and adversity on occasion, and done so with a small amount of grace.

But I am a thinking person.

As such, I am capable of recognizing a few things:

* I would not have had the means to overcome life's challenges were it not for the opportunities provided by a fundamentally co-operative society.

* Whatever success I have had in this life, however meager or robust, does not invalidate the life of anyone else.

* Sometimes, life-shattering things happen to people through no fault or action of their own, and some of these people, for whatever reasons, cannot extricate themselves from the resulting poverty, or pain, or hardship, no matter how hard they try.

I think those people deserve help.

I think the people who caused their troubles should be punished.

And, I think we should try to keep it from happening again.

I am the 53%.

That's all for now.

Of a Brush With Fame

2011-07-27T05:44:00.000-07:00

I probably met a porn star once.

This was while I was a register biscuit at a used bookstore: I was at said register when a strikingly familiar-looking lady came in and started browsing the science fiction section. I stared at her for a minute or two, wondering where I knew her from; eventually, I realized I was having a hard time recognizing her because I'd never seen her with clothes on. Obviously, the next step was to talk to her.

This presented some difficulties.

First, I couldn't be sure of who she was without asking her. And how, pray, does one ask that question? It's not like I can just walk up and say, “Excuse me, but have you ever taken a dick on film?” There's no precedent for this; normally, when you think you recognize someone, it isn't because you once saw a video of them getting nailed against a van by some blowjob wearing a pair of Newbalance sneakers and a Kanji ass tattoo.

Second, any compliment or statement is suddenly pregnant with implied filth. She knows exactly what I've seen her do; she knows I've seen her butthole, for fuck's sake. I imagine, then, that anything I could ever say to her would have this raw sexual subtext where even the most mundane and innocuous phrases suddenly become the most suggestive phrases imaginable. Observe:

“I really like your work,”...especially the way you work the undercarriage.

“You're a very pretty lady,”...when you're getting pounded.

“I'm a big fan,”...of your vagina.

Ultimately, I decided that conversation was out of the question.

So I just asked her if she needed help finding anything.

Turns out, she didn't.

That's all for now.

Of Freedom: Director's Cut

2011-07-25T02:34:00.000-07:00

This is a paragraph that I wrote about Freedom for my last entry but didn't include because it didn't fit the tone. I still think it's pretty funny on its own, though, so here you go.

I just finished Freedom by Jonathan Franzen. It had this strange, constant dramatic pressure that would build as it subsided, so invariably congruous that it could not be said to be cyclical. Reading it was like taking a dump that never stops, just snakes endlessly out of your ass into the luminous depths of your hyper-toilet.

Of Freedom

2011-07-14T23:42:00.000-07:00

After two weeks, I'm finally done with Jonathan Franzen's Freedom. In an alternate dimension, I'm still reading it, and will be reading it forever, just like in another, altogether different place, I'm still watching The Sound of Music and listening to American Pie.

The takeaway, in short: I'm amazed that Franzen was able to build a book that I was unable to stop reading out of settings I don't give a shit about, characters I uniformly hated and themes that were old hat in the fifties.

If I were to use one word to describe Freedom, it would be "distilled". It has the focused density of Kundera with the endurance of Tolstoy; it reads like what once was a much longer work, boiled down to the bare essentials. Every sentence, every phrase, and every piece of dialogue bears a crushing import, and this combines with the undeniably riveting nature of the book in such a way that there isn't really a precedent for in real life. I imagine it's what being force-fed five pounds of steak would feel like, which, if it were really fantastic steak, probably wouldn't be a huge problem.

Sadly, this is not the case. The characters are invariably petty and small and hateful, hateful even in the way they love each other, so much so that I cannot feel sorry for them and instead start to feel sorry for Franzen--what life has he led that this is the kind of person that populates his mind? I can only assume that Franzen is as obsessed with perfection and the ideal life as his characters, that the soul-crushing state of dissatisfaction his cast inhabits is projected, that he himself has let the inevitable disappointment of living hijack his creativity; or, perhaps, that's where he gets it from.

It's kind of academic at this point.

It's a book that would have been perfectly at home, would have in fact have been earth-shatteringly relevant, in the 1950's. America's consumerist orgy ran unabated; this is a time when dissatisfaction with near-perfection (because it's just not perfect enough) wouldn't have been so laughably obtuse, would instead have been shockingly appropriate. Trying and failing to achieve perfection in one's life isn't something one should be disappointed about, nor is this something that should ever need to be explained to someone.

Though today, maybe we just would never have tried.

That's all for now.

Of Poems III

2011-06-13T20:27:00.000-07:00

One poem, two forms. The first is a sonnet, the second is free verse in triplets (and one couplet).

I'd Forgotten What I Said About Her Hair

I had a dream wherein I met a girl.
Her world died, inside out, while I watched.
I saw the last light fade, then unfurl
and fold back in on itself, worn and notched.

Awoken, dreaming done for now, I wait:
Remember this, she says, and points her fair
hand at a lock, a ray of light, one plait.
I'd said something then, about her hair.

Forgotten words; they follow, clear and bare.
I'm focused on doors now, always when shut.
They draw me in. I see their outlines flare,
and I'm concerned: I feel this in my gut.

The words I need are here: I can't recall.
She's waiting, singing, ready above all.

I had a dream
that I met a girl
in a dying world.

She asked me to remember
her hair.
The last light of that place struck it just so:

it scattered, bronze and gold, metal and fire,
mounting beauty,
a liquid that held me as it burned me.

I'd said something then,
something important, something
rarefied and diffuse.

Awake, dreaming done for now:
I remember the feeling but
not the look.

We've become overly concerned with doors:
they give us pause,
a glimmer lying

in wait for us, quietly subsiding.
We reach for the words: they come easy
just before awakening

but now, and always, they hover at
the edge of consciousness: I'd forgotten what I said about her hair.

----

That's all for now.

Of Poems II

2011-06-09T00:39:00.000-07:00

A new poem. Not my best. It'll do.

Photographs
----
We have four pictures.
It is my father's family
or mine or
us or ours.
It is Halloween,
and it is not. and not and not.

We are costumed. We are a clown, or
our mother's idea thereof.
We are focused with bespectacled Kathy, half-
lidded, concentrating.

Now: We ask ourselves,
what of Halloween?
We say, "I dressed as a hippie."
We aren't sure what that is.
We don't know what to say.

Not-Halloween: our hand hovers
over a fish on the counter,
menacing and desirous,
caught on a hook in the moment.

This is any day
and every day
repeating,
coming back to us through years of void and regret.
-----

That's all for now.

Of Poems

2011-05-14T14:03:00.000-07:00

Here's a poem I wrote.

Candles
-----
I light my candles
and nobody touches me.
I am thus privileged.

They ask what I remember:
hot breath and cold sweat,
the rustle of robes, hitched high,

and his voice, bass,
when he gave them to me.
“Thine vestments,” he

said, a secret curl on his lip.
A moment of cresting
ugliness rolls over me.

It breaks, and rolls back,
and he lets go with deep whispers.
That is what I tell them. My words make dust:

it blooms like summer pollen, silent and tenuous,
then settles
in slow motion

while I watch and
wait, trapped in my life,
half awake: I'm a winter sky dawning.

In the end, he leaves how he came: quietly, candles flickering.

Of Persona

2011-04-27T21:31:00.000-07:00

I had to write a poem in the voice of a historical figure. Naturally, I chose H.P. Lovecraft. I wanted to give it some richness and modern relevance by working in some reference to the Rothschilds and their tentacular management of world banking, but couldn't do so without using imagery that was more Christian and European than Lovecraftian. We'll see what we can do in a second draft.

The Dreams of Lovecraft
-----
I have been inflicted
with a succession
of frightful dreams,
most details of
which blessedly escape me
but whose closing haunts
me yet.

My first sensation was
a brazen sky,
molten and roiling,
and under this untenable thing
did I first see
the countenance of unreason.

My surroundings were that
of a ravine,
boulders red and cracked, throbbing as hearts,
and I began
to pick my way among the terrain.

I came to a sickened building,
its columns twisted as of
a creeper,
its portal projecting not
light, but
its own material blackness.

Though its vileness was clear,
my heart soared,
for never before had
my dream forced me through
its penumbra.

But my limbs,
seemingly possessed
of a baleful intelligence,
compelled me ever forward.

Through the darkness
I went, wherein I
felt, with
crawling certainty,
that all blossoming joy
would forevermore be
an unreachable winter's gasp.

The shadow subsided,
and I came to a chamber
lit by the sky
and all memory from now
was poisoned,

For there was a cyclopean beast,
fleshy and viscid,
wreathed as a lion with
grasping, furious tentacles,
their rending hooks a-shudder,
seated on a throne alive
with the writhing
of great worms, thrust
into the earth.

I awoke with
a scream, slick with sweat,
and paramount
in my concern was
this: the nightmare's end
draws ever closer.

Rejection Register, Part the Second

2011-04-09T14:29:00.001-07:00

Of Americans

2011-03-07T02:48:00.000-08:00

This has been a very trying twenty-four hours.

I made the mistake of purchasing Twilight of the Assholes by Tim Kreider at the Emerald City Comic-Con yesterday. Like most of my best literary finds (The Myrkin Papers, I Was Told There'd Be Cake, et al.), I picked it up based mostly on the strength of its title. The accuracy and truth of the obese hag replacing Lady Liberty on the cover merely sealed the deal. This is a theme that would repeat itself throughout the book; Kreider has an uncanny knack for drawing the ugliest parts of this country.

It represents, essentially, the concerted efforts of a thinking person to keep himself from going completely batshit insane during a time when his country has already lost that fight. And I do mean his country, because it is clear that, despite all the vitriol he flings on the idiot public and our elected officials, he has a deep respect for the ideals that this place ostensibly stands for. In one essay, one downright harrowing essay, he asks what happened to the country that he grew up in. Typically when people ask this, they are wondering why it is that Kids These Days wear their pants so gad dang low, or why Them Faggits are suddenly allowed to touch each other in public. When Kreider asks, he wants to know how we went from a country where an anti-war comedy was the most beloved program on television to a country where people routinely suggest that 150,000 confirmed Iraqi civilian deaths are acceptable losses in the War on Terror.

It is a salient question.

It is answered, in part, by welfare. The right-wing hate machine has successfully turned the term into a curse. If you ask someone if they are for welfare, it is statistically likely that they will say they are not. However, if you ask them how they feel about each individual element of social programs, never mentioning that these are the pieces of welfare, they are far, far more likely to be in favor of them. The difference is truly shocking; people are something like 60% more likely to be in favor of welfare if you simply call it something else. There are a lot of conclusions to draw from this.

But I am a cynic.

Accordingly, I immediately spot the most unpleasant conclusion: education and knowledge are incredibly important to justice, fairness, and the democratic process- but most people simply do not have enough of either.

The book builds to the 2008 election and then erupts in elation, with one of its only genuinely sweet illustrations: the author standing with his friends at Barack Obama's inauguration. Those of us with the benefit of hindsight know that this was, perhaps, premature. Even a scant few weeks later, Kreider knew, deep down, that this was nourishment for a body too far gone: "The Republican Party will be resurgent sooner than anyone would like to think. Like herpes, conservatism lies dormant in the nervous system of the republic, waiting for times of stress, for our resistance to weaken, when it will erupt scabrously anew."

The beginning of the end is decompression, written during the idylls of Obama's first summer in office. Kreider's prose becomes hazy and apologetic, then, finally, resigned: "We have fulfilled our national destiny according to our own ideal: we lived fast and died young. The corpse, however, may be less than beautiful."

Really, this is the cusp of the matter: the truth of the American public is too disgustingly ugly to be admitted.

That's all for now.

The Rejection Register

2011-03-02T23:00:00.000-08:00

Of Labor

2010-12-04T17:32:00.000-08:00

My twelve-page research paper for English 102. The longest thing I've written to date. It turned out alright, I think, if you can make yourself care about the source material. I could easily write an entire paper just on the Pinkertons, but I'll save that idea for another assignment.

-----
Triumph and Failure: the Dichotomy of Labor in the East and West, 1870-1920

The mechanization of industry in the United States was a necessary step in the country's history. It allowed for us to achieve the economic dominance that has served our country so well, while also allowing us to avoid the overt belligerence that eventually proved to be the downfall of the British Empire. However, it was not without its costs: it exacerbated the already-inflamed labor disputes that had been brewing since the turn of the 19th century. It wasn't until the 1870s, however, that the labor disputes became routinely violent, as “the workers rose to protest violently against what they considered to be their ruthless exploitation by employers” (Dulles 108). For the next fifty years, the country was swept up in a class struggle that affected every worker from coast to coast, from factory worker to logger to coal miner and everyone in between. The 1920s were an era of relative calm, as a series of victories by the employers of the country had demoralized and weakened the unions, and the first great wave of American consumerism temporarily obfuscated the plight of the common laborer (Dulles 232-3). While the labor disputes from 1870 to 1920 in both the East and the West contributed to the eventual adoption of fair labor policies, the disputes in the West were fundamentally less successful than those in the East, due to more government intervention and stronger negative public opinion.

The economic depression of the 1870s touched off the first national labor disputes: “The depression of the 1870s ushered in one of the most confused periods in American labor history” (Dulles 108). It was during this period that employers first started to actively combat the efforts of the labor unions. Up until this point, employers had been mostly reactive, crushing or starving strikes as they arose and doing their best to block legislation mandating ten- or eight-hour workdays (as opposed to twelve-hour or longer workdays, which were the norm at the time). However, the founding and early rise of the first major nationwide labor union, the Knights of Labor, in 1869, convinced many businessmen that they needed to take a more proactive approach against the efforts of the workingmen (Dulles 122). This, combined with the recent legislation in many states that allowed railroads to employ their own police, and with the newly-famous Pinkerton National Detective agency ready to go to work for them, resulted in many violent strikes, uprisings, and riots (Churchill 11). The 1880s were more economically stable, but the Knights of Labor were at the height of their influence during this period and “...the future of American labor in the mid- 1880s appeared to lie with the Knights of Labor” (Dulles 120).

The 1880s were just as turbulent, if not more so, than the previous decade. Membership in the Knights waned toward the end of the 1880s, but this did not dull the fervor of the labor movement going into the new decade, as “labor disputes reached a peak involving even more workers...than the strikes in 1886” (Dulles 162). The depression of the 1890s served as an impetus to the movement; this same depression fell particularly hard on Washington State and would have serious and fatal ramifications in Everett 1916, and again in Centralia in 1919. The most important labor events of the 1890s, though, were the two “great strikes” of the era: first in Homestead, Pennsylvania, and the Pullman strike, the latter of which covered a large network of railroads primarily in the West (Dulles 157).

The turn of the century marked America's first real foray into Progressivism, with many Progressives achieving real political power, especially in the West. These were men and women with the goal of “...building a better society” (Anderson 250). This era lasted until 1917, with some entrenched progressive politicians staying in office through the Great Depression (Dulles 175). Western Progressives were mostly in favor of labor reform, but when strikes occurred, “middle- and upper-class Progressives refused to support them” (Anderson 264). Significant steps toward labor reform were made during the Progressive era, but public opinion in the West was slanted against the largest unions at the time, the American Federation of Labor and the Industrial Workers of the World (colloquially called the Wobblies for reasons that are to this day unclear), and as a result, state government complicity in (or outright support of) violence against striking workers and union members became the norm. While the federal government for the most part recognized the importance of cooperating with the unions during World War I, a series of incredibly violent strikes and labor fights still rocked the nation between 1914 and 1919. The American press sensationalized these events and distorted them beyond recognition, blaming the Wobblies, foreigners, Communists and Socialists for instigating the fights, even when clear eyewitness accounts showed that the local governments or citizens were the aggressors (McClelland 88). Finally, in 1920, American business launched a concerted effort to break up the unions with an open shop movement; union membership declined and because Warren G. Harding's Presidential victory convinced most Progressives to abandon their efforts, the labor movement no longer had any friends in government (Anderson 282). The unions were forced onto the defensive, and spent the 1920s holding onto the advances they had achieved during the Progressive era. The movement had not ended, but for the first time in fifty years, it met welcome, if grudging, peace.

The Eye That Never Weeps

The late 1800s were a difficult time for law enforcement in the US; railroads made it easy for criminals to run from one state to the next, and, outside of the odd US Marshall, there were no federal police officers, as the FBI wouldn't be established until 1908. This was true across the country, but particularly so in the West, as it was only relatively recently that it had been settled. The railroad companies had had enough of their trains being robbed, and because the federal government both was the only body with the authority to enforce law over all of the land covered and had proven themselves inept at doing so, the railroads encouraged states to enact laws that would allow the railroads to hire their own police. These railroad police were given their power and authority by state governments, just as civil police, but were employed and directed by the railroads. Railroad police were mostly hired from private detective agencies; there were many of these agencies, but the true powerhouse of the market was the Pinkerton National Detective Agency. The Pinkerton symbol of an unblinking eye and their motto “We Never Sleep” would be ubiquitous in America for many years to come. As the lawlessness in the West became less of an issue, and the railroad management “[sloughed] off of dependence on Pinkerton detectives”, Pinkertons were hired more and more to combat the strikers and unions (Morn 94). A Pinkerton detective, for instance, was single-handedly responsible for destroying the Molly Maguires, an Irish radical labor group (Morn 94). The Pinkertons were, from the 1870s to the 1920s, essentially a private army directed by the railroads and any other business that could afford them.

Because they operated nationally, the Pinkertons are uniquely positioned to offer insight into the difference between Eastern and Western labor movements. The Homestead strike in Pennsylvania, for example, was particularly violent; while it was not completely successful, it was noteworthy in that it was one of few cases where the Pinkertons engaged the strikers and lost. Homestead, Pennsylvania was the site of a Carnegie Steel plant, and in 1892 the local manager tried to cut the wages of its skilled workers. They chose to strike, and in response, Carnegie Steel sent in three hundred Pinkerton detectives to act as guards for the strikebreakers they planned to bring in. This was perceived as a direct challenge by the strikers, who waited by the river for the Pinkerton barge to arrive. When it did, the strikers fired upon the Pinkertons, who attempted to return fire but, realizing the hopelessness of the situation, they eventually surrendered with the agreement that they would be given safe passage out of town. However, “When the Pinkertons came ashore, they were again attacked and had to run the gauntlet of an infuriated mob of men and women armed with stones and clubs before they were safely entrained for Pittsburgh” (Dulles 159). It is no coincidence that this event was the first of its kind to be investigated by Congress – despite the eventual breaking of the strike, it could not be ignored that a mob of citizens had felt so strongly in favor of the union that they had attacked a group of armed mercenaries (Morn 102).

Conversely, the miner strike in Northern Idaho in 1892 was a complete failure on the part of the unions, ending in their dissolution and resulting in an irrelevance that would last for years to come. This region of Idaho, the Couer d'Alene river valley, was the site of many gold and silver mines, worked by about two thousand skilled and unskilled miners (Lukas 101). Years of small wages at long hours had encouraged the miners in this area to organize unions in 1887, and the thirteen mine owners themselves formed the Mine Owners Protective Association of the Couer d'Alenes (MOA) in 1891. That year, the MOA asked the Pinkertons to send them an agent to infiltrate the union (the separate unions had agreed to organize and essentially operate as one earlier that year). The Pinkertons sent Charles Siringo, a man who had proven himself as a cowboy detective in Colorado (Lukas 102). With no support, he infiltrated the miner's union in early 1891 and reported on them until he was discovered by a former acquaintance in July of 1892; later, his testimony would be integral in the conviction of thirteen union leaders for contempt of court and conspiracy (though a federal court would later overturn all of these charges). Siringo's discovery, though, triggered an uprising among the unions, who lashed back at the owners and used dynamite to set off explosions at several of the mines. Idaho's Governor, Norman B. Willey, declared martial law and ordered the Idaho National Guard into the county, and asked President Harrison for federal troops. These two forces then proceeded to escort non-union workers into the area and to arrest anyone suspected of being in the union, most of whom were released after months without being formally charged. These men were allowed to return to work if they swore off the union completely. This would not be the only time that both local and federal governments, along with the Pinkertons, would directly oppose the miners and their unions in this area.

In 1899, tensions between unions and mine owners in the Couer d'Alenes were again rising as the threat of a strike combined with a Democratic governor in office (and Populist politicians in most local positions) convinced most mine owners to raise wages. The only holdout was the Bunker Hill mine, which refused to raise wages in addition to illegally refusing to hire any unionized miners. Then “the WFM and/or Pinkerton provocateurs responded by dynamiting and burning Bunker Hill & Sullivan property” (Churchill 26). This prompted the new governor, Frank Steunenberg, to again send in the National Guard and ask for federal troops, repeating the series of events played out in 1892. The Guard once again arrested all suspected union members, incarcerated them illegally, and forced them to renounce their ties to the unions in order to return to work. It was a bitter denouement for the workers, whose faith in the Democrat Governor Steunenberg had been proven to be unfounded. The Pinkertons would continue to work with railroads and mine owners against the labor movement even after the formation of the FBI in 1908, until the Wagner Act of 1935 necessitated a change in their business focus. As for the unions themselves, “the repression of the strike broke the WFM in the [Couer d'Alenes], and unionism remained insignificant in the area for years” (Goldstein 71).

Blood in the Forest, Blood in the Sand

The Industrial Workers of the World, (or “Wobblies”, as they came to be called for no evident reason) never had a membership that was, taken by itself, large enough to suggest social significance; their membership at the peak of their influence was only one hundred thousand, compared to the Knights of Labor membership of over seven hundred thousand (Renshaw 1-2). However, their importance is more readily represented by their vocal radicalism; they were a populist, progressive union at a time when that was an incredibly dangerous position. They represented a direct and obvious challenge to the status quo, and the public response differed by region. Extreme violence against labor groups in the West was not limited to the Wobblies, however – the unions attacked in the Ludlow massacre of 1914 were strictly local organizations. No region, though, was as hostile as Washington State.

Washington was the site of two major attacks against the Wobblies; the so-called Everett Massacre of 1916 and the Centralia attacks in 1919. Historically, the two cities could not have been more different; Everett was founded by businessmen as a prospective West coast Boston equivalent and became a dismal failure, barely surviving the depression of the 1890's, whereas Centralia was more or less created by one man, who had the foresight to claim exactly the sort of area that people would want to settle in (McClelland 3). However, the press atmosphere in Washington as a whole was largely anti-labor during the first part of the twentieth century, with many newspapers accusing the Wobblies and other unions of communism and of getting their living without work (McClelland 2). The unstable economy and press bias catalyzed the public resentment toward any perceived threat to their hard-earned way of life and ultimately led to the violence in Everett and Centralia.

Everett in particular teetered on the edge of disincorporation throughout the depression of the 1890's. The cause was simple: a group of men, John D. Rockefeller among them, had decided to build a new city, then pulled out when their Eastern interests became troubled. The town was reduced to such poverty during this period that some citizens were forced to eat garbage thrown from restaurants (Clark 36). The vast majority of Everett citizens worked very hard simply to survive; they fished, they cut firewood, and grew whatever vegetables they could in the sandy, acidic soil of the area. Their salvation, as it were, came in the same form that brought their hardest times: a new group of investors. A new mill, new infrastructure and new money brought Everett from the brink of ruin. To these people, the success of capitalism erased its failure only a decade before. Their dependence on the businessmen of the area belied their dalliances with Progressive and Socialist politicians during the early 1910's. So, when the Wobblies became active in the area in 1916, the first response from the city government was to throw any and all of them in jail. Donald McRae, the Sheriff at the time, had an arrest-first-ask-questions-later approach to any Wobblies he found; his typical action was to arrest them, hold them overnight, and ship them out of the county in the morning. Tensions rose from July 16 when a Wobbly speaker was jailed and then deported for simply speaking on a street corner; the Summer and Autumn months were heavy with police brutality and speech suppression on the part of McRae, the odd labor riot, and a strike on the part of the shingle-weaver's union. The finale to all of this unrest took place on November 5th, 1916. Two boats full of roughly 250 Wobblies (and two confirmed Pinkerton detectives) departed Seattle for Everett; the first to arrive, the Verona, was confronted by McRae and several hundred of his deputies. After some words with the foremost men on the deck, shots were fired (there is still some debate over who shot first; it is certain that at least one of the casualties on the Sheriff's side was from friendly fire). There were two casualties on the side of the deputies, five on the Wobblies, and over fifty wounded. Now, such an event would no doubt be a shock; then, after twenty years of seesawing between prosperity and poverty, the massacre was swiftly forgotten, and similar events played out in Centralia three years later (Clark 232-3).

Centralia was celebrating Armistice Day in 1919 with a Legionnaire parade when tragedy struck. Much like the events in Everett leading up to that city's own massacre, Centralia was, as the newspapers of the time might have put it, plagued with Wobblies, and their gadfly-esque demands for basic constitutional rights prompted a group of Centralia Legionnaires to raid the Wobbly hall as they marched in the parade. Unlike the Everett Massacre, witness reports are quite clear and unconflicting in regard to who fired first: it was undoubtedly the Wobblies. Because raids on Wobbly buildings had been commonplace in the state in the years up until 1919 (raids in which the aggressors “took everything that could be lifted and burned or smashed it”, according to McClelland), the Wobblies in Centralia had taken to setting armed guards in their building, so when they saw armed Legionnaires marching to their building who had publicly discussed a raid on the Wobblies only days before, they acted in defense of their property (66). Legionnaires attempted to break into the Wobbly hall and several were killed as soon as the shooting started; the rest flooded into the hall and began to overpower the men inside. One Wobbly, Wesley Everest, ran out of the back of the building, but ultimately failed to escape while killing at least three men. All of the Wobblies, Everest included, were rounded up and arrested. During the night, Everest was pulled out of the city jail by an angry mob, then beaten, castrated, and lynched. The coroner's report listed the cause of death as “suicide”. No effort was made on the part of local law enforcement to identify and prosecute those who took part in the lynching. Newspapers were unflinchingly on the side of the Legionnaires and the lynchers, with one paper in particular remarking that the lynchers displayed “commendable reserve” in not murdering more of “the assassins” (qtd. in McClelland 86). What is truly telling about the public's venom against the Wobblies is that not only did it take place after the massacre in Everett, it also took place after the massacre in Ludlow, Colorado, an event which achieved national notoriety, and convinced even John D. Rockefeller, Jr. that something had to be done to address the “labor question” (Gitelman 16).

Rockefeller owned Colorado Fuel & Iron, which operated, appropriately enough, in Colorado. Rising disputes between the operators and the miners were based on these complaints, listed succinctly by Zinn:

...that they were robbed of from 400-800 pounds on each ton of coal, that they were paid in scrip worth ninety cents on the dollar...that the eight-hour law was not observed, that the law allowing miners to elect checkweighmen of their own choice was completely ignored, that their wages could only be spent in company stores and saloons, that they were forced to vote according to the wishes of the mine superintendent, that they were beaten and discharged for voicing complaints, that the armed mine guards conducted a reign of terror which kept the miners in subjection to the company...casualty rates were twice as high in Colorado as in other mining states. (Zinn 188)

The mine operators ignored any requests for mediation. Perhaps inevitably, the miners struck, and a series of brutal attacks by mine guards and, later, National Guardsmen culminated in an attack on the Ludlow tent colony where the miners were living with their families. For roughly twelve hours, the Guardsmen (who at this point were mine guards drawing mine salaries but wearing Guard uniforms) fired a hail of bullets into the tent colony, then set it on fire. At least nineteen people were killed, most of whom were unarmed women and children. The press reaction was national but neutral; the New York Times held the strike leaders just as responsible for the deaths as the men who ordered the attack on the tent colony: “Strike organizers cannot escape full measure of blame for the labor war” (qtd. in Zinn 200). It is perhaps not altogether unsurprising, then, that in a social climate where the murder of over a dozen women and children is blamed equally upon their attackers and defenders, the same conditions in an idealistically similar setting would reap the same results.

The Relevance of the Worker's Plight

The results of all of this conflict were indeed far-reaching. Rockefeller Jr. himself recognized the importance of proper labor relations after the Ludlow debacle. Public opinion in the East had been slowly creeping toward the side of worker's rights since the dawn of the progressive era; however, it was in the West that unions found the most resistance to their efforts. It was during this time period that the West was acutely susceptible to economic depression; Eastern investors would cancel their Western ventures at the first sign of depression in the East. Risk was simply unacceptable to them when the economy dipped. This business skittishness, combined with the structures that were used for the repression itself and the public's dependence on capitalists made for an environment that was intrinsically hostile to the efforts of the labor unions. It is truly unfortunate that a region so abundant with natural resources was also built in such a way that the people who extracted those resources were also the most oppressed in the region. Geoff Mann says that “The particularity of work and workers in the U.S. West is not merely a product of geography and history; western geography and history are themselves a reflection of these workers, their work, and the way they politicized the wage relations that constituted it” (167). It is of utmost importance to understand and acknowledge this – the very history of the West was forged through these conflicts, and the truth of the matter is that they were caused by some of the things that America holds most dear: nationwide business, autonomous state governments, and capitalism.

Of Food and Memetics

2010-12-01T22:35:00.001-08:00

I helped at an event hosted by EdCC. It was called "A Taste of Sustainability" and focused on raising awareness of green living in general and sustainable food in particular. The work I did consisted of helping with decorations (balloons) and standing at a booth to answer questions about a local organic grocer (PCC), which, for the record, I had never heard of before that day. If this seems strange to you, rest assured you are not alone: it was uncomfortable.

As soon as I was informed of what I was doing, I set to reading all of the literature at my disposal as quickly and thoroughly as possible. This helped; I could now tell people what bulgur was. "Think if rice and couscous got together and had a baby," I prepared to say to anyone who asked (no-one did. Alas.).

I make it a point to know at least a little bit about a lot of things, so I came to this event already aware of the problems with our nation's current, overly centralized and profit-oriented industrial food scheme. I've read Fast Food Nation. I've got a friend who's an organic farmer in Tacoma; long conversations over the internet and dark beer had given me what I thought was a pretty basic level of knowledge in this area. As it turns out, that means I knew more than any of the people walking around the booths (which makes sense, because ostensibly they are there specifically because they don't know about sustainable foods), and any of the other people running the other booths. I was not entirely prepared for that; typically I am not the person to ask about anything that doesn't involve comics or video games or voice actors.

So, it came as a slight shock to me when people didn't know that the recent contamination of a large quantity of our country's eggs with salmonella was the direct and inevitable result of a deregulated and unethical industry; that our prior adaptations to life in a sprawling nation whose primary ideal is that of Capital is essentially to blame for the fact that our food is slowly killing us; that organic food is mainly expensive because it isn't heavily subsidized like industrial food is and therefore represents the actual costs of production. Unfortunately, I also would not have discovered these things just by working the event; take from this what you will.

I spoke to a few people at some length about these issues. They were receptive, and always surprised to find out that there are better options for food out there. This was the cusp of my experience: observing, and taking part in, the spread of a meme (a cultural idea that acts like a gene in many ways - an idea that self-propagates). I daresay that in any sapient society, the ideas which are selected for, which float to the surface and spread, are probably more important than the physical traits, especially since our medical technology allows us to mitigate the effects of natural selection. This was my individual contribution to our evolution, then; I am, perhaps, a link in the chain of a successful idea, possibly an idea which may, someday, have a measurable effect on the way humanity conducts itself in the natural world.

That's all for now.

Of Projects

2010-10-25T00:01:00.000-07:00

The Deal:

I have here nine notecards. They are the first of many. On the front, college-ruled side is printed a sentence of some kind. They vary in style, tone and content. On the back is printed my phone number.

I will take these and distribute them, out there. They will be tucked into books and left on seats and thrown away and folded into newspapers and anything else I come up with.

What will happen? Maybe nothing. Maybe something! Maybe everything. We are going to find out.

THE RULES

1) No houses.

2) No businesses we frequent.

3) Be discreet.

4) Don't question.

5) Don't hesitate.

6) Don't look back.

7) Answer the phone.

That's all for now.

Of Metroids and Woe

2010-09-15T23:30:00.000-07:00

Metroid: Other M is here, and the short version is, it's pretty fun but the plot is HILARIOUSly bad.

A brief plot recap for the uninitiated: You play Samus Aran, bounty hunter. At this point in the story she has been through six adventures of note (in chronological order, they are Metroid, Metroid II, Metroid Prime through Prime 3, and Super Metroid). She fights space aliens, typically as a contractor for the Galactic Federation, with a special emphasis on Metroids and Space Pirates. Metroids are bulbous, hovering creatures with tooth-ringed suckers that devour the life energy of basically any creature. They are terrifying. Space Pirates are pirates – but in space. Samus has just defeated her nemeses, Mother Brain and the Space Pirates, for the second time (see: Super Metroid) when Other M picks up. The first half hour of the game consists almost entirely of Samus talking to herself, soliloquizing even, about the infant Metroid that saved her delicious, savory bacon at the end of Super Metroid. “The Baby,” she calls it, in a breathy, Bella Swan-esque murmur. Samus' weird, uncomfortable maternal attachment to a lifeforce-devouring space alien monster is, unfortunately, a reoccurring one, unfolding throughout the game. Samus is flying through space to who knows what port when she gets a distress call, codenamed Baby's Cry (I know this because the name is mentioned on at least two occasions, and is just as cringe-inducing both times; the game makes special mention of the fact that this distress call is meant to call attention to itself – like there is any other kind of distress call). Samus flies her maternal self to the source of this call, a secret GF installation called the Bottle Ship, so-called probably because it's shaped like a cricket bat. Turns out she's not the first to get there – her old commanding officer, Adam Malkovich, is already there with a cadre of soldiers, all of whom are completely forgettable except for Sergeant Black-Guy-Who-Looks-Asian. Predictably, he is the comic relief, and while he does try very hard, laughing at him feels sort of dirty since he's such a caricature of what black folk tend to look like, combined with subtly and inexplicably tilted eyes. Imagine a half-asian Al Jolson wearing blackface in a Broadway production of Aliens. Jarring. Malkovich decides that Samus can help the team take care of business and unravel the mystery of the Bottle Ship, so now, one hour into the game, is when the fun actually happens.

Now, if there's anything that defines the mechanics of Metroid games, it's exploring and shooting crazy aliens (or, “craliens”) with progressively more deadly lasers and explosives, and Other M does not disappoint on either count. Unlike in other Metroid games, Samus hasn't mysteriously misplaced all the powerups she accumulated in the first game (as in Metroid II, Super Metroid), nor does she get catastrophically damaged at the beginning (Prime, Fusion). It's actually quite clever: Samus defers to the judgment of the officer in charge and only uses the more powerful components of her arsenal at Malkovich's discretion. That's an excuse that doesn't leave a weird, vaguely unsettling aftertaste. It makes perfect sense and is probably the best bit of writing in the game.

The combat itself is easily the coolest, most fulfilling in the series. You dodge enemy attacks (projectile or otherwise) buy pushing any direction on the d-pad just before the attack connects. The window here is very wide and the action, called Sensemove, gives a lot of invulnerability. If you hold down the attack button while you do this, you'll instantly charge up your gun as you flip about – and there are a lot of times when attacks come right after the other, resulting in an incredibly satisfying series of high-power shots and exploding monsters. Samus can also get right up to her enemies and finish them off up close, which involves some acrobatics and usually puts the enemy in the sort of headlock an unpleasant uncle named Gary might give, except this one ends with a face full of plasma. These moves are smooth and an absolute joy to perform and watch, and this fresh take on Samus is much appreciated; she has always been competent before, but never has she been certifiably badass. It's also worth mentioning that there is a first-person element to the game. Most of the time, you hold the Wii remote on its side, with the d-pad on the left. To fire missiles, you must point the remote at the screen, which pulls the camera down into Samus' helmet and allows you to lock onto enemies and fire missiles. There is no way to describe this function without making it sound horrendous. It isn't. It works just like it's supposed to, and switching is one of those rare uses of motion control that doesn't feel like simply a replacement for a button press. I daresay that I would prefer more robust controls that don't require me to change the way I hold the controller and don't change my viewpoint, but they suffice as they are.

The exploration raises its hand when its name is called but does not bring cupcakes on its birthday. You explore, often by jumping from one platform to another. You backtrack when a freshly unlocked piece of equipment allows access to new areas, just like in previous titles. The mechanic does what it needs to do but does not excel. There are some minor kinks with platform edge grabs where sometimes they just don't work properly. The in-game map is two-dimensional (in a three-dimensional platformer? Really, guys?), which makes backtracking confusing at times. The scanning that was an intrinsic mechanic of the Prime series is all but gone, which is a spot of contention for most but a relief for some. I didn't miss it; the pace of the game is interrupted enough by questionable dialogue and awkward cutscenes without also forcing you to stop and scan everything around you every three minutes. The combat is very much the star of this game and the exploration elements competently back it up. Aesthetically, the places you explore are believable but not bold; they are not the unique worlds we were given in the Prime series.

The plot, though. The plot. It is brilliant, almost inspiring in its badness. The dialogue is heavy-handed and corny (“I'm here to secure your safety!”, Samus claims at one point), like it was...well, translated from Japanese. Every time I play one of these games, I wonder how many native English speakers read the dialogue before they put it into the game, if any. The pacing is off, but not Mel Gibson- or Sean Young-off. More like Angelina Jolie-off, a degree that just makes you impatient and mildly uncomfortable, and maybe you want to hit the fast-forward button.

Samus does a lot of reflecting in this game. She acts like a character out of Speed Racer, constantly spouting internal monologue (is it still internal if we can hear it?), in her dusky, soulless mutter. She is written to be an idiot, asking questions that have already been answered and laboriously explaining the obvious. Whoever wrote this game very clearly did not think much of the players if they felt that we wouldn't be able to connect the dots after seeing that the Bottle Ship has a Bioweapon Research Facility – Samus sees this and asks, “Do you think they were researching bioweapons here?” No, Samus. That's where they make the waffles. I didn't think there would ever be any video game characters who were as unintentionally stupid as Metal Gear Solid's Solid Snake: he may have a competitor in Other M's Samus Aran.

That is not to say that there are no intriguing plot elements. They are just buried under glaciers of stupid. Samus' attachment to the infant Metroid is interesting at face value, but the dialogue discussing it is all so creepy that it makes the whole thing awkward. The plot eventually turns into a government-project-gone-awry thriller story, which, again, might have been interesting if it weren't for the dropped plot points, Samus' contrived incompetence, and the fact that Metroid: Fusion already drew from that well. Ultimately, the writing is so disrespectful to the intelligence of the player that all but the truly stupid can't help but laugh. Sergeant Blacksalot probably has the best/worst piece of dialogue in the game: “Man, if something like that happened now...”. It preempted any jokes I might have made at its expense, though, since he said it the same way I might have said it if I were making fun of the cutscene right before it. That is the heart of the matter, really; the writing is so bad that it makes fun of itself on accident before you even have a chance.

It suffers from a plot that is hamstrung, to say the least, but the core elements of combat and exploration still hold up. There's little here for new fans of the series and old fans will probably be irritated by Samus' characterization, but there is some fun to be had. The only thing that stops me from calling Other M the worst Metroid title ever is the fact that Metroid and Metroid II came out twenty-four and nineteen years ago, respectively, much like the only thing that keeps Billy from being the worst Baldwin is Daniel.

5/10 for this.

Context

2010-08-06T20:54:00.000-07:00

New story for school. Inspiration: Some people I overheard in a Denny's. I stupidly put it off until about two hours before it is due so it is far from my best work but ehhhh.

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Context

She had heard about her grandfather's illness a week earlier. Her mother had called, thrown it in at the end of her weekly conversational attack. Tracy endured the call while she painted her nails a light pink. “Oh, by the way, your father's father is dying.”

Tracy nearly missed it. “Wait. What?”

“Your grandfather. He's dying. The doctors say no more than two weeks.”

“But I haven't even met him!”

“...honey, the cancer doesn't know that.”

Tracy sighed. “Thanks for telling me, Mom.”

“Are you going to go meet him?” her mother asked, tentatively.
“Of course!”

“He's in St. John's hospital in St. Louis. Call me when you get there.”

Tracy spent the flight to St. Louis imagining what her grandfather would be like. She pictured an age-rounded version of her father, who had died shortly after she had been born. She had only ever seen pictures of him. She thought about her father and her grandfather as she took a taxi to the hotel she was staying, a Best Western. She settled into her room, looked in all the drawers of her temporary furniture, and called her mother.

“I'm in St. Louis now, mom.”

“Good. Are you going to see Bill tomorrow?”

“Yes! I can't wait! Why didn't I ever meet him when I was young?”

“When your father died it was just...too hard to talk to his parents. They never asked to see you, either, so I assumed they didn't want the reminder, either.”

Tracy paced the room as she listened, walking from the door to her room to the door of the bathroom and back again.

“What's he like?” Tracy asked.

“I don't know what to tell you, dear. I only ever met them once, and that was twenty-five years ago. Besides, you'll find out soon enough.”

“Is he sweet? I bet he tells funny stories. Did he fight in any of the wars? Is he old enough for that? Or maybe too old–“

“I hardly know him myself, Tracy. Just wait and see. And do try not to get your hopes up, okay?”

Tracy looked out across the dark parking lot of the hotel from her one window. “Yes, mother. Good night.”

“Good night, honey.”

Tracy flipped her phone shut and started to get ready for bed. As she brushed her teeth, she studied herself in the mirror and tried to determine which of her features had come from her mother, tried to build an image of someone two generations removed from her. The picture in her mind was incomplete, like a memory with no context, nothing to hang it on and force it to stick. She turned off the lights, got into bed. Sleep came slowly, the fatigue of her travels creeping slowly into her until she fell into a deep and dreamless sleep.

Tracy stood in the hallway of her grandfather's hospital room. The door was open; she stood staring at the wall six feet removed from the doorway. She took a deep breath and walked up to the doorway, looked into the room. The man lying in bed had a newspaper opened in front of him, covering him completely. She took a step in and cleared her throat. He lowered the newspaper, and looked her up and down. He smiled, and winked at her.

“You've definitely got the wrong room, cutie. Or maybe I've got the right one,” he said.

“Are..are you Bill?” Tracy asked.

“I was wrong, you do have the right room.”

“I'm Tracy, Frank's daughter.”

He frowned slightly. “And here I was thinking I'd get one last twirl. You may as well sit down then.”

She sat in a chair facing his bed and looked at Bill. He was thin, almost to the point of emaciation, with a shock of white hair that stood high on the back of his head, and a burgeoning forest of stubble on his face.

“So, you're Frank's kid. You're how old now? Twenty-six?”

“Twenty-seven.”

“And what do you do for a living?”

“I'm a dental hygienist.”

He nodded, then cocked his mouth to one side and looked up at the ceiling. “Well, I'm tapped out. Anything you want to know?”

Tracy thought. She had so many questions, she was paralyzed by opportunity. She looked at Bill, spread her hands and bit her lip. He laughed.

“Alright. I was a fisherman. Retired thirty years ago.”

“Did you have a boat? What was it called?”

“Yep. Thought about calling it the Wet Dream for a bit. Settled on Horizon. Still thought of it as the Wet Dream, though...”

Tracy listened to him for hours. She learned all she could about this man, listened as he told her about storming a beach in the south Pacific in a bulldozer, knocking down a Japanese pillbox and driving on top of it. There were snakes so big that men who picked up live grenades and threw them back would freeze at the sight of them. He told her about returning home, marrying her grandmother, having a litter of kids. He told her about the life of a fisherman, living from one catch to the next, the friends he'd made and buried. Frank's death was something he skipped over entirely.

Tracy walked out of the hotel and called a taxi for a ride back to the hotel. As she stood waiting on the curb, she was struck by a memory that had lain dormant for years, waiting for just the right moment. She was small, held in her mother's arms, and there was Bill. He smiled at her, and winked.

Of Sadness

2010-07-22T02:56:00.000-07:00

Wrote a story for school. It's based on an actual person I once met, an artist by the name of Brom.

-----
The Sacrifice

I walked into the convention center. I was there to meet a few artists and show my portfolio around. Really, the comic book industry is like any other art industry. You don't have to be good, you just have to be persistent. You only need to want it enough. I walked around the hall, checked the competition and potential collaborators, eyeing the merchandise like it might bite me. As I wandered, I saw the booth of an artist I'd heard of but hadn't known was attending. Huge prints of his baroque, Lovecraftian art hovered over him as he sat staring off into space. I got the impression that he wasn't fully aware of where he was. Nobody waited to see him. I made a mental note to come back after I'd hit all the booths on my list.

Toward the end of the day I came back to his booth. He was in more or less the same position, still staring off into nowhere, still fan-free. I walked up and stood in front of him, waited for him to acknowledge me. He didn't. I cleared my throat. Still nothing.

“Excuse me.” He started a bit, surprised, like he hadn't been expecting anyone to talk to him.

“Oh. Yes. Hello!” He smiled, tentatively. I noticed that it never touched his eyes.

“Could I get a copy of your new book?”

“Oh. Oh! Sure. Yes! Twenty dollars.” I handed him two ten dollar bills, the last of the money I'd allowed myself to spend on swag. He set a copy of his book, The Jack, on the table in front of him.

“Who should I make it out to?”

“Jay.”

“Like this?” He uncapped a black marker and wrote J-A-Y on the piece of butcher paper which covered the table.

“Yeah, that's right,” I confirmed.

“Are you from around here, or are you just in town for the convention?” I asked, as he scribbled something inscrutable on the title page of the book. He sighed softly, marker frozen, and offered a too-long pause before replying, “No. No, I don't live around here.” He looked at me then, and I noticed a deep and profound sadness in his eyes. He still had a weak smile, hanging precariously, ready to fall off at any moment, but now I saw it for what it was: the sign he gave me to let me know that this was not my fault. I knew it as certainly as if he had whispered it in my ear, at length, a steady murmur of forthright apology, endlessly heartbroken and precise. I thought that if I lived his life for one moment, I'd be crushed under whatever burden had turned down his eyes and made his face so gaunt.

“I live up North,” he said to me, closing the book and handing it to me. “Is that your portfolio?” he asked.

“Oh. Yeah,” I stammered, still reeling.

“Can I take a look?”

“Sure.” I unslung the black nylon portfolio from my shoulder and handed it to him. He opened it and starting paging through my drawings. He was in his element, focused, looking at everything critically but rarely lingering on any one drawing. He stopped at one unfinished piece toward the back, something I had only included as an afterthought. I'd given up on it because I couldn't get it to work, had been too frustrated by it.

“That one-”

“It's the only one here you cared about. Finish it,” he interrupted.

“You think...?” I asked. He nodded, already disconnecting.

“Oh. Well. It was nice meeting you. Thanks for signing this,” I replied, reeling. He nods, and waves his hand.

“You too. You're welcome,” he says.

I collected my portfolio and walked away from the table, lost in thought, book in hand. Eventually, I remembered to read his inscription:

Jay,

Thank you.

Some days are easier than others.
-----

That's all for now.

Of Negativity

2010-07-03T02:45:00.000-07:00

Rarely, people have asked me why I'm so negative. I can't explain that, not completely, because from my perspective it seems like such a fundamental character trait. I can give one (probably insufficient) explanation, though.

A lot of pop culture is bad. I point this out, partially because doing so is fun, but also because I like to be helpful. I'm a cultural tank, breathing deep the greasy exhaust of our social art engine so that you don't have to. Later, I can refine these fumes and perhaps expel them as something incrementally better, or at least less odious. So, "You shouldn't read Twilight," I say to you, "because it is worse than child abuse, and reading it will give you ultracancer."

This way, when I recommend something, you know that I'm not faffing about: this is a thing that will enrich you. "Yes, The Sandman is incredible. When you are done reading it, your life will have changed for the better - you will see the subtle things in our world that belie beautiful magic."

"After playing Planescape: Torment, you will be able to punch people through the moon, into the sun, but will have hands that are as soft and supple as a newborn piglet."

And so on.

So, let me tell you: Sloane Crosley's new book, How Did You Get This Number, is really quite good, despite the conspicuous absence of a question mark. Her essays are funny, and nostalgic, and then they culminate in moments of aching beauty. Then you're at the end and you realize that for all its mundanity and monotony, life is worth living. She is a treasure.

Moving on.

A sneak peek at something new - my first attempt at a longer form piece in quite some time. We'll see how it goes. No title as of yet, though I called the version I put on Ficly, "I Will Force You to Know". We'll call that a working title.

-----

The first thing I remember is the way it smells – so bad that it had lost its connection to any thing and had instead come to represent an idea, like hatred, or welfare. Maybe it had started off as rotten garbage combined with stale cigarettes and rancid diapers, then it was left to stew in some irrelevant crack of life in one those American cities we prefer to forget about.

Since then, I've discovered that every day is just another opportunity to experience the very worst that humanity has to offer. Any second you're awake is a second where you might take an unfortunate step and see some geriatric coprophiliac eating his lunch and polishing his knob with twenty-grit sandpaper he found in a dumpster next to the literal clown from whom he bought figurative magic. You might wonder why, but in doing so, you've already failed by assuming that the answer might make any sense to anyone who doesn't spend the bulk of their time eating shit, or that there is even an answer at all.

It's too close to the edge, here; too easy to look down and lose your mind.
-----

That's all for now.

Of Cell Phones

2010-06-10T00:08:00.000-07:00

An essay I wrote for school. It's a little alarmist, but that is intentional.

-----

The Destruction of the Common Good: Cell Phones and the Public

Our rampant and discourteous use of cell phones in public has gotten out of hand. In her essay, Our Cell Phones, Ourselves, Chrstine Rosen suggests that cell phones are like tobacco, and should be relegated to the realm of the private: “Perhaps one day we will exchange quiet cars for wireless cars, and the majority of public space will revert to the quietly disconnected.” (403). The use of cell phones in public, despite their utility and convenience, is an infringement of the common good as defined by J.H. Kunstler, which is tantamount to Rosen's argument that cell phones are eroding the public trust. Our inability (or refusal) to establish and follow guidelines of etiquette for this new technology has made it abundantly clear that we must take legislative steps to reduce or eliminate the use of cellular phones in public areas.

Rosen's argument against cell phones hinges on the idea that they are reducing the public trust. While cell phones encourage strong bonds with the people we already know, “....public trust among strangers in social settings is eroding” (402). Essentially, the use of cell phones in public is engendering a distrust of strangers in all of us, subconsciously or consciously. The root cause of this is simply the fact that a person on a cell phone has chosen to disengage from the public mentally while remaining physically – an implicit statement that they are better than what is happening around them.

At the same time that a cell phone conversationalist has disconnected from the public, he is yammering away about his upcoming vacation, or his most recent growth (financial or otherwise). He is projecting his own private life onto the public space around him; Rosen refers to this as “conversational panhandling” (399). Simply put, he is forcing his conversation on his peers without their explicit (or even implicit) acceptance. In his essay, The Public Realm and the Common Good, J.H. Kunstler introduces the idea that the public realm, all the bits of land and space between our privately owned buildings and plots, “is the physical manifestation of the common good.” (461). He is speaking in an architectural, zoning and planning sense, but he argues that these physical things have a major effect on the mentality of the public – it follows that abuses on the public realm with the same nature but different format, a mental one, would also have a major effect on the mentality of the public. When people carry out their cell phone conversations in public, they are eroding the atmosphere, the character, of the public space, making it uncomfortable for anyone to be there – thereby degrading the common good in the process.

This is the crux of this issue, the inherent flaw of cellular phones. They mentally force the user out of the public space while simultaneously forcing his conversation onto everyone around him. He is causing harm to the common good and is oblivious to this fact as a result of the basic mechanics of cell phone technology; the normal, subtle social cues that indicate when someone is being rude have no effect on someone who is totally unaware of what is going on around them. Furthermore, because the technology is relatively new, we have yet to come to a consensus on what the etiquette is for public cell phone use. We know that having loud conversations in public is rude, but again, because of the mental disconnect, we're never aware that we're doing it, and nobody knows how or even if they are supposed to inform us.

Etiquette is simply a more formalized version of courtesy, and courtesy keeps us sane – it is the lubricant that allows the machine of our society to function, and should not ever be considered optional. The lack of courtesy with public cell phone usage and its necessary disconnection from the public realm has further ramifications as well. Rosen suggests that “people who use cell phones seem to be acting more like the people in the asylum than the ones in respectable society” (398). You've no doubt seen this in person: a man, seemingly talking to himself or no-one at all, gesticulating wildly, staring through the ground. You may or may not see the Bluetooth earpiece he's wearing. Users of cell phones in public bear an uncanny resemblance to the mentally ill because both of them have disconnected from society. The only difference – as far as the objective observer is concerned – between the truly insane and a rude cell phone conversationalist is that one of them is outdoors. It has the effect of turning our public spaces into one huge asylum.

Kunstler claims that our attitude towards the public space has a major effect on public sanity. According to him, the proper sort of building “literally charms us in the direction of sanity and grace” (462). It follows that if the public space is full of people who are indistinguishable from the certifiably insane, the common good is degraded even more.

I was driving through suburbia recently, trying to find the home of a friend I'd never visited before. I had gotten lost and pulled over to check my phone for directions, when a man, presumably one who lived on the street I was using, came up to me and asked what I was doing there. The conversation that followed was truly surreal: in short, he suspected me of wrongdoing, of burglary, of vile deeds, simply because he didn't recognize me or my car. Here I was, a person who is utterly ordinary in every relevant sense, engaging in one of the most mundane things that it is possible to do in a vehicle: looking at a cell phone. How many other people are suspected of theft and assault only because they've never been met by their accusers? This is a truly harrowing state of affairs. The public trust has fallen to the point where people are afraid that even the most innocuous strangers might be ready to attack them and steal all their stuff at a moment's notice.

It has become necessary for us to regulate this issue through government. There is precedent for this; any time that a certain act or behavior becomes demonstrably unhealthy for the public, it has been forced into privacy. Tobacco is only the most recent and obvious example, with most states adopting laws banning its use in most public areas and pseudo-public areas, like bars and most other businesses. Alcohol consumption isn't allowed in public spaces, either. By allowing this flagrant disregard for the public space to continue, we have fundamentally lapsed in our standards for social behavior, resulting in an unfair, undeserved, and unwarranted fear of strangers.

-----

That's all for now.

A Memorial.

2010-05-17T01:24:00.000-07:00

Frank Frazetta and Ronnie James Dio are both dead. The implications of their combined life forces are intimidating.

Enjoy.

The Hell Picayune-Intelligencer
----------

The Prince of Darkness came home today, back to the Pit, back to the city of Dis, wherein lurks the Throne, lashed together with the Hatred Engine. At the exact moment of his arrival on his flaming, enchanted dirtbike, Malfeasance, one thousand perfect rainbows shone over one thousand viking swords, covered in the blood of the fallen and held above in triumph. Then, the last known unicorn made the Pronouncement of Two-Deaths-As-One and promptly vomited up its bowels. The entities formerly known as Frank Frazetta and Ronnie James Dio coalesced and became the creature known as Fronnie Jank Dizetto; may his reign usher in a new age of black prosperity for the underworld. Gaze upon his terrible form and weep, weep, you mortals, you pitiful things, as he sings the song which marks the beginning of the end.

----------

That's all for now.

Of Pain

2010-05-09T03:11:00.000-07:00

I was reading through some of the "I Saw You" style of personals in The Stranger.

You: Girl in red sweater, blonde hair and cute glasses. Me: Bookish fellow in dire need of a haircut. Our eyes met on the bus. Coffee?

I was struck by how painful they seemed.

Not much more to say about that.

I've been kicking around this sentence for awhile and finally did something with it. Enjoy.

Wraithvoice
-------------------

The language of ancient Sumer was once the universal language, spoken across the entirety of human existence.

They found the rosetta. It was in one of the dark places, the deepest part of humanity's beginning, where nobody had been in thousands of years, hidden from everyone. The ancients had known that the only way to stop an idea is to forget it, to make sure that no attention was drawn to it.

Sumerian as a language diappeared virtually overnight.

There was no portend, no essential wrongness of the place, no ominous murmur, no arhythmic hum. They took it from that place, took it away to study and uncover and translate and reveal. They succeeded. They spoke aloud what was written, and unleashed once more the thought-specters, the idea ghosts that move through speech and song, the dead terms.

Now, they speak only pain and sing only despair.

Our numbers dwindle. Their numbers can only increase, they of the wraith voice. Our children ask why we move, why some of use cannot speak, why some of us cannot sing. Our children ask why we must run from the others.

We tell our children: their words are haunted.
-----------------------------

That's all for now.

Of Beginnings

2010-02-23T22:55:00.000-08:00

I'm migrating my blog from Myspace for a variety of reasons, most of them having to do with the frustrations brought on by Myspace's poorly coded, workaday blog setup. So. Here, we start anew, afresh even, with new content forthcoming. As for what happens to the old blog entries: I will absolutely be leaving that blog up for as long as the Elder Things which haunt the black spires of Myspace continue to allow its existence. So, you know. Feel free to look at it, or them, or they. I will also be (slowly) copying those entries onto my hard drive. Maybe one day they'll show up in a self-serving collection of random bits of writing I created in the heady days of my youth.

Here we are. This new place with its new chains- we must unpack, and take stock, and acquaint.