POST NUMBER ONE HUNDRED FORTY

So I am pretty sure that I killed Captain Planet yesterday in what we shall euphemistically call a "controlled burn", designed to take care of a troublesome structure. There were no twenty foot high columns of flame, but there were plenty of clouds of black, sweet-smelling smoke, most of which scorched my lungs into ragged bands of lemonade-soaked beef jerky. Perhaps Turkey Jerky. DELICIOUS

It's Friday! Embrace your inevitable death and join us for QRAZY QUOTES!



Thomas: I WILL NOT SPEAK ILL OF THE SPONSORS
Zachary: Which one is it now?
Thomas: I will not speak of it.

Zachary: When will Thomas go back to writing every day so the rest of us can slack off?
Thomas: When he stops drinking.
Zachary: So, never?
Thomas: It may be quite a while.

Zachary: AND THE GOVERNMENT CONTROLS ALL THE LAUNDROMATS
Thomas: TINFOIL HATS NOW
Zachary: TINFOIL HATS FOR ALWAYS

Thomas: Maybe later, when we become a folk pop band.
James: This one doesn't involve us actually having to learn or be competent with instruments or have appreciable music talent.
Zachary: I HAVE VAGUELY APPRECIABLE MUSIC TALENT
Thomas: I can play the cornet!
Cathleen: I AM QUITE MUSICALLY TALENTED
Zachary: ONLY JAMES IS UNTALENTED NOW
Zachary: SUFFER, JAMES
Thomas: *WOOMWOOMWOOMWOOM*

Zachary: DAMMIT
Zachary: STOP ATTRIBUTING MY BEST TERRIBLE IDEAS TO THOMAS
Cathleen: *sigh*

Cathleen: You make me and my legitimate questions cry.

Jack: I don't mind the sexy at all.
Thomas: I would not mind the sexy, but I fear others would.
Zachary: I as well don't mind the sexy.

Zachary: We need badges, or t-shirts or something.
Zachary: So I can try to scam myself into places.
Jack: I have a button maker.
Jack: Which is different.

James: We also are not afraid of "no ghosts".
James: ...
James: *whistles*
James: Ghostbusters?
James: Anyone?
James: Jesus, it was a hit movie, what, 15 years ago?

James: *eyes*
Jack: *shoes*
Zachary: (In narrative!)
Thomas: *horses galloping along a beach*
Zachary: (...and threesomes!)
Zachary: *the letter E*
Thomas: *horse threeway on the beach*
Zachary: *with photoshop's glowing edges filter!*
James: *eyebrow*
Thomas: *LENS FLARE LOOKOU-fshhHHHHHHHHHH*
Jack: Two threesomes!

Zachary: Pretty much all you have to do to get me to do laundry and shave is question my dedication to gentlemanliness.
Jack: Hee! Cute.
James: Cute?
James: Cute?
James: USEFUL.

Zachary: Jack is the boy of girl island!
Jack: Hee.
Jack: Watch me oppress them!
Zachary: Make them bake you sweaters.
Jack: Nice.
Jack: In the pregnancy room.

James: what is the word we are searching for here?
Beth: Linguistic?
Zachary: I KNOW ALL THE WORDS
Zachary: DICK
Zachary: ALL OF THEM

Thomas: There will be Norwegian black metal.
Zachary: Excellent.
Zachary: Google maps tells me it is a 23 hour drive.
Thomas: ....
Thomas: Hmmmmmm.


MAYBE MORE WHEN I FINALLY DIE.

Introducing: Demos

Eleven Names and my campus' newspaper occupy a strange place in my head. Both are repositories for my coalesced thoughts on a given issue, and frequently, they overlap. I could publish something on Eleven Names before it goes to the newspaper, but when it was originally written for the newspaper, it feels a little bit like cheating.

In fact, I wrote something that was originally written for the school paper, but I published it here when I realized that it would be a month or so before it was published in the school. That gave me an idea that I sat on for a couple issues. The editors tend to screw up the column when they don't check what they're putting on the page, which made me think, I'll take my own mistakes so long as I can do the final spell check. My columns will be be great!

So, I'll publish my first drafts here, a couple hours after they appear in the campus' paper to be digested. I hope this is a fairly stable new feature, where you all will get the demo version, what I sent to the paper for them to supposedly improve, and in fact, foul up with not catching the notes on the edits they were making.

Enjoy!

I wrote in recently about videogames and about the ease that journalists can dismiss them. But now I’d like to focus on why, with a couple reasons stolen outright from Wired’s Clive Thompson.

Why don’t videogames have the same kind of in depth discussion associated with them that recordings or movies do? First and foremost, I would imagine is because they simply aren’t good material for a daily feature or column. Just speaking about the time invested in (or expected from) a video game, the sweet spot being anywhere between 20 and 40 hours, depending on the kind of game, there’s no way that columnists could play a third as many videogames a year as they write columns or articles and expect to maintain a readership. They wouldn’t be saying anything useful. To make a quick comparison: If my college’s DJs had to sit through 3 10 hour CDs a week, they’d give up.

That is one of the primary reasons why videogames as a medium and form of communication do not get attention or care from newspaper media, the investment of time is too great as compared to other forms of communication and entertainment. In other words: Videogames take too long to digest for effective daily or weekly publishing material.

There’s also the monetary cost. Keeping up with the latest videogames is expensive, since the technology shifts every so often (PCs and consoles), in addition, the games themselves usually cost between $50 and $60 before tax. Unless, of course, you’re still playing last generation systems, in which case, it just isn’t newsworthy enough for further explanation in a paper or professional magazine.

Right now, video games occupy the same position that the “God-forsaken rock and roll noise” and “that awful rap garbage” did years ago, as the corrupter of children. How were those art forms absolved of their blame for being the worst thing to happen to morality since Original Sin? It was only through exposure to the music and an in depth discussion of the themes contained in the words that the form was acknowledged as legitimate and not as some kind of artless, puerile endeavor.

Pioneering political and social artists Public Enemy and NWA were bitter pills to swallow for Tipper Gore and Co., this is true, but almost two decades worth of distance from the outbreak of hip-hop music from racial boundaries, most serious critics acknowledge, at the very least, that those artists were writing about what they knew. (For that matter, “Fear of a Black Planet” was inducted into the Library of Congress in 2004 alongside the Beach Boys and Dizzie Gillespie.)

The easy comparisons end there. Because video games today combine text, audio and an interactive portion with a controller or mouse and keyboard, games are judged in terms of a seamless interactive experience, which must be intimidating to players who don’t understand the vernacular.

With Grand Theft Auto IV coming out this year, gamers of all stripes can expect a storm of faux-controversy and hours of babbling from ignorant commentators who don’t know the vocabulary, but have no trouble proclaiming it as another murder simulator, peddled underhandedly to mentally unstable, titillated, teenage boys with predilections for school shootings.

Hopefully, you’ll know better.

THE MACHINE IS MANKIND'S MADNESS

Fake friend accumulator and glorified address book Facebook (also social networking, where I guess you network your socials. Mine is a lvl 73 Venusaur. LET'S DANCE.) has been on my mind lately, if only because it's become the latest useless, flailing appendage of my online persona (insert self-aware pause here). I scarcely use it anymore, save to upload embarrassing pictures of myself, red-faced and four sheets to the wind, at some dive bar with my disreputable pals; this phenomena is, in itself, worth analysis, though maybe later. I've got complaining to do. And did you know that 30 Rock is watchable, like, for free? And legal? THE WORLD HAS GONE MAD OR AT LEAST REALLY REALLY DISTRACTING.

Instant online communication, (OH LIZ LEMON YOU'RE SO FUNNY) whether it be through our own tawdry AIMing back and forth (Keep an eye open for the glorious return of chat transcript Fridays!) or the glorified note-passing that comes with Facebook and Gmail, is typically grounded in real life communication. At least anecdotally, all of the people I know solely from the internets have very little influence on my lifestyle - my fabulous lifestyle. Contrariwise, even with people that I know temporarily or, say, from High School, I tend to at least humor. The aggregation of social capital may be modified by online mediums, but it is still, gratefully, grounded in real life communication.

Which can be distressing for a young blog out on the mean streets of Technorati Town (the meanest part of Internet City), because with you, our reader, our influence is, at best, only third or fourth place in how you schedule your lives. The rapid access to communications from all around the world mean that someone from Zimbabwe can become a rabid devotee of beardo and ur-nerd Warren Ellis as easily as the next skinny pale kid (kaff kaff Zachary kaff). Social capital (OR IS IT CAPITULATION?) has become a global thing, then, when one weirdo can influence another from around the world! It's a mixed bag, of course - scientists (and their science) have seen that this becomes a normalizing force in small doses, i.e. that sure, students will do well in the areas of their focus in areas with high social capital, but also that deviance and creative endeavors will suffer. Culture spreads, and Ellis is suddenly effing everywhere.

Speaking of which (science, not Ellis), one prominent Scientician of the sociomological subcategory (IT'S IN THE WIKIPEDIA AM TOO LAZY TO LINK WAAAH WAAAH) stated his belief that this social capital is, in the United States, decreasing. As a whole. The ramifications for this are strange - does it mean that influence is more tangible than previously thought? Is it being disseminated about the rest of the world on strange trade winds of Myspace and Facebook? Or are we just becoming a nation of sociopaths, unable and unwilling to consider our fellow man as anything other than a walking meat puppet?

I can personally hope not. Scorn is the appropriate response to anyone who has 300 facebook friends but still has loneliness. They are treating online personae as cosmetics, a way of appearing healthier than they really are. It's not so much that the tangible measure of our friendliness is decreasing, says I, but rather a sign that the convenience of easy online contact has made us socially lazy (in addition to physically and mentally. Michelle Obama speaks sad truths sometimes.), and that has, in turn, made us kind of crazy. Crazy enough to say that we have 500 friends around the world when OMG wouldn't that make you insane? I can barely stand talking to three people per day, much less more than a dozen.

I am certain that more severe authors would make mention of the castration of modern mankind, but it's nothing so severe. Like so many things, we simply need to work at it, to do silly things, to like or like to hate (in a productive way, like how I feel for Zachary!) someone, and find other people who feel the same. While it is certainly callow to quantify your relationships with other people, on the other hand, it's naive (and arrogant) to presume that people will like you simply because of the your own sparkling personality; a happy balance in any relationship must be reached between giving and taking, as with all things. And while social networking websites are a nice and easy (and riddled with STDS DON'T BE FOOLED) way to meet new people, they still do not replace the quality work out there in the trenches of actually saying hello to strangers, and the giddy rush that goes along with it.

The internet is a marvelous tool, but it is far from a foundation upon which lives should be built. Go forth, then, gentle reader, and at least be more aware of balancing your life between sitting in front of a glowing screen and sitting before another human being. I mean, come on, I know we're pretty awesome here, but resisting the siren song will make you a more interesting person.

Secret Cartographies: Persia, Sri Lanka, Great Britain, and Rhode Island.

The old Persian name for Sri Lanka was Serendip. The name first met the English language in the form of a children's story, and the place became a word through the attentions of Horace Walpole. When I was young, I was told that it was the West that found Sri Lanka and called it Serendipity. They'd been looking for India, for spices and tea and exoticisms, and found this other place, instead.

Sri Lanka is not actually closer to Europe than India, of course, so I'd always been left to wonder exactly why these men in boats felt so lucky to have stumbled upon it, or, alternately, why Serendip, an island that had been charted by the outside world in the time of the ancients, would have developed the reputation for being a place in which one could stumble into luck. It has less, apparently, to do with our finding Sri Lanka than what clever Sri Lankans, and clever children, can manage to find.

Here's another: the founder of the colony of Rhode Island, when he died, was buried on his family's farm under an apple tree. In recent memory, the government of the state of Rhode Island decided that their founder deserved some sort of monument. The old maps were lined up with the new maps, and they found that his grave was in someone's back yard, which was far more convenient than its being under someone's house. As it happened, the apple tree was still there, ancient and thick. They began the exhumation in order to move the dirt that was once his body to some more prestigious spot.

Through the use of their science, they knew they were in the correct place, and they noted that the roots of the apple tree had grown through the place where the coffin once would have been. No matter; they'd dig around it. But the root had a form to it. It had an arm, in fact, and fingers. There was a torso, and legs, and even toes. The tree, finding the tasty dead thing, had eaten it, inch by inch, starting at the shoulder. Using their science once again, they found that the capillaries of the tree had borrowed the body's arteries, tracing a strange organic map.

I've always been terrifically jealous, of the tree, and the corpse, and those who found it. Alas, it seems that the root, cut away from its tree and exposed to the air for display, began to decay quickly. One can still tease out the shape, but it lacks the same majesty as finding a headless underground man made of wood.

If you require more tales of strange things that happen to the dead, I recommend After the Funeral, the funny little out of print, extremely cheap book from which my second story was stolen entirely. If you require more cartographies, sometimes secrets, always bizarre, I might recommend the often thoroughly delightful blogue, Strange Maps. If you want to increase the likelihood that you, too, will be eaten by a tree, I suggest that you look into the growing green burial movement.

Secret Cartography: UNDEAD THEME WEEK IS UNDEAD

President's Day (which was on the 18th - who knew?) was the nationally recognized date of George Washington's birthday, until it was graciously expanded to include those presidents who could not throw knives into Heaven. Washington grew up in a time when duels were still an established way to settle arguments, and it was not unheard of for firearms to explode in your hand, leaving you a smoking rag of muscle where there once were fingers. And then he fought, single-handedly, the forces of a mad king to free America, or whatever.

Holidays are an important way that I navigate my life, because God knows I'm incapable of doing it on my own. All the same, their irregularity is something of a bête noire with me - it seems like they come at a staccato pace at some points in the year, with birthdays leading up to unofficial anniversaries bleeding into major holidays. Thanksgiving itself is the beachhead of these assaults, burning away the gentle memories I have of ever-distant Halloween (a holiday which I have yet to spend sober), and then as soon as the leftovers are disposed of, it's off to buy Christmas presents and arrange New Year's parties. Similarly, this time of year is marked adagio, with angsty Valentine's being the only day which even offers any turbulence to our flight. Would you like a beverage? Pillow? Towel? Our in-flight movie will be Final Destination.

As surely as we navigate language (and what navigating you had to do with my last post! Oh dear, it was terrible.) and landscape, we also navigate time. Thank the stars for their own cyclical nature, because it's these observable patterns that allow us to locate ourselves in time. Where would we be, for instance, if every day was unpredictable? If weather moved according to it's own whims? We are creatures built on patterns and predictability, who depend on the knowledge that it snows in month X (lousy Smarch weather) and it's always sunny in month Y (also, Philadelphia), and so disruption in these schedules make us sub-prime, take away the comfort of knowing what to expect. Just as all rebellion is inherently conformist, we have to see that we go through time as meticulously as any lost traveler follows a map through a foreign country - that is, maybe kinda in the right direction, though also very easily getting lost and maybe finding a delightful little place to spend an afternoon. Or maybe going to prison! Yay for being lost!

Holidays, though, serve as the places on our maps where we can get back to where we're going; they take us out of the doldrums of mindless space and back onto the main stage, where we can participate again with our culture at large. How you spend your holidays is almost as important as participating in them, with the only important thing to do being to take advantage of the opportunity to do something unusual. Valentine's day can be spent with your sweety, yes, but how much more interesting is someone who drives two hours out of their way to buy a unique shoe, or begins a new health regimen instead of bitching about their loneliness?

All in all, dullness is always a measure of self, or rather, if you're bored, then you're boring. The most interesting people I know are always the ones who are up to something, even if they're just sitting and staring at a wall, they're up to something. To admit to boredom is admitting that you've stopped, that you're afraid to go astray in time, and such timidity stems from a desire to do only good, to ably progress down a preconceived correct path, when no such path exists. Budget your time, yes, but do not allow your natural inclination to temporal frugality to override your sense of actually going out there and having a good time of it. After all, tempus fuggits when you're having fun.

Secret Cartography: Its like the Internet

My first thought of secret cartography was to write about the many pathways that weave themselves through the internet, guiding you from one page to another, revealing treasures that you could only find by crawling through the bowels of inter-web's most seedy societies. But then I thought, you must already know about that, after all, you are reading our blog.

Zach's article about the subtle musical nuances of the newest Daft Punk album strongly reminded me of my own form of Secret cartography: allusions. I love books, a lot, and nothing makes me happier then finding a book full of allusions which either test my knowledge of other works of literature, or make me curious about something I have never read before.

What brings this particular literary device to mind is my growing love of author Terry Pratchett who's large collection of works have satirized almost every famous work of literature or genre out there. I have to admit, I was not taken with Mr. Pratchett at first, but now as I read each new book, and am treated to a series of references that hearken back to Shakespeare and horrible fantasy novel cliches, and I love it. I love that there is a secret level to the books, one that makes them more interesting, more humorous, and more socially relevant. In many ways it is my version of a treasure map, one that you can only appreciate if you have the the key (being a huge nerd and having read tons of books). It makes me feel like I am some kind of explorer, following the clues and codes to some long lost document that holds information that will alter the perceptions of western civilization.

Hmm, somehow I feel this whole secret cartography thing is feeding into my life's goal of finding some history altering artifact, like a new Rosetta Stone or something.

Secret Cartography: Please Don't Shoot Me.

There are some rules you can obey. They can help you get around. They may keep you safe.
Pay attention to your surroundings. Square your shoulders; don't look like a victim. Don't show off money or expensive toys, like iPods. Look alert, don't appear nervous. Try to fit in. Stay away from small, poorly lit streets.

All the advice I've ever gotten means the same thing, at the end of the day: there is nothing you can do. None of these rules work. Nothing can keep you safe.

I live in arguably the most dangerous city in America. About two years ago, the murder rate spiked dramatically and hasn't abated yet. This is not inner city violence, segregated to "bad neighborhoods" and late nights. Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods: Queen Village is another world from Kensington and neither are like Strawberry Mansion. And when something awful happened in a poor neighborhood, a dangerous neighborhood, it was okay. Not great, of course. But easily ignored. And it was easy to get around. Stay to the nice neighborhoods, with nice people, and you will be safe. Only the foolish, the suicidally naive and the badly intentioned ventured beyond such invisible and subtle boundaries, but now children and police officers have been shot in broad daylight. The unrest in the city is bold and shameless, never showing respect for the leylines that are class and privilege running in the streets.

When I was in second grade, a boy was beaten to death on the steps of my parish church, because some other kids felt like hurting someone badly.

My cousin was murdered when he was 21. He hadn't been a cop for a year.

For those of you with good memories: There was a shooting outside the house, my Fort, eight months ago. Zach and I were sitting on the same couch I'm posting from when we heard it.

There is no rule to follow. There's no direction to take. There never was any place safe.
I live in fear. Everyone does, I think, and I won't deny my own. Any place and time could be the wrong one. I make myself sick sometimes. I've lived here as long as I've been alive.
I am not making some tiny plea to stop the violence. I haven't nearly such an idealistic spirit. I'm just telling you, I feel lost now. I can't comfort myself with behavior rules and made-up boundaries. I can't map my movement by time or street. There's nothing to do, no secret cartography. Nowhere to go.