"Just the place for a Snark!"

Oh joy, oh Rapture!

2011-05-24T16:58:00.001-07:00

It seems almost inappropriate for an (occasional) atheist blogger not to write about the recent buzz surrounding the May 21^st Rapture. After all, it’s not every day that the world is allegedly supposed to end. For most people, anyway.

As you’ve likely noticed, it’s not May 21^st anymore, and the Rapture didn’t occur. Whoops. Big mistake on the part of Harold Camping and any others who helped him in crafting his apocalyptic prediction. Not that he or most of his devoted followers see it that way, of course. The Internet is humming with pieces about Camping and the Rapture: why he was wrong, what his followers are doing now, and, most prominently, slightly tongue-in-cheek posts and article starting with some variation on “Anyone still out there?”

I won’t be doing any of that. I’ve only a small bit to say on the topic, and then I’ll disappear into the nether once again.

One of the most fascinating parts of all of this for me is the media frenzy. People predict the end of the world all the time, but rarely does the mainstream news take the story and run with it. Perhaps this is the child of 24-hour newsfeeds and a viral-hungry populace looking for the next YouTube hit. Perhaps Harold Camping has enough of a flock built up that he warrants the spotlight. Which brings me to my next point: said spotlight was busy shining on the Rapture this past weekend, instead of other issues it might be focusing on: tornadoes in the Midwest, the conflict in Libya, volcanoes in Iceland, or even the murder trial of Casey Anthony or the continuing scandal surrounding Dominique Strauss-Kahn.

These are important things. These are things that are actually happening, to actual people. It’s a bit odd, really, that an event so few people believed would occur gained so much attention for the few weeks it did. It’s yet another case of non-news becoming news (celebrity gossip as news, “person-on-the-street” opinions as news, Donald Trump, etc.), and I find the whole thing horrifyingly intriguing. Why do people care so much?

Is it because secretly some of them hope it might happen? Is it because secretly some of them believe it will, despite knowing better? Or is it just a fun story, a vulnerable target for ridicule, like a comedic fountain into which anyone can toss a quip or one-liner?

Most importantly of all, why don’t more people ask the obvious question: is there a negative aspect to all this Rapture-rousing?

I say yes. First, the obvious: dozens of people drained their savings accounts, liquidated their assets, and left their families or friends behind in preparation for the event. Their lives, while perhaps not entirely ruined, are certainly changed forever. Imagine looking back on your life and realizing you gave up everything on the word of one very old man with a radio transmitter and a knack for speechmaking. Even if these poor victims get themselves back on their feet, they’ll always look back on that event and wince. They’ll know how far they went, and how close they came to the edge.

I’m speaking of the ones who leave the flock, of course. But what of the ones who stay? That’s the second danger. The subtler one. It’s not just these believers I’m thinking of: it’s the fact that we’ve validated their belief by speaking of it as a perfectly legitimate, reasonable course of action (or at least as one that few openly condemn as foolish). By giving Harold Camping’s Rapture a place in our news, we’ve legitimized it as a real concern. We spent hours talking about it, blogging it, Facebooking it, Tweeting it, and cracking jokes at its expense.

Why are we wasting our time with this? (he asks, and his voice echoes out to the furthest reaches of lolcats and failblog). Why are we handing a microphone to some kook who twisted his own delusional brain into a pretzel in order to concoct a rationalization for an almost certainly impossible event, and then received millions from those he managed to convince of his prediction’s truth? He does not deserve the megaphone, and the fact that he got it for a time shows the common denominator of American culture: we love spectacle. We love watching people make huge commotions as they spiral deeper and deeper into complete disaster.

This Rapture business is no different. It is, in effect, the religious equivalent of Charlie Sheen. But unlike the Vatican Assassin Warlock, Harold Camping’s Rapture isn’t funny, or even particularly clever. It’s just sad. Sad that people ruined their lives over it, sad that many will continue going along with the latest prediction (October 21), and sad that we lifted that charlatan on our media shoulders for a ride around the newsroom.

Living In My Own World... of Warcraft - Part 2

2011-05-03T16:43:00.000-07:00

Welcome back. When we last left our intrepid hero, he’d just finished his first year of college. It was an exciting time all around. Several months prior, the first expansion for World of Warcraft—The Burning Crusade—was released. This addition resulted in more playtime, since now I had even more world to explore and levels to gain. The game changed then, I think: no longer was it focused on hardcore, time-intensive play, as it had been for years. The mentality of the game designers started to move toward flexibility and overall friendliness to casual players.

Casual play. That’s a loaded term, I think. A digression I’ll save for later in this post.

After my first year of college, I spent a summer at home, hanging out with my girlfriend, working at Barnes & Noble, and playing WoW. It was a fun situation, and despite various trepidations within my own life (a relationship in peril, for one thing), I kept WoW as a steadfast staple. I used it to relax after work, or when I had some downtime to kill. At one point I wanted to save up a large amount of in-game gold to buy a special mount for my character. I created a spreadsheet detailing exactly how long it would take if I obtained certain amounts of money each day. I completed my goal ahead of schedule, and gleefully obtained my desired item.

I think this is a fine place for a tangent: goals. World of Warcraft is about a lot of things, and no two players have exactly the same objective when they sit down to play. Some want the best gear. Others use it to chat with online friends. Still others want to find the hidden secrets the game has to offer—rare and strange items, unique locales, and so on. But ultimately, all of this can be boiled down to one of two things: social interaction, and goal completion.

When a player logs into WoW, they aren’t immediately told what they should be doing. There might be quests available for them to complete, but they can just as easily ignore those tasks and go do something else. When a character is not at max level, gaining levels is a fine goal, but sometimes players ignore this seemingly obvious directive (“twinking” is the process of keeping a character at a low level and giving them the best items they can get, so as to be the strongest character of that particular level). Thus, not only is doing quests not required, even gaining levels is optional. Everything is optional, for that matter.

Which brings me to my point: playing WoW is about setting and attaining goals. The game sets goals for the player in the form of quests and levels. The player, however, makes the final call regarding how they spend their playtime. Do they sit in town and talk to guildmates? Head out into the world to gather supplies? Fight bosses? Go to battlegrounds to slay enemy players? There are many choices to make, and the player is given autonomy to make those choices.

For me, playing WoW has always been about setting personal objectives. My “quest” for the rare mount is just one example of something I’ve done since almost the beginning of my WoW career: I set tasks for myself. I’ll make lists of goals I want to achieve, and then set about achieving them. Sometimes I put the bar too high—I still don’t have characters of every class at the max level—and sometimes deliberately low—so I’ll at least get something done. At the end of the day, having a set array of objectives is what keeps the game interesting for me. The goalposts are always moving forward. There’s always just a little bit more to do.

This, as an aside, is part of why games like Farmville--and WoW for that matter--are so addictive: there’s always more to do. Our desire for closure and completion is never sated with games like these. But that’s a whole can of worms I’m poised to open, and I’d rather not at the moment.

Let’s get back to the tale. At the beginning of my sophomore year, I broke up with my girlfriend of two and a half years. It was rough. Mistakes were made, many by me. WoW remained a stable part of my life then, something I could turn back to when I needed comfort and stability. I went through school that second year as usual, and on into the summer after. Time passed. WoW remained. The third year of college began.

In that fall, I began dating another girl who lived on my street in Bellingham. I decided at that point that WoW was taking up too much of my free time, and so I cancelled my subscription. But then the girl and I split, so WoW came back. It was less than a month I spent away. It was, oddly enough, the first time since getting the game that I’d quit for any period longer than a week.

It wasn’t to be the last. In the winter of 2008, my laptop stopped working. I was without WoW for a few months at that point. It was a grim time, full of much weeping and gnashing of teeth. Or, in other words, a perfectly normal time in which I spent more hours playing other games and seeing friends.

You see, WoW is, for me, something that I do as part of my free time, my me time. It’s not something I substitute for interactions with others. Granted, I do have some friendships that blossomed because of WoW, but those a few. Mostly, I play WoW when I would normally be doing something else “unproductive”, like watching videos or reading comics.

Speaking of friendships, it was during the fall of 2008 that I met a woman online who would later become a close friend. But, once again, a story for another time! Specifically next time.

Okay. I promised a bit on casual play, and I think I’ll end this installment with that. Casual play is a loaded term, to be sure. What does it mean, exactly? Who counts as a “casual” player, and how much play is considered a “casual” amount? These are questions that remain unanswered even today.

As far as WoW’s development goes—and don’t worry, I won’t bore you with too many details—the game’s approach began like most MMOs of the time (the time being 2004): very hardcore. To gain the best items and equipment required hours of devoted play. Only a handful of extremely dedicated players were able to complete the titanic challenges the game presented. Content was not geared toward beginners: I recall my first floundering moments in game, trying to figure out how to cast spells and what all the million different buttons on the screen did. As WoW grew, the developers made a conscious choice to start moving toward a more “casual friendly” form of game design. This meant richer tutorial systems, more on-screen clues as to what the player was supposed to do, and content that required less playtime to fully explore.

Defining "causal player" is difficult. I would say I’ve been a casual player at certain times of my life and more dedicated at others. Casualness is something that can come and go. Ultimately, the current design of the game is such that a new player can pick it up relatively easily, while a veteran still has challenges at the top level that provide a fun experience (and require lots of invested time). This balancing act isn’t always easy, but it’s something WoW has done very well in my opinion.

But is casual-friendliness a good thing overall? Yes and no. Of course I think it’s nice that more people can enjoy the game that I love. And of course I think it’s good that things are more streamlined than ever. But by removing a lot of the hurdles the game presented, there is some loss of that sense of accomplishment that comes from besting a difficult challenge. Some of the peaks we were required to climb back in vanilla days were nearly insurmountable, and needed fixing. Others were just challenging enough. By making everything easier, the game loses a few of its teeth. It is, again, a balancing act, one that’s constantly in flux.

Thanks for reading! Next time:

-From 2008 to the present!

-Making friends online!

-Why I play female characters almost exclusively!

-My WoW future!

Don’t miss it! Coming in… um… probably a few months, knowing me. Sheesh.

100 Falsehoods

2011-04-08T15:11:00.000-07:00

WHAT WAS YOUR:

1. last beverage: liquid nitrogen

2. last phone call: Alexander Graham Bell

3. last text message: Socrates

4. last song you listened to: Never Gonna Give You Up – Rick Astley (text Rickroll!)

5. last time you cried: as a robot I am incapable of crying

HAVE YOU EVER:

6. dated someone twice: I went on a date with a woman, then went back in time and stood her up, only to swoop in under a false name to comfort her after being stood up. Thus, I dated her twice… at the same time.

7. been cheated on: someone peeked over my shoulder at the SATs

8. kissed someone & regretted it: never. Every kiss is perfection.

9. lost someone special: Yeah, shoot. Where did I leave that guy?

10. been depressed: I’ve been repre-

11. been drunk and threw up: I’ve been drunk and thrown down. Close enough?

LIST THREE FAVORITE COLORS:

12. Dark light purple

13. Negative green

14. Four

THIS YEAR HAVE YOU: (2011)

15. Made a new friend?: Out of paper clips, mulch, and candy corn

16. Fallen out of love?: Should’ve worn a seatbelt…

17. Laughed until you cried?: As a robot I am incapable of laughter

18. Met someone who changed you?: Mom?

19. Found out who your true friends were?: They were plotting against me. I had to put a stop to it. Cue ninja battle.

20. Found out someone was talking about you?: Yeah, and you’re gonna be sorry, Mitchell. That’s right. I called you out.

21. Kissed anyone on your fb friends list?: This question assumes I’ve kissed someone who isn’t on my friends list.

GENERAL:

22. How many people on your fb friends list do you know in real life: Real… life?

24. Do you have any pets: Baby phoenix

26. What did you do for your last birthday: Are you threatening me, quiz?

27. What time did you wake up today: Yesterday

28. What were you doing at midnight last night: Waiting. With a shotgun. For HIM.

29. Name something you CANNOT wait for: Now. Every time I try to wait for it, I’ve already missed it.

30. Last time you saw your Mother: I know the last time I saw your mother.

31. What is one thing you wish you could change about your life: The being alive part of it?

32. What are you listening to right now: Screams of the damned

33. Have you ever talked to a person named Tom: No.

34. What's getting on your nerves right now: The awful formatting of this quiz, which I’ve attempted to fix but is still irking me

37. Nicknames: The Rhino

38. Relationship Status: Enslaved and loving it

39. Zodiac Sign: NO OUTLET

40. Lady or Gent?: What is this, 1885?

41. Elementary: Proton.

42. Middle School?: Moody Middle School

43. High School?: Xavier’s School for Gifted Youngsters

44. Hair Color?: Teal

45. Long or short?: Shlong?

46. Height: I do not exist in the vertical dimension

47. Do you have a crush on someone? I’m pulling the lever to release the anvil as we speak

48. What do you like about yourself? What don’t I like about myself?

49. Piercings? Brosnan only.

50. Tattoos? Baked potato, behind left ear

51. Righty or lefty? I don’t discriminated based on sides

52. First surgery: Awesomedectomy.

53. First Piercing?: Again, Brosnan

54. First best friend: You assume I have friends.

55. First sport you joined: Tiachtili

58. First pair of trainers? Youngster. Damn his Bug Types!

RIGHT NOW:

59. Eating: Babies

60. Drinking: Babies

61. Sweating: Bullets

62. Coloring: Outside the lines

63. Waiting to: Get this arm stitched back on

64. Want kids? Want them where?

65. Get Married?: Only if there’s a dowry

66. Career? Underwater basketweaver

WHICH IS BETTER:

67. Lips or eyes?: Eyelips.

68. Hugs or kisses: Hisses

69. Shorter or taller: No less than one inch taller or shorter

70. Older or Younger: Exact same age down to the minute

71. Romantic or Spontaneous: Spontaneously… combusting

72. Nice stomach or nice arms: Nice overall(s)

73. Sensitive or loud: Can’t it be both?

74. Hook-up or relationship: Break-up first, then get together and meet later

75. Trouble maker or hesitant: Troubled.

HAVE YOU EVER:

76. Kissed a stranger: You mean have I ever kissed anyone who wasn’t a stranger… no

77. Drank hard liquor: You mean have I ever drank anything other than hard liquor… no

78. Lost glasses/contacts: Yes, but they weren’t mine

79. Had sex on first date: Had… sex?

80. Broken someone's heart: It was slippery, okay? How was I supposed to know it was made of glass?

81. Had your own heart broken: ERROR

83. Turned someone down: One of my robot friends is a stereo, so yes

84. Cried when someone died: As a robot I am only capable of remorseless killing

85. Fallen for a friend: Will fall for friends upon request

DO YOU BELIEVE IN:

86. Yourself: No… uh oh *disappears*

87. Miracles: Baby, I am a miracle

88. Love at first sight: I’m blind, jerk

89. Heaven: No, only Android Hell

90. Santa Claus: I did, until he told me he wasn’t real.

91. Kiss on the first date: Assuming I’m conscious at the end of it, yes

92. LIFE AFTER LOVE: What is love?

ANSWER TRUTHFULLY:

93. Had more than one bf/gf at the same time? Does it count of they were both clones of me?

94. Is there one person you want to be with right now? I am always with you.

95. Did you sing today? Auto-tuned myself

96. Do you want to go on a date with someone? Only if they are a robot

97. If you could go back in time, how far would you go, and why? I already exist at all points in time

98. If you could pick a day from last year and relive it, what would it be?: See #97

99. Are you afraid of falling in love? Silly… you can’t fall in love. It’s solid. You can fall on it though, and that stings.

100. Posting this as 100 truths? This sentence is false, as is the preceding one.

Inspired by my brother. Check out his blog: http://blackhorsereviews.blogspot.com/

On the subject of post frequency

2011-03-25T10:55:00.000-07:00

I recently realized that writing blog posts is a) time-consuming and b) stressful. Why is this the case? The answer is plain: it’s time-consuming because I tend to write long posts, and it’s stressful because I’m insecure about the quality/interestingness of each post I create. Naturally, I want to write things that people enjoy reading, and will pass along to their friends. There’s tremendous pressure on bloggers to be snappy, witty, and delightfully entertaining at all times. And while I’m certainly capable of creating texts of that nature, it takes a while. I simply don’t have the time to devote to creating posts like that on a regular basis, given the fact that I have a life and a job.

So, the solution? Shorter posts with greater frequency. Get some meat on these bones. Get that post counter up into the triple digits (eventually). Writing posts about things that I’m pondering, considering, raging about, or otherwise interested in is a good way to get myself in the habit of writing. In time, I’ll be able to create longer, more detailed posts with greater speed and skill. I’ll practice, in other words.

I make no promises, but it’s my intention to write more often. So keep your eyes here, because if things go well, you’ll be seeing new posts soon.

Chiptunes

2011-02-15T11:14:00.000-08:00

Chiptunes!

Are you familiar with this genre? If you’ve played any video game since 1987, you’re already halfway there. Chiptune music is music generated from old school gaming platforms such as the Atari, the Commodore 64, the Gameboy, and the NES. Chiptunes artists utilize the sound-generating chips in these machines and transform them into instruments. By mixing the varied tones and sound capabilities of different devices, artists can build strange new worlds of technological sound. It’s a style akin to electronica, but it has a distinctly different feel, and even a quick listen will allow the ear to set it apart from other genres. It is a unique form of music that sits just outside the mainstream. Yet even the least gamer-inclined among us is familiar with it: recall the familiar tones of the Super Mario Brothers theme, and you’re already thinking chiptune.

I think the thing I like most about chiptune music is the way it allows me to invoke my own images. See, with traditional video game music, the pictures you link to the sounds are fixed by the game you play. When you hear the classic hook of Donkey Kong or the epic fanfare of Zelda, you immediately picture those characters. The association is made before you ever put on your headphones for a listen. But with original chiptunes, no such connections are forged prior to the experience of the music, leaving the listener free to build their own universe around what they hear.

I often ask myself questions as I listen: “What kind of game would this tune be in? How would the player play? How would they win?” I immediately conjure up images of distant worlds and heroic protagonists, of horrific monsters and valiant soldiers, of power-ups, of secret weapons, of levels and platforms and zones and cliffs and seas and mountains and time machines and space travel and anything else I could ever want to see and do, here and now. The sounds of gaming allow me the freedom to build any world I choose. The musical experience of chiptunes, then, is about more than just feeling nostalgic: it’s about pushing the creative envelope in new directions and allowing the music to trigger fantastic flights of imagination.

But it is about nostalgia too. It’s about remembering a time in my life when things were simple and easy. I recall fondly the long hours I spent in the car playing Gameboy as we traveled around Europe and the West Coast. Those days of my childhood were good ones. Chiptunes bring me back to a time of innocence. Games then were blocky, with pixilated sound and no color. The disconnect between reality and the world of the game was much wider. Were games gentler back then?

That’s really the question, isn’t it? Was it a golden age of innocence because the medium itself was young, or was it a golden age because I was young? Games back then didn’t have the technical capabilities to show us graphically what they wanted us to see, so they had to rely more heavily on storytelling and atmosphere. Not all games succeeded at this—many didn’t—but something about the raw, simple nature of old video games harkens to a feeling of purity and benevolence. There were violent games. There were total knockoff/product placement games. But there were gems as well. I feel like games didn’t try to take on real issues as much as they do today. What did you have in the early console era? Mario, Sonic, Link, and Samus. Fictional heroes set in far-off lands. Nowadays we have games like Call of Duty: Modern Warfare and Killzone: realistic shooters where a few bullets will—as in real life—kill you. The stories these games tell hit much closer to home than the tale of a young boy on a quest to save a princess or a blue hedgehog out to stop a robot-creating genius.

I’m kind of rambling here, so let me get to the point: one of the key differences between storytelling in the early days of video games and storytelling today is the level of graphical and sound capability available to storytellers. These days, the story of a game like Halo: Reach is told in a cinematic fashion akin to a movie. 8-bit games didn’t have that luxury; they had to rely on text and simple imagery to convey their points. Now, just because many games try to appear more like films in their storytelling approach doesn’t mean that all games today are this way. Modern game designers and storytellers have realized the potential of simplicity. Games like Braid and Limbo illustrate the potential of text and low graphical interface.

Chiptune music is a special genre that almost any gamer will enjoy. There’s appeal for others as well, but those who have gaming in their past are the most likely to find the familiar pings and blips a welcome throwback to their youth.

As a sign-off, here are a few of my favorite chiptune artists and sites:

Anamanguchi – recently made famous for their work on Scott Pilgrim: The Video Game, this band sets the standard for chiptunes today.

trash80 – high degree of sophistication to these pieces. One of the best artists out there.

8bitpeoples – great hub site with a ton of music for download, all free

PS: I really enjoy listening to chiptunes with RainyMood playing as well. Something about the blend between high-tech and nature is very beautiful.

The Worry Monster

2011-01-24T10:46:00.000-08:00

The Worry Monster. A terrifying beast: one that devours minds and can make living an ordinary life impossible. Over the last few weeks I’ve rejoined a familiar battle with this behemoth. I suspect this is due to a number of factors: the realization that my life goals are somewhat undeveloped, the continuing effects (primarily positive, a few negative, but all still transitions and changes) of a new relationship, even the weather (I suspect I have Seasonal Affective Disorder, just like every Western Washingtonian). Given this, I have started to delve into tactics for combating unnecessary (and occasionally crippling) worry. The most potent of these thus far as been to learn to focus on activities of the moment. For example, as I write this, I consider both the words I’m penning and the overall experience of writing: the feel of the keys beneath my fingers, the strange, echoing voice in my mind that silently reverberates each word as it leaves my thoughts, the feeling of sitting with my eyes locked onto the moving letters on the screen, and so on. This kind of mental focusing exercise will help me in harder times, when my thoughts drift to worries about things that I have no control over.

Worrying is, I think, fundamentally driven by two kinds of fear: fear of loss, and fear of being unprepared. We don’t like change, as a general rule. It’s easy to become used to something, be it a person, an object, a lifestyle, or a routine. Familiarity breeds comfort. We get to know the thing, and we feel that we can rely on it. When other items in our lives seem to be shifting, at least there’s the familiar. The old standby. Home, as it were. Worry is the fear that the things we know so well will somehow no longer be accessible as they presently are. Furthermore, when we worry about things in the future, we often worry that some unexpected or unfortunate event will occur, and we’ll be left unsure of how to respond. Fear of not being ready to handle a situation can lead to anxiety.

Consider all these common worries: “What if I he gets in a car accident today? What if the plane crashes? What if I can’t find my cell phone? What if she doesn’t really love me? What if my coworker is trying to get me fired? What if I forgot to do something important before my trip?” I see these as specific instances of archetypal worries, to the following tune: “What if something happens to someone/something I care about? What if the thing/experience/situation I’ve relied on for stability is suddenly taken from me? What if I find myself without the items that make me feel prepared and secure?” When thought of this way, the resolutions (twofold) to them become clear: they are beyond our control, and we will handle them.

They are beyond our control: nothing is guaranteed. No matter how long that old oak in the yard has stood, a freak lightning strike could slay it where it stands, or a flash flood could drown it, or a madman with a chainsaw could end its life. Nothing is certain. Things are more or less likely, sure, but to say that the tree will never die is to ignore reality in favor of fantasy. Similarly, the knowledge that our lives are subject to sudden events over which we have no control is, in a way, liberating. We can only maintain command of some things in our lives. Not everything. But since we cannot control everything, we can maximize the good in what we can control; and this, at least for me, provides both an ongoing quest and a sense of purpose in my actions. I will do the best I can with what I have command of, and let other things be as they are, for I cannot affect them.

We will handle them: if you are reading this, you are (presumably) still alive (if you’re not, please contact me. I have some questions for you). You’ve made it through the day so far, and every day prior to today. Odds are good that you’ll make it through tomorrow, and the day after. Unexpected things have happened in your life before today. Some of them might have been difficult, painful, or even tragic. But still you persevered. You dealt with those problems when they arose: not before, and not after. Right then. When you needed to. And so you shall again, when things arise.

I read something very helpful the other day. The gist was that if I worry about something that might happen, I’m suffering the pain of that potential loss before the loss occurs. Say I worry about my (hypothetical) cat dying 100 times, and then the cat dies. Now I’ll have suffered the pain of that loss 101 times. But if the cat hadn’t died, I’d still have suffered the pain 100 times, and for what? Why not just suffer that pain one time? Worrying about the cat dying does not prevent the cat from dying. Turning that worry into action, however, does.

This entry has been as much about me telling myself how not to worry as it has been for your benefit, kind reader. I hope you found something here that was of use. I’ll wrap things up with something a little more artsy.

I don’t normally share my poetry, primarily because it is often very personal and thus reflects feelings that I’d only prefer to share with those closest to me. Nonetheless, as a writer and someone who desires strongly to bring art into the world, I feel I must work on overcoming this fear of judgment. I must create for the sake of creation; I must create not because the approval of others is what will satisfy me, but because the act of creating is in and of itself enjoyable. Thus I present to you a poem I wrote last week. I hope it brings you happiness.

The Worry Monster

it lumbers a little

growling and nibbling at your

thoughts turn like clockwork

chiming away, while from the shadows

two slithering eyes watch

two lips part, a tongue protrudes, teeth gleam

ravenous, tiny, a speck on a speck

on your eyeball

on your mind

on the go as you go to swat it away

but the monster's too quick

speedily, it balloons

eating threads from the tapestry

pulling and tugging like a child

with clawed fingers

on your favorite sweater, and you watch

as it disintegrates

a moth in a candle flame

the city beneath its roaring

toes crushing the spires and rooftops

of churches, malls, homes, castles

let there be no mistake

when this beast rages

the world you know burns hotter

and when at last you breathe

the cold air like a drug

it retreats to its lair, a forgotten cavity

no dentist can reach

lurking, still hungry

still just a meal away from the end

Thanks for reading. If you enjoyed this entry, please become a Follower on my blog, and share it with your friends via Facebook or whatever other means you wish!

Living In My Own World... of Warcraft - Part 1

2011-01-05T09:49:00.001-08:00

Welcome. In this and the coming posts, I intend to tell you a bit about World of Warcraft, and the ways in which it has affected my life, both positively and negatively. Mood music for this piece can be found here.

This post series is not a justification. I feel that I need not make excuses for playing WoW. I’m a long-time gamer, and I’m proud to be one. What I want to do here, in more words than is likely necessary, is explain the ways WoW has affected my life over the last five and a half years—for indeed, I’ve played WoW for that amount of time. It’s been a long, bumpy journey, and there were many events on the way. Come with me as I share this part of myself with you. If you are of the opinion that anyone who plays World of Warcraft must be socially neglectful or otherwise behaving in error, I hope that perhaps I can show you a side of the game and its players that you haven’t seen before; one that, although it may not inspire you to change your mind, will at least hopefully open your eyes a bit to the way a virtual world can affect or not affect the real life of an (allegedly) average person.

I’ll begin with a brief primer on the basic structure of World of Warcraft. If you are familiar with the game already, skip this paragraph. WoW is an MMORPG, or Massively Multiplayer Online Role-Playing Game. As of this writing, the game has approximately 13 million subscribed players worldwide. Players must pay a subscription fee of about $15 per month in order to maintain service; characters are not deleted if service is interrupted, so players can quit for a while and return later to their old characters. The game consists largely of killing monsters, completing quests, exploring the world, and interacting with non-player characters (NPCs) or other player characters (PCs). Players create characters as one of many races (dwarf, human, orc, troll, etc.) and classes (warrior, mage, paladin, rogue, etc.) as part of either the Horde or the Alliance. Which side a player selects will dramatically affect how that player progresses, as certain areas are hostile to members of the opposite faction, and many NPCs will only interact with players of their same allegiance. Once a player selects a side, they cannot change their side (unless they are willing to pay a $25 fee), nor can they change their race (except if they pay $25) or class. Players are separated into a number of smaller instances of the world called realms, and you can only use your character on the realm he or she is stored on. Each realm can house several thousand characters, although if more than a certain number log on at once, a queue will form to prevent the realm from becoming overloaded. So, in essence, players may have the entire world to run around in, but they’ll only have the same two or three thousand other players to interact with (unless, again, one pays $25 to change realms), and they’ll only have a thousand or so online at any given time.

All right. The rest you’ll have to look up yourself. I’ve placed links throughout the piece for your convenience, should you so choose. Onward!

It began in the summer of 2005. My friend James had just started in on this fresh MMO, World of Warcraft. I didn't know much about it, save what he told me. The game was so new that most people hadn’t even heard of it. Imagine! You’d say World of Warcraft and no one would know what you were talking about. I’d played other Blizzard games before, and I’d played their Warcraft series, so I was somewhat familiar with both the storyline and the quality of Blizzard games. Reading more about the game increased my intrigue. It sounded fascinating. I was eager to give it a try. I played a bit on James’ account, but that wasn’t nearly enough: I had to find my own copy.

I’d played as the Scourge—an evil undead army—in Warcraft III, so I was excited to give the Forsaken a try when I at last obtained the game. I created my first character: Blightfire, a female, undead warlock. She and I bonded quickly. I ventured forth into the vast world of Azeroth, wide-eyed, like a small-town kid in the big city. Everything was new and exciting to me, and I took things slowly, soaking up the atmosphere and learning everything I could about how to play my character effectively.

An important note here about my relationship with my characters: part of what has kept WoW engaging for me for so many years is the bonds I forge with the characters I create. The game gives your character a bit of background to start—your initial allegiance to your faction and first few levels of play are more or less set in stone—but there is much flexibility for the creative mind should the player so desire it. The world itself has many avenues open for storytelling. Blightfire, for example, is a member of the Forsaken, and had been (at the moment I first created her) recently resurrected from the dead, but that’s where the game-side storytelling ends. She could be from a noble family, or a commoner; she could be a talented warlock whose powers were drained by death, or a fresh recruit who just learned to use magic; she could be good, or evil; a champion of justice, or an agent of chaos; a heroine, or a villainess. The choice was left to me.

That being said, the mechanics of WoW are not built for role-playing. There are no rewards for speaking (typing messages) in character, giving your avatar a backstory, or making aesthetic or moral decisions on your character’s behalf (that is, choosing a certain piece of armor for its looks rather than its magical bonuses, or refusing to complete a certain quest because it requires your character to do something they are morally opposed to). Knowing all this, there are realms dedicated to role-playing for players who enjoy that experience, and for a brief time I considered making my character on one of these realms. But instead I chose the realm James and some other friends were on, thereby sealing my fate: if I wanted to role-play, I’d have to go it alone. Anyway, I’ve digressed: I build up storylines for my characters as I play, adapting and supplementing them as new things happen and new adventures present themselves.

With Blightfire, the story was simple: I was a freshly awakened corpse. I hadn’t the slightest idea where I’d come from or who I’d been in life. All I knew was that, with the right incantations, I could summon powerful demonic energies to aid me in combat, and there was a vast world out there that was ripe for the plundering. As a Forsaken, I adapted quickly to my race’s MO: cold, unrelenting, and willing to do whatever it took to get what I wanted. James, one of the few people I knew on the realm, was playing a Tauren, a bovine race of largely peaceful nomads and nature-based spellcasters. We sent letters to each other using the in-game mail system, relating tales of our travels on opposite sides of the world. It was a lot of fun.

Meanwhile, in real life, I was dating a wonderful girl named Justine and getting ready to head to college at Western Washington University. I quickly realized that WoW would consume far more of my time than I wanted, and thus I made a policy for myself: except on rare occasions, never turn down real-life interactions in favor of WoW. This self-imposed edict is, I believe, what prevented me from succumbing to the life-draining properties of the game that so many others fall prey to. For WoW is nothing if not addictive, and as I discovered over the coming years, it’s an addiction that can leave devastation in its wake.

Playing WoW during my first year of college occasionally caused me trouble, but for the most part I was able to keep my schoolwork in check and make time to talk with/visit my girlfriend. Being separated by a pricey two-hour bus ride and a mile or so on foot wasn’t fun, but we made it work. I recall a certain level of resentment at my WoW habit on Justine’s part. One evening stands out vividly in my mind: I was running a raid called Molten Core with members of my guild. Raids typically take several hours to complete, and in the early days of WoW, a raid night might last from 6pm until 10pm or later. Justine was visiting that weekend, and had assured me that she didn’t mind if I took part in the raid. Yet a few hours in, she became upset, asking, “When is that stupid game going to be over?” I can understand her frustration. She didn’t expect the event to take as long as it did, and I was failing to pay as much attention to her as I should’ve been. I learned an important lesson that day, and from that point forward tried to never ask her or anyone else to entertain themselves while I played WoW. If she suggested that we just hang out while I played, that was another matter, and I was willing to do that, but not the reverse.

Next time: James quits WoW! Sophomore year of college! Junior year of college! New girlfriend, new job, new everything! And the exploration of an important question: why do I almost always play female characters? Don’t miss it!

A quick plug for a new project and an old project, both WoW-related:

The Stromblog! – a dwarven hunter’s adventures in Azeroth. With his trusty pet Strombear at his side, Strombol is ready to take on any challenge, be it the arid dust of the Strombadlands, the heated caverns of the Stromblackrock Depths, or the icy winds of the Stromborean Tundra. More posts coming soon!

Undeath Beckons – the storyline behind many of my characters, Blightfire being principle among them. Fan fiction is fun and easy to write; I hope you enjoy reading it as much as I enjoyed creating it! Eleven chapters and still no end in sight. WoW experience not required, I hope.

Go Zombie

2010-10-30T11:21:00.000-07:00

People are scared of zombies. Well, some people. I don’t know if everyone is. But a lot of people are, for a lot of reasons. Freud’s unheimlich springs to mind (one of the few subjects I actually understood and enjoyed when studying critical theory in college). Seeing your loved ones as little more than bloody, slavering shells… yeah, that might be another reason. But maybe what scares us about zombies isn’t either of those things. It’s the closeness. The distance, or lack thereof. Yes, I think I’ll come out and say it: we’re not so different, humans and zombies. The living and the dead.

Humans lumber though life in search of something(s) they believe will bring them satisfaction and fulfillment. Driven purely by instinct, zombies are incapable of believing or desiring anything (except brains, depending on which kind of zombie we’re talking about). Yet they too are single-minded in their drive, seeking only one thing: flesh. Fullness. Satisfaction. Revenge? Maybe.

The zombie lurches into the courtyard. He looks left, then right. Gears turn. He moves with a shuffle toward the nearest warm body, intent on feasting. Yet what drives him? No desires or thoughts. Only cold, empty urges. Instincts. Are we so different?

Human beings don’t like to think of themselves as animals, but that’s all we are, really. We have a few nifty evolutionary modifications installed, of course: big brains, leading to consciousness and self-awareness; the ability to feel, think, reason, and plan; a grasp and utilization of technology. Yet at our core, we’re fueled primarily by instinct. When we hear that crash from the underbrush, or see the fist flying for a punch, or are so ravenously hungry that our minds begin to melt, our instincts come into play. We act without thinking. The brain hijacks the body. “Too slow,” it says, “much too slow. This clunky consciousness won’t get the job done fast enough.” We become, in that instant, pure animals, moving without volition. Acting on genetic, instinctual programming.

So in this way, we become like zombies. We lunge out at what we want, without any consideration for what might happen. It’s beyond our control. Just like the living dead, we become the dead living: emptiness behind our eyes. Lines of code.

Allow me to summarize my point. Humans and zombies share one major trait: We’re both capable of being driven by instinct alone. For zombies, this is the only existence they know. For humans, we have options. But many of us choose not to utilize those options, don’t we? How many times have you intended to drive one place, but accidentally ended up on autopilot to a different location? How often do you let yourself remain half asleep as you get cleaned up and dressed in the morning before work? We go zombie all the time. It’s part of how we survive. Seeing full-bore zombies is terrifying because it reminds us just how close we can get to that state even while alive. No one wants to die and arise as mindless undead… but we fear the worse fate even more: becoming a living, breathing zombie, still alive but very much dead inside.

The zombie apocalypse may be closer at hand than we thought…

Happy Halloween everyone! On a totally unrelated note to everything above, I’ve recently discovered an awesome artist whose work is very appropriate for today’s entry. Her name is Zombie Girl, and she rocks. Check out her stuff here:

Thanks for reading!

Amazing still it seems... I'll be 23.

2010-10-04T21:48:00.000-07:00

New home. New friends. New job.

New Marc?

I figured it appropriate (dare I say proper?) to write something on the eve of my 23^rd birthday. For indeed, tomorrow the hand of the clock ticks one more notch forward. Tomorrow I will be one year older. One year wiser? Maybe. I don’t know. Have I learned anything in a year’s time? I’d like to think so. But who can say for sure?

I’m on the first few pages of the next chapter in my life. I never really saw any of this coming, or at least never fully imagined it. I’m not who I was at this time last year, the day before I turned 22. I couldn’t have dreamt of the situation I’m in now: sitting on a park bench in Capitol Hill, fighting the chill in my fingers as I pen these words. Who is this person? Who is this Marc?

This Marc is scared… but ready. This Marc is embracing the world. Carpe diem. A motto so often spoken yet so misunderstood. Seizing the day doesn’t necessarily mean doing something crazy or reckless. It means doing something, period. It means breaking free of ruts and routines. It means asking yourself, “What am I afraid of?”

That’s the question of the month. October, I mean. Fear is everywhere now, as the cold autumn winds begin to blow. But it’s a pacified fear. It’s plastic and corn starch. Harmless. Life, real life, isn’t harmless. It can wound you. It can break your heart. Yet we live on, riding out the stormy seas. Growing older. Growing wiser.

I guess that’s the point, isn’t it? We can’t stay static. We can’t bring back the people we were and the people we were with, except as intangible spirits, ghosts who can’t hurt us. No. We live to learn. We can do nothing more.

This Marc is ready to learn. This Marc is ready to seize the day. This Marc, like the slacker/hero he so idolizes, is ready to win his birthday.

Marc Reviews: Scott Pilgrim vs. The World

2010-08-18T12:38:00.000-07:00

I’ve decided to try my hand at writing a review. I don’t know if it’ll live up to whatever standards exist out there for reviews, but whatever. Meeting other peoples’ expectations isn’t really the point of blogging, is it? This is all about opinions, formed succinctly and displayed with flair. Without further ado, let’s get to it!

Today I’m reviewing the film Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (http://www.scottpilgrimthemovie.com/), which is the film adaptation of a book series by Bryan Lee O’Malley (http://www.scottpilgrim.com/). Yeah.

“We are Sex Bob-omb! ONE! TWO! THREE! FOUR!”

Scott Pilgrim vs. The World (hereafter referred to as SP) chronicles the adventures of one Scott Pilgrim, a 22-year-old Canadian slacker living in Toronto in the mid-aughts (circa 2005). He’s an avid gamer and plays bass in a band (named Sex Bob-omb) with his friends. The film revolves primarily around his relationship with a girl named Ramona Flowers, who roller-blades mysteriously into his life and captures his heart. They became attached to each other very quickly, and things start going… well, swimmingly would be an overstatement, since Scott has other ex-girlfriends and problems to deal with. But still, it’s a pretty good situation.

Until Ramona’s evil exes start showing up to fight Scott for her love. If he wants to keep dating her, he’ll have to defeat the entire “league”, which includes seven dastardly past romantic entanglements spanning Ramona’s entire life up to that point. And so, after perhaps twenty minutes of character introduction, we move into the film’s primary focus: fighting. Scott fights all seven exes one after the other (though not necessarily one at a time) in huge, over-the-top kung-fu battles, with only a few days between each engagement. The combat has the feel and appearance of a video game, which is sort of the point. Gamers will geek out big-time at all the nerdy moments. Case in point: the film’s climactic final battle includes a boss health meter, level-ups, and a variety of other in-jokes for those who partake of the digital entertainments.

SP only loosely follows the plotline of the graphic novels upon which it’s based. The first half hour of the film is drawn more or less word-for-word from the comics, but after the second ex shows up, things begin to deviate pretty wildly. Certain integral characters from the novels are either not expanded upon or completely absent (for example, Kim Pine is given almost no back-story, and another of Scott’s high school friends—a girl named Lisa Miller—is missing entirely). Other characters are recolored (Envy Adams is portrayed as a bitter, evil ice queen, when in fact she’s actually a very sympathetic character in the books), and plot elements that are critical in the books are left unexplained or untouched (Subspace, the “convenient” fast-travel network that Ramona uses to get around, is barely even mentioned in the movie, while it plays an enormous role in the novels). Perhaps the biggest difference between the books and the film is the timeframe: the written works chronicle Scott and Ramona’s romance over the course of a year’s time. The movie does it in a month or less. This dramatic shortening of their relationship’s duration is perhaps the film’s biggest failing, but I’ll return to that in a moment. First, the good stuff.

There’re a lot of fights. Good fights. Fun fights. Entertaining fights. Scott’s battle with Matthew Patel, Ramona’s first evil ex, is hilarious: it’s riddled with everything from Street Fighter references to wacky cartoon sound effects to a cheesy Bollywood song-and-dance number. As the battles progress and the difficulty increases, the combat becomes more and more animated and extreme. The final showdown against Ramona’s last ex is a tour-de-force of classic kung-fu moves, swordplay, tag teaming, and nods to gamers. Perhaps the best way to approach SP is to see it as a kung-fu film, rather than a love story or romantic comedy. By coming at it through that framework, the various shortcomings of the plot can be glossed over with greater ease.

I’m a fan of the compliment sandwich, so let’s switch gears and talk about what’s not so great. I mentioned before that the film’s condensing of the story’s timeline caused the experience to suffer. Here’s why: the most integral piece of the whole plotline is the romance between Scott and Ramona. It’s what motivates Scott to fight for Ramona (and Ramona, at times, to fight for Scott). It’s what propels everything forward. It’s what drives Scott to turn his entire life upside down for the sake of a cute girl on roller blades.

And it falls flat.

Ramona, as she’s written and portrayed in the movie, is not particularly loving. She’s kind of aloof, often comes across as cold, and doesn’t really give Scott the time of day throughout most of the major moments. Scott, meanwhile, acts more like a kid with a crush on his babysitter than an adult in a relationship. Perhaps this is because Scott is kind of a kid; the movie (and the book) chronicles some of his growth into adulthood. But even so, I found their romance to be more alleged than displayed. I was told they liked each other, but I didn’t feel it. And without that sense of attachment and love, the rest of what’s going on devolves into a series of battles for an unclear or even misguided goal.

How does this relate to the timeline? Like so: in the books, Scott and Ramona are together for far longer than in SP, and things just take longer to happen. For example, there’s a three-month gap between Scott’s fight with the third and fourth exes (in the movie, that gap is about thirty minutes). Because of this, we’re able to watch the love between Scott and Ramona blossom. Their passion for each other grows organically, just like such things do in real life. To put it another way, we have a chance to see them fall in love in the books. But when the entire plotline is squished into a month, suddenly we don’t see that take place. There simply isn’t time. Consequently, although we’re told repeatedly that Scott and Ramona are in love and that they want to be together, it feels implausible given how short a time they’ve known each other. And that makes everything else seem pointless.

I think the best solution to the above problem would’ve been (and here movie executives everywhere cringe) two movies. Not three. No need for a trilogy. And certainly not six (one for each book): that would’ve been excessive and unnecessary. Two films, however, would’ve been just the right amount. We could’ve been treated to a few montages of time passing, showing Scott and Ramona together. That would’ve given us plenty of time to really get a feel for how they were as a couple and why we should care. Unfortunately, the problem is monetary: with an “unknown” franchise like this one, it’s virtually impossible to garner the necessary buzz and funding for two movies.

My other major critique of SP can be summed up in one paragraph (hopefully). This movie could’ve gone in one of two directions. Option one: make it a loving homage to the series. Fill every second of screen time with lines and scenes from the comic, and don’t explain anything. Only those who’ve read the original will fathom the action, while everyone else will be left scratching their heads. Option two: ditch the books entirely. Keep only the basic principle (seven evil exes). Create an entirely new plot and run with it. Try to make it internally consistent, engaging, and easy for the average American to follow (in other words, dumb it down). The tragedy is that SP tried to do both, and succeeded at neither. There were plenty of things for readers of the books to chuckle at, but every time such a scene played out on screen, a few key items would be altered just enough to leave fans grumbling and the clueless masses wondering if they’d missed something.

Let’s finish this sandwich with another delicious compliment: what scenes the movie did strive to recreate from the books are spot on. They managed to get the costuming, the background, the poses, the facial expressions… everything. I particularly enjoyed the scene after the Clash at Demonhead show, and a number of the moments at band practice with Sex Bob-omb were quite delightful as well. Also, many of the lines spouted by characters were straight out of the novels. While a lot of said lines were out of context, uttered by unrelated characters, or construed in different ways, it was still nice to hear the lines being used.

SP is action-packed and entertaining, but only on a surface level. Below the skin, the plot suffers from a number of continuity and believability problems. These are not game-breaking, however; the film carries itself well enough from start to finish, and the casual viewer will only experience a few moments of slight confusion. The more careful eye, on the other hand, may find the lack of a truly engaging romantic plotline a powerful foil to the motivations of the main character, Scott. Despite these imperfections, SP is worth a viewing in theaters, if only for the sheer pleasure of a slightly mind-warping, two-hour, bright and colorful slugfest.

Tl;dr – If you like kung-fu or quirky, semi-nonsensical films, go see Scott Pilgrim vs. The World. It’s flashy, fun, and if you’re a gamer you’ll squeal with delight at some of the clever references (maybe that was just me…). If you’ve read any or all of the books, definitely go see it. But if you’re on the fence about movies with a lot of fighting and not much else, you may want to skip this one.

Arabian Nights

2010-08-05T18:49:00.000-07:00

“So. Saudi Arabia, huh? Kind of an odd choice, but, well, if it makes you happy then go for it.” That’s what they all said. And they’re right, of course: it’s my life, and if it’s what I want to do, I should do it. But the thing is… it’s, well, not. Not really. I’ve spent the last two weeks mulling (like wine!) over these issues, and I’ve come to a number of useful conclusions.

First—for those of you playing along at home—a brief recap: midway through the month of July, I was contacted by a recruitment agency that contracts English teachers out to King Saud University in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia. I’d put in an application with this agency, so it wasn’t just out of the blue, but I honestly wasn’t expecting to hear anything back. Long story short, they offered me a job. I accepted the offer within twenty-four hours, and started down the long road to departure. Did I say long? I’m supposed to be leaving in two weeks.

I’ve been trying to come to grips with this choice ever since that day. I’ve spent quite a few hours working out everything, and I think I’ve got a really great basis for the decision I’m about to announce: I’m not going to Saudi Arabia after all. Let’s take a look at why, for the reasons are fivefold:

1. Saudi Arabia sucks

Let’s be honest here: Saudi Arabia is a really fucked-up place by American standards. Call me racist or bigoted or ethno-centric or whatever, but any country where alcohol (and bacon, incidentally) is illegal and I can be assaulted in the streets by the Mutaween (religious police) for the simple act of talking to a woman is not a country I’d particularly care to live in. While we’re on that subject, did you know that women have almost no rights in Saudi Arabia? Most are veiled, especially in Riyadh (the capital). They can’t drive cars, they can be arrested for speaking to men who aren’t their husbands, and they must ask permission of their closest male relative to leave the house. What sort of place is that? Not the kind of place I think I’d enjoy living for a year.

Furthermore, there’s a deeper moral issue wrapped up in this: by living in the country, working for the benefit of its citizens, and accepting Saudi currency, I would in effect be silently condoning their behavior. And that is something I don’t feel morally comfortable doing. Call me what you will, but the form of Islam practiced as the national religion of the country is backwards and sexist to an unbelievable degree. Women should not be treated the way they are in Saudi, period, and I’d rather never leave this country at all than accept even one penny from a place that not only condones but actively encourages such discrimination. Perhaps I am being a bit extreme, but I feel it’s important for me to be clear on this: I don’t want to provide Saudi Arabia with any form of support beyond the money I undoubtedly already pay for their oil (in the form of gasoline). Working there would, in effect, encourage them to continue doing what they do. And I can’t do that.

2. The company is, at best, sketchy

A close friend of mine—truly a god among men, if I may be frank—was able to provide me with some background information on the company I’m being hired by. This info is not normally available to the public, but due to my associate’s contacts, he was able to give valuable input. In short, the company (ICEEL, http://www.iceel.us/) , while perhaps not outright a scam, isn’t a well-oiled machine that can navigate immigration with the finesse I’d expect from an international contracting company. Various stories online point to bumbling on the part of management and a general lack of experience in the staff. Now, I acknowledge that there is a certain measure of risk I have to be comfortable with when it comes to working overseas. No company is perfect; there’s always the chance that I’ll arrive and end up in trouble. But it isn’t unreasonable, I think, to expect more of a company than what I’ve seen and read about so far. Bottom line: I’d probably have no problem getting all my paperwork settled… but the chances of something going wrong are higher than I’d like.

3. It’s not part of my long-term plan

At the beginning of this year (2010), I set up a number of goals and objectives for myself. These are long-term things that require multiple steps and months or years of effort to achieve. I won’t elaborate on all of them here and now—perhaps I’ll save that as fodder for another post—but suffice to say, going to Saudi Arabia was not part of the scheme. I’ve never been particularly interested in the country. I didn’t want to go there before I found out about the job, and even when I did learn of this option, I had to do a lot of research just to get a basic idea of the place. I just… don’t really want to go there. At all. It’s simply a matter of interest. I don’t care about Saudi Arabia. I’m not really hooked by its culture, people, or traditions. In fact, as noted in my first point above, I’m actively repulsed by many of the practices of that nation. Going there doesn’t fit into my plans, so I don’t want to go.

A note about plans: I understand that having inflexible objectives brings with it the possibility that I’m aiming too narrowly. I know that. And I realize that changing my plans won’t mark the end of my future. But I also know that I shouldn’t give up quite so easily on what I really want out of my life. I’m young and I have a lot of time left, but I do need to pick my battles carefully. Otherwise I’ll burn myself out and miss other opportunities that might come my way. Which brings me nicely to my next point…

4. I have unfinished business here in the States

I know people always say that you never really feel “ready” for big changes. Getting married, having a baby, buying a house, starting a fresh career, moving to a new city: all of these are things that are essentially impossible to fully prepare for, at least mentally. There are always reasons not to do these things, and there never seems to be an ideal moment. Something is always in the way. Excuses can be found in even the smallest of circumstances.

I get all of that. But I really do have things I want to do here before I leave. It’s important to me that I see my sister and brother through at least part of their first and last years of high school, respectively. I want to bid my other sister farewell as she leaves for Ireland. I want to work at the Puyallup Fair again, if the job is available (despite my complaints, I had a lot of fun last year). Most importantly, I want to do this overseas thing on my terms. I want to find a place where I’ll be happy and successful, and go there when I feel prepared. I know I’ll always be able to find things here in the US that I don’t want to miss, but even so… there are things I don’t want to miss.

5. I’m not ready

Despite the fact that I spent literally an entire month of my life learning how to be a fantastic ESL teacher, I don’t feel ready to do it for reals. Being a teacher is tricky. There’s a lot of responsibility riding on your shoulders. And although I have a certificate claiming I’m capable of doing that job, I don’t feel like I can yet. I’m sure I’m just nervous because I’m inexperienced; once I’ve had my ESL cherry popped (to put it crudely), I’ll feel a lot more prepared to take on an entire class by myself. The only way to reach that level of readiness? Volunteering or part-time/classroom aide work. Now, I want to point out one thing: if I find a really awesome job opportunity that I’m truly interested in, I probably won’t pass up that chance regardless of how ready I am. But barring that, I want to give this a bit of time. Get my feet wet in a classroom or two. Then we’ll talk.

That’s it. Those are my reasons. Take them or leave them. I realize I don’t really need to justify my actions to anyone in particular—for after all, I’m an adult and I can make my own choices—but there is at least one person I have to satisfy: myself. And I can’t let myself make a big decision like this one without careful consideration of all the angles. I won’t say I’ve hit every single one of those either. But this is good enough for me, and as I pointed, it’s all about me anyway.

What’s that? You want to know what I'm going to do instead of going to Saudi? Good question. I’ve thought about that too.

I plan, tentatively, to keep my eyes and ears open for jobs. Teaching jobs, writing jobs, whatever. Jobs. I quit my job at Barnes & Noble in anticipation of going to Saudi, and I don’t intend to go back to that damn bookstore unless I have to. I feel confident that I can make it out here without returning to what I consider to be soul-sucking employment. There’s plenty for me to do anyway: write, build my portfolio, work the Fair, and prepare myself to apply for JET. I mentioned earlier that I’d set a number of goals for myself; one of them is going to Japan. The whole reason I got TESOL certification in the first place was to get there. And I’m not giving up. Not yet. So yes, JET is on my radar in a big way. I think I have a better shot now than I did before. I also have a number of writing projects that need finishing, and without a full-time job, I’ll have the time I need to work on those.

Beyond that, I’m not sure. I’ll keep you posted.

Thanks for reading.

Options

2010-07-09T18:19:00.001-07:00

Well, the unexpected has happened: I now have too many potential job avenues to pursue. Impossible, you say? I may be exaggerating a bit, sure, but seriously, the world is at my fingertips. As I predicted, having TESOL certification makes me a top candidate for any overseas job I could want. And that is precisely the problem: which one should I choose? I just don’t know!

My four main options at the moment (although there are dozens more just waiting to be looked into) are Thailand, China, Japan, and Saudi Arabia. Now, none of these locations have actually presented me with a job offer yet… but I’m confident (and have the testimony of people with similar or lesser qualifications) that if I apply I’ll be given a shot at a job. Thus the question arises: where to go?

I could go to Japan. It has been a dream of mine for a few years now, yes. But the program I’m most interested in is JET, and applications for that aren’t due until Fall. That means waiting four months just to apply, followed by two more months to hear back about an interview, followed by four more months before I actually leave the country. I’d be stuck at that goddamn bookstore until this time next year. Yuck. On the other hand, I could try for a private school position at one of Japan’s many such companies. However, this also has its risks: a lot of conversation schools are going under in Japan right now. It’s a tough time to be getting into the industry in Nihon.

I could go to Thailand. I don’t know much about possible gigs there, but it’s an interesting place and I’d be near other Asian countries like Japan (which I could visit). I’ve heard the money in Thailand isn’t good… but who cares? I’d be in flippin’ Thailand! Elephants! Pad Thai! Other cool stuff!

I could go to Saudi Arabia. A lot of people cringe at the idea since it’s in the Middle East, but it’s really not as dangerous as it seems. Furthermore, the money in Saudi Arabia is good. They pay very well. I would dare say that I’d be hard-pressed to find a better job short of getting a Master’s, monetarily speaking. Now, there is the problem of a very strict theocratic culture, which may prove difficult to adjust to. But I think I could handle it. And the heat. But whatever, I can deal.

I could go to China. My cousin is there right now, and she recently suggested a very bold maneuver: she said I should move to China and stay with her for a few weeks. She claims that I’d have no trouble whatsoever finding a job or four. My cousin is not fully TESOL certified and she still has job offers coming at her every day. So she’s probably right. But just up and moving to China? That’s bold. Really bold. Crazy enough to work? Maybe. Still, I hesitate: I like to have a plan before I move to a new place. Moreover—and I admit this is probably just petty or shallow of me in some way—I don’t know if I really want to go to China. I mean, I don’t know a lot about China, but what I do know kind of doesn’t make me want to go there. I like Japan and Japanese culture, even though I’ve never been. China… not so much. But that might be ignorance talking.

I could look for other jobs. I’ve realized that I don’t care all that much where I go (he says after a long paragraph about why he doesn’t want to go to China), so long as I’m overseas for a while. That’s been the dream for years. I’m not giving up on it now, no sir; if anything, I’ve expanded it. I’m a global person now, or at least I’m trying to be, and thus I want to see other parts of the world regardless of where they are. Aiming solely for Japan, or even Asia, was a narrow move, and I’m glad I don’t feel so restricted anymore. I just wish I did feel at least a little restricted.

The Return

2010-07-05T18:15:00.001-07:00

I’ve returned from a long, long month of classes in Seattle. I am now officially trained as an ESL teacher. I have a fancy piece of paper that says so! And as a new teacher in the field, I’m really excited to find some students to work with. But that, unfortunately, is the first problem: I don’t even know where to start, really. Tomorrow I’ll call Pierce and see if I can volunteer with their ESL program. From there, I hope to gain a bit of insight as to what I should be looking for. You see, the problem is that even though I know there are a lot of international programs out there, it’s really taxing to throw complex (and often expensive) applications all over the place. Better that I focus my efforts on the things I’m most likely to succeed at.

Hi, by the way. Been a while. Sorry about that. I can only concentrate on so many things at once, and once work started picking up and other projects came to the forefront, I let the blog slip away. I won’t promise anything, but if I do end up overseas, I’ll take advantage of the fact that I have this location already established.

I suppose it’s worth mentioning that I’m less than thrilled to be back at Barnes & Noble once more. That month away was seriously needed; I’m not sure I would’ve survived much longer if I hadn’t gone for it. I still find it hard to believe that it’s only been a month since I left. That class felt like it took a year. And rightfully so! 120 hours of graduate level coursework in a month is nothing to scoff at! At any rate, while I’m glad to be home, I wish I could just quit my job and focus all my energy on finding a teaching position somewhere. Alas, I need money. And so it goes.

In other news, I feel invigorated by my recent departure from the normal flow of life. Cramming a year of class into a month was definitely difficult, but I’d take that over making coffee any day. Why? I was pondering precisely that question earlier, and this is what I came up with: I think working as a barista is draining because it has no lasting effect on the world. I go to work and everything is dirty; I clean up and things are clean again; but as soon as a bit of time passes, it’s dirty once more. No matter how many times I wash the counters, replace the food in the pastry case, mop the floor, or tidy the shelves, it will slowly be undone. And as for the product I create, well, that doesn’t last long. How many sips does it take to get to the center of a caramel macchiato? Not nearly enough, I say. I make food, and making food, while sometimes rewarding, is ultimately not as fulfilling to me as making something that lasts, something that I can point to a week (hell, even a day) later and say, “Hey, I made that.”

Which is why teaching is so much more appealing: I’m helping students change the course of their lives. For some of my future pupils, learning English is a gateway to a better job, more money, and opportunities beyond anything they’re expecting. To use a tried-and-true cliché, teaching them English is like giving them a powerful skeleton key, one that can unlock a great many doors around the world. I’d like to see an extra-hot breve latte do that.

I’m looking forward to what’s ahead. I don’t know where I’ll be in six months, but I can tell you this: as long as it’s not at that bookstore, I’ll be happy.

Doing The Puyallup Part 1

2009-09-28T14:05:00.000-07:00

I awaken to the rattling sound of a pinball machine. It’s not a real pinball machine, of course: it’s my phone, letting me know that the time to rise has arrived once again. I clamber out of bed, stagger awkwardly across my darkened bedroom, and shut off the racket. An hour later I’m dressed, watered, packed, and on the road to the eighth largest fair in the world. Just another day in the life of a Puyallup Fair food service worker.

The air is cold, biting, but fresh with the promise of many colorful sights and sounds. I park on the street in a secluded suburb just a few blocks from the Service Gate, a special entryway reserved for sanctioned vehicles and employees. After turning off the engine, I sit in the truck a moment. Waiting. Thinking. How many more days? How many more hours? The daunting immensity of the task before me—six hundred minutes of work, at least—pushes down on my shoulders, threatening to crush my clavicles and all that lies beneath. I take a few breaths. Baby steps. Narrow the focus. Keep it in perspective. I leave the car and walk the quiet streets of Puyallup. Soon they will bristle with life, as Fairgoers swarm the area like invading locusts, but for now the roads are peaceful and serene, almost dreamlike.

Flashing my employee badge at the guard like I’m some kind of secret agent infiltrating the enemy base, I enter the Fairgrounds. Not too far now. I maneuver around tractors and trailers, creep uncomfortably through the horse barns (the expressions of the riders and trainers in said stable betray their mistrust of outsiders such as myself), and enter the main Fair proper. Booths are opening left and right as their operators arrive. People are moving. Things are happening. The air is rank with dissonant smells—scones, wood-fire barbeque, manure, and diesel fumes. I cross the last hundred yards to the main Marcoe’s booth, which we call Number Six or just Six. On certain days there may be someone here already; perhaps Rhonda, the general manger, or Bob, the owner; perhaps Tom, our handyman; maybe Neil or Curtis or Aaron or any number of varied persons, each with a unique story to tell. But today there is no one. I’m the first to arrive. I find a seat on a nearby stone bench, remove my backpack and sweatshirt, and reach into my bag of supplies.

As I apply greasy globs of Hawaiian Tropic to my face and arms, I wonder: What will today bring? Will I make it through the trials before me? How will I whittle away the seemingly endless hours? The concept of eternity means more to me now than it ever has before, yet I’m quick to remind myself of how much harder many others work. The fight against entropy is truly a never-ending battle. I massage sunscreen into my skin and think about what it would be like to do this job forever. Any job forever. Is this the future? Is this what life is? If infinite existence is as rigorous as this, I want no part of it.

The sunblock feels icky on my bronzed face, but without it that bronze will be lobster red by the end of the day. I stand. Don my shades and authentic Puyallup Fair baseball cap. Rotate my shoulders a few times. Breathe out.

The moon, perched somewhere above, smiles down at me with a Cheshire grin.

Bookseller Relic

2009-09-03T09:04:00.000-07:00

I was digging through old documents the other day and found the following piece. Original air date: August 2007. Enjoy.

You know what I realized the other day? People have no respect for bookstores. None at all. This occurred to me as I was fuming over some of my biggest bookselling pet peeves, but before I get to those, here's a smidgen of background info:  

*The books are stacked vertically on the shelves in alphabetical order. It takes many painstaking hours to arrange them this way. I know. I've done it.  

*A place for every book and every book in its place. I once heard a librarian say this, and I liked it. This should be our motto at Barnes & Noble. It isn't, but nonetheless, we all live by it. Every book has a specific place in the store.  

*It is not my fault if we don't have a certain book in stock. Period.  

Now, my pet peeves:  

*People seem to be under the impression that I care about why they want the book they're looking for. I don't. Whatever stupid excuse you have for buying two copies of "Sex Positions for Every Day in Every Way" or every issue we have of "High Times" [a magazine about pot], I don't care and I don't want to hear it.  

*As I said, books are stacked vertically. Some people feel the need to remove a book from the shelf, look it over, and then put it back across the top--horizontally, I mean--of the space where it just was. The hell? How much effort does it take to rotate the book 90º in either direction and reinsert it into its proper space? All this does is force me to spend a few extra seconds putting the book back on the shelf properly. I have other things to do, you know.  

*When people come to the Customer Services desk with no author name, no book title, and only a vague notion of what the story is about, what are they expecting? Do they think I can somehow reach into their minds and pull out the information I need to look up the book? It's even more infuriating when the person gets mad because I have no idea which book they want.  

*And while we're on that subject, why do people think that I have some sort of control over which books we sell? "Why is it out of stock? Why does it cost that much? What do you mean you can't find it? How come you don't carry it anymore even though it was last published in 1971?" What response are they expecting me to give them? "Well ma'am, since I am, in fact, in complete control of which books we sell in our store, and also know the location and exact price of every item on our shelves, and since I have command of all the funds of the Barnes & Noble corporation, it would be my pleasure to monetarily compensate you for the trouble you've gone through to get your fat ass off the couch and come to the store without calling, checking our website for your obscure title, or even having a fucking clue what book you want."  

*Here's a situation that happens all the time: I'll spend a few minutes working with a customer to locate a book in the computer. We'll finally get the title right and I'll note that we only have one copy in the store. I'll lead the customer to the distant shelf, locate the book, and share in the joy as the customer is united with his or her prize. I'll walk away, feeling satisfied that I've both made someone happy and made the store some money with a guaranteed sale... and five minutes later I'll find the book thrown haphazardly atop other books on a table in the opposite corner of the store. Look, customer: you saw me get the book off the shelf. You know where it belongs. You were there! Why do you feel the urge to just toss the book aside like it's a crumpled Big Mac wrapper?  

*It bothers me when a customer has me lead him or her to the Bibles or Christian Inspiration books and then doesn't say "thank you".  

And all of this led me to a stunning conclusion: People do not respect bookstores in the same way that they respect other stores. Here's my evidence: if you were in Albertson's, would you pick up a box of Lucky Charms, eat a few handfuls, and then leave the open box on the floor in the produce section? No. If you were in Sears, would you try on a shirt, wear it around the store for a while, stretch out the seams, rip off a few buttons, and then leave it crumpled up in a corner near the kitchenware? No.  

Yet at Barnes & Noble, this kind of thing happens all the time. People will grab a book (one favorite is Letters to Penthouse Forum, but any book is vulnerable) and scurry off to some shadowed corner to read it. They'll break the spine, get greasy fingerprints all over it, bend the dust jacket, and leave the book facedown and open on the floor. This happens more often than you'd think--it happened with HP7 just the other day. We can't sell the book once it's been damaged. We have to return it. So basically, the person who mangled Jo's beautiful work has cost us $22.84. I see this as the equivalent of the things I mentioned above, namely eating food before you pay for it or tearing a piece of clothing before you buy it. You're damaging something you do not own.  

Why is this the case? I tried to get my head around why people don't show the same respect to a bookstore that they do to a grocery or clothing store. And then it finally occurred to me. It's all about consumption. In a grocery store, every food item can only be sold once. Once someone eats the item, or even opens it, that's it. No refunds. The same is somewhat true in a clothing store; although items of clothing can be sold again if they're returned, this is only the case if they're returned new. Once the tags are off, it's over. But with books it's a different story. Books are reusable ad infinitum. Reading a book doesn't wear the book out. Bending the spine and all that might slowly destroy the material of the book, but the words retain their power and usefulness no matter how many times they're read.  

Thus, people feel they can mistreat books because they don't feel like they've "broken" something. Most people will report any damage they do in a store to a clerk so they can pay for it. It's a rare person who'll break a lamp in an antique shop and just walk away, or knock a jar of pickles off the shelf in Safeway and run for it when the glass shatters on the floor. But in a bookstore, the book is still just as good after it's been read. Thus, it hasn't been broken, and people feel no obligation to pay for it or even return it to its proper place.  

Next time you're in a bookstore, try to remember this simple rule: booksellers don't like cleaning up any more than you do. If you move something, put it back.

ADDENDUM: It has been pointed out to me that this entry makes it seem as though I hate my job. I don't. I like doing what I do and I'm not unhappy with it. It may also appear that I hate customers. I don't. Most people are perfectly well-behaved. They treat the store with the respect it deserves and they don't make messes. They're polite and friendly and generally a pleasure to serve. Also, I am admittedly guilty of the same crimes I so ferociously decried; I have a history of moving items around in department stores such as Target. Having worked in the retail industry, I think I can safely say that those days are over. I've learned a humbling lesson. Perhaps this is karma coming back to make me pay for what I've put other clerks through over the years.

Making The Grade

2009-08-20T14:47:00.000-07:00

As is the case with most of my best thoughts, I was taking a shower when the following occurred to me: our current letter grading system—the one we use in schools? You know, A, B, C, and so on?—is kind of unfair. I will now expound upon this topic. Hang on to your hats folks, because it’s about to get academic up in here. Or something.

I took quite a few classes in my time at Western, and even more before that. From middle school onward, my aptitude for any given subject could be reduced to one of five arbitrary letters, coupled with one or neither of two mathematical symbols. And for the most part, I found myself with high marks. But not always. I suppose it takes doing poorly in a class to appreciate the feeling of doing well, but whatever; the point is, I realized today that this grading system is not as fair as it may seem on the surface. It has its pros and cons.

On the one hand, the system is simple. “How is little Johnny doing in mathematics?” a concerned parent asks. “Well sir, your son currently has a D+,” the teacher replies. Boom. Simple. No need to explain any further than that; the teacher goes back to grading papers, little Johnny gets an ass-whooping, and the world is all sunshine and rainbows. Without this kind of easy assessment method, the teacher would have to spend an inordinate amount of time creating detailed evaluations for each student on every assignment and at every point during the course of the… course. This is quite unfeasible.

On the other hand, the system lacks a capacity for detail at the high and low ends of the spectrum (and to a lesser degree across the middle). Granting a student the mark of A entitles that student to feel proud of their accomplishment. But it doesn’t tell an outside observer as much about that student’s performance or capabilities as it could. Some teachers set very low bars for their pupils, and certain students might be able to reach those goals with minimal effort. An A grade says, “This student is capable of meeting and/or exceeding the standards I set for the class”, but it doesn’t explain how difficult it was for that student to achieve the standard.

I feel that there are really only two types of students out there: those who need to study, and those who don’t. I was lucky enough to generally fall into the latter category, which was great for subjects I was good at but terrible for those I struggled with, since I had underdeveloped study skills. So for me, an A in English was practically a given, while an A in Math was like fighting a war against linear equations. Yet my grades don’t reflect the difference in the amount of work it took to get those A’s, which, while somewhat disingenuous, isn’t exactly unfair.

Where things get a bit dicey, I feel, is at the bottom end of the scale. There’s really no comparison for the feeling you get when you look down at a paper or project you worked hard on and see a big (Huge. Colossal. Galaxy-dwarfing.), red (why is it always red?), glaring F stamp right at the top. It hurts. Somehow, you’ve managed to disappoint not only others, but yourself. You’ve failed. It’s a painful thing to experience, yes, but I do see the necessity. Sometimes failure is just the motivation we need to succeed in the future. And many times, failure is deserved. It is no one’s fault but one’s own. Yet the F grade on the report card can be, I think, a bit misleading.

I’ll use an example from my own life to illustrate my point. During my last quarter at Western, I took Japanese 103. I’d been taking and passing Japanese for the previous two quarters, so moving up seemed like a logical step. I was also taking two 400 level English classes that quarter, to finish up my major. Anyway, I didn’t pass the class. There’s an F on my transcript, and to someone looking at that transcript without any other knowledge, that’s all that matters. Didn’t pass. Unsuccessful attempt. No good.

But there’s more to it than that. I’ll be the first to admit that in this case, it was my own fault. I can’t blame anyone else. But consider my reasons for failing:

1) I had a lot on my mind. I was about to graduate from college. I didn’t have a job lined up. My friends were moving away or getting married or graduating or not being my friends anymore or several of the above. I had to find a place to live, a goal to work toward, and a way to keep my sanity as the recession loomed ahead like a bully waiting outside the classroom to steal my lunch money. With so many larger problems just around the corner, school became increasingly difficult to stay focused on.

2) I had other classes to concentrate on. My other two classes that quarter were upper-level English courses, as I said. One of them required me to create a 90-day outline for a high school English unit, complete with activities for every day and a week’s worth of lesson plans. And that was just one project. My other class was my senior seminar, and thus required me to utilize every skill in my English major repertoire. I was constantly reading, writing, and thinking for that class (and I loved every minute of it, but that’s another story). My point is this: I had two extremely difficult classes to focus on. Japanese, by comparison, should’ve been a cakewalk. It was a 100 level. It was a freshman class. Yet it honestly asked for more of my time than my other two courses combined, and frankly, I sorted out my priorities and realized that passing those English classes was a lot more important than passing Japanese.

3) I’d lost all motivation. I took Japanese primarily for fun. I became interested in Japan and its culture in the summer of ’08, and thought I could pad my schedule with some language classes. Why not, right? What that meant was that I was taking classes with mostly freshmen around me. But so what: I was aiming to teach English in Japan, and if that meant putting up with punk kids, so be it. Alas, by the time spring arrived, it was clear that my dream was not going to come true. I’d been rejected from multiple teaching programs without explanation. To describe my attitude as discouraged would be putting it mildly. Moreover, some quick calculations led me to the following: even if I failed, nothing terrible would happen. I’d still graduate. My GPA wouldn’t take too big of a hit. I wouldn’t miss out on the credits, because the class didn’t count for anything anyway (at that point I already had all the lower-division credits I needed). Failure wouldn’t really do anything to me. So why bother trying, especially when it’s just another stress on top of the huge list?

As you can see, there was a lot more going on than just me not caring about the class. And again, don’t get me wrong: if I had tried harder, I would’ve likely passed. But my point is that the F on my transcript doesn’t reflect all the circumstances I just outlined. Nor does it reflect all the work I did do for the class. I worked hard during the first half of the quarter. I completed projects. I put up with bullshit deadlines and expectations from the professor. I went out of my way to help my groups do well on group projects. And for what? So that I could still be given a failing mark. The F in the grade book does not convey the effort I put into the class. It’s as if nothing I did during the class mattered at all. And that’s unfair.

My example may not be perfectly illustrative of the case I’m making. After all, I could’ve done more. But what about students who fail because they get sick, can’t take the midterm, and then aren’t allowed to make it up by a grouchy professor? What about students who fall behind because they are overwhelmed with other work and projects? Falling behind can cripple or outright assassinate a student’s chances of success; after all, the difficulty of catching up increases exponentially with time, rather than geometrically (see, I did learn something in math). What about students who honestly try and still don’t quite get it?

All of these circumstances are regrettable. Some are more unfair than others. I won’t say that these students don’t deserve to fail. What I will say is this: unlike with the other levels of the grading system (D, C, B, and A), the F grade does nothing to convey the amount of effort a student put into the class. It is a write-off; a closed book; a judgment that says, “It doesn't matter what you did to get here. The goal has not been met.” Perhaps the most unjust thing about it (and here we see the hallmark of exploratory writing, for I’ve only just come to this realization) is that it places the student in a huge pool of other “failures”. It’s a stereotype. It’s a label that does not adequately describe all the conditions surrounding the student’s performance. An F says, “Even though you tried your best and did a large amount of the work for the class, you’re no better than the kid who showed up on the first day and never came back.” And that’s patently inequitable.

Maybe there should be more grades, spanning further down the alphabet. Maybe a better comment system should be put in place. Maybe grades should be negotiated. But the raw A-F system just doesn’t cut it, and I think it’s time for some kind of a change. Your thoughts?

Waking Up To Reality

2009-08-19T14:22:00.001-07:00

“Have you ever had a dream, Neo, that you were so sure was real? What if you were unable to wake from that dream? How would you know the difference between the dream world… and the real world?” – Morpheus, The Matrix

The Matrix is my favorite film, hands down. Yes, you too Bobby. Hands down. No, I am not calling on you! Bobby, how many times… thank you. Anyway, as I was saying, The Matrix is my favorite film for a variety pack of reasons, a few of which I will enumerate for you here and now.

The year is 1999. We’re hiding in bomb shelters with the power off and cans of beans stacked to the ceiling, because haven’t you heard it’s THE Y2K OUT THERE?!? Computers running wild! Plane falling out of the sky! Children crying! Gnashing of teeth! It was bad juju, to be sure. But somehow we survived, and out of the darkness and despair came an innovative, creative, quintessentially unique film starring:

Ted “Theodore” Logan

Cowboy Curtis

Elrond

Frances Fratelli

And… ok, maybe I couldn’t find anything embarrassing for Carrie-Anne Moss. So, um… Carrie-Anne Moss.

These and others brought an ancient allegory to life on the silver screen. What allegory do I speak of, you ask? Oh, humble reader… you have so much to learn. My homeboy Plato came up with this phat rap, circa 400 BC, fo real. The Allegory of the Cave is foundational to Western philosophical thought, and consequently, The Matrix spends a fair amount of time rehashing ideas that already exist in our culture. Not that I mind. I’m just saying. But we’re getting off topic; let’s return to my explanation of why I like this film. There’s one reason that stands high over the others, mocking them for their insignificance, so I’ll head directly there:

The Matrix asks questions.

No, not just that.

It asks good questions.

Questions that make you pause as you really consider their meaning; questions that keep you awake at night, like a fiberglass splinter in your mind; questions that leave you breathless, leave your heart beating a little faster, leave you wanting more, wanting less, wanting to wake up from the strange dream that you must be in right this very moment; questions that demand more of you than you’re willing to give; questions that lightly finger the plush textiles of reality, only to set them ablaze with the fires of reason; and you have no choice but to sit there and watch them burn, watch them bubble and ooze, because artificial fabrics like reality melt instead of igniting…

These are the questions that make people nervous. They’re the questions your mother warned you about. They’re the questions you wish you didn’t have to ponder, because no reply seems correct. They’re the questions that can make you change your mind, not just about a few things but about everything. They’re the questions that no one wants to try to answer.

And so help me, they’re the questions that everyone should be asked.

Socrates (my brother from a Greeker mother) once said, “The unexamined life is not worth living.” I agree with this statement more than I can convey. What is the purpose of being alive, if not to understand ourselves? I find inimitable joy in putting my highly evolved human brain to the grindstone and attempting to reason out just what is and isn’t true about our world. And The Matrix allows me to do just that. From the moment the film opens, we’re asked to think about what “real” means. Further questions about free will, truth, and purpose arise throughout the film, each with its own special set of circumstances and conditions.

I encourage you to take things slow with this movie. Let it soak in. Let it become part of you. Don’t be afraid to ask questions as you go. Who knows? You might surprise yourself.

Jumper Cables

2009-07-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

It has become apparent to me that my life isn’t going to start by itself. No matter how badly I want job opportunities (and people, specifically single, attractive, twenty-something women) to tumble unceremoniously into my lap, it just ain’t happenin’ bro. This is the real world. Things like that don’t occur.

Or do they?

…no, they don’t. Nevermind.

I feel like I’m at a red light here. I’m wedged in the broken front seat of a beat-up, burgundy-colored Volvo station wagon, trying to get the frickin’ AC to work because it’s hotter than Hell’s boiler room outside and I can’t get the stupid driver’s side window to open. The radio is putting out crazy blips that sound like Soviet radar at the end of a James Bond film, but that’s just the busted cassette device I’m trying to use to play my iPod. I’ve thrown the car into Park, and am seriously contemplating shutting off the engine—better for the environment, right? Yet I can’t, because directly behind me is a flashy new Honda Civic, painted a brighter red than its driver’s nail polish, and if I shut down my junker she’ll almost certainly start honking her horn and making very unfeminine gestures at me.

So I sit there with the engine grumbling, staring up at the light anxiously. Maybe it’s broken? Maybe I should just go through anyway? There’s no one coming in either of the side directions. But wait, I can’t. There’s a cop car on the other side of the intersection! The smug officer inside has his eagle eyes directed right at my face; as I contemplate running the light, he revs his engine, as if he has x-ray crime-o-vision and knows I’m preparing to commit a misdemeanor. Sneaky bastard. I can’t do a thing with him perched there.

So I wait. And wait. And wait. And wait. God, this has to be the longest light in the history of traffic lights, which is a long and sordid history, I’ve recently discovered—thank you ~~History~~ World War II Channel. I put the car in and out of gear like an indecisive swimmer at the starting block, bending down into position, then rising again and muttering, then bending, and so on. As soon as that light turns green, I’m gonna burn some rubber. I am ready.

But it just… doesn’t. It stays red, and keeps staying red, and I begin to wonder if I’ll live the rest of my life at a red light, because I can’t seem to find a reason to expect it to change. I ponder dating while stuck at a red light (the backseat would rapidly lose its charm, I suspect). I envision a wedding here. “In sickness and in health, at red lights and at green…” Our first child: my wife sprawled across the leather seats, with me playing catch at the messy end. Home school—or rather, car school—would of course be unavoidable. And then the cycle would begin again; soon we’d have hot rods and flashy motorcycles pulling up beside us, asking for our daughter’s license plate number and wondering if she’d like to take a spin in their wheels, if you know what they mean. And me sitting there, still in the front seat, still with my foot on the brake (but always ready to hit the gas), saying, “You think you’re going out the window dressed like that, young lady?” And my wife saying, “Honey, she’s growing up. She needs to make her own mistakes.” Then eventually our daughter does go out, and she does grow up, and before I know it I’m bouncing grand-babies on my knee (left knee, of course; the right leg is still permanently glued to the brake pedal). My wife and I enjoy our long retirement. Maybe think about doing some traveling: we could leave our daughter at the wheel and go out on the hood, or the roof! Then one fateful day, the final bell will toll, and one or both of us will pass from this Earth. There will be a solemn burial at street. Flags at half-mast, twenty-one gun salute, all that.

And still the red light shines on.

I’ll cease spreading the analogy thinner than an anorexic in a prison camp and cut to the marrow of the matter: I’m waiting for my life to start, and I don’t know when that will happen. Maybe it’ll start tomorrow. Maybe I’ll wake up one day and suddenly realize that it started six months ago. Maybe I’ll never feel like it’s started.

No matter what, though, I think anything is preferable to this idle stance I’m stuck in. I spend my days at home, writing or playing video games or watching things on YouTube. I’ve applied for a couple jobs, but all I have so far is some temporary work in September. I’ve visited some friends, but never for more than a day or so. It’s a whole new world I’m in, but this don’t feel like no magic carpet ride, no sir.

I feel like I’ve been sailing across little ponds my whole life, and now I’m suddenly facing the ocean. No shore in sight. Won’t be for years. It’s tempting to stay on land, but I want to face the danger out there. I want to see the sea, ride the waves, weather the tempests. I want to sail boldly out and make a name for myself. I want to go until there’s nothing but water on every side, and I’ll stand on the bow and shout, “I am here! I am alive!” All the preparations have been made: I’m poised to raise the anchor and cast the lines. Every muscle is tensed, every thought focused, my gaze cast outward. I’m ready to set sail.

Only problem is, I can’t control the wind.

What kind of blog post are you?

2009-07-15T23:35:00.000-07:00

It’s one thirty-four on a Wednesday morning. You’re tired, but not sleepy, which is, again, pretty much business as usual, you caffeine-addicted Starbucks whore. You recline haphazardly in your desk chair, the phosphorescent glow of your computer screen lighting up your face. The angelic aura of that saintly pleasure machine is keeping you awake, you realize, but you feel powerless to stop it. It’s safe. Gentle. Womb-like. You wonder why you’d ever desire to be anywhere but here, staring at a liquid crystal display so smooth you could drink it. And you just might, if someone blended it with hazelnut and a strong French roast (God, you’re such a slut for coffee). You click once, twice. A familiar blue and white banner appears in the top left. You smile, inside and out. That face… that book… this feels like home.

But what to do? Nothing popping up in the News Feed. None of your actual friend friends are online. You guess you could talk to that guy from your debate class, since he’s in the chat list, but he always wants to argue about some stupid political shit that you don’t really understand, so that’s a big No. You check your Wall. Hmm. Most recent post is a link to a video of some kittens playing with yarn… god damn, could those kittens be more adorable? Oh whoops, gotta remember to wish your buddy “happy birthday” today. You jot a quick message and nail that shit to his Wall. There. Sweet, first post too. God, you’re such a fucking awesome friend.

But now what? You wonder if you should watch the trailer for New Moon again. You’ve watched it like two bazillion times already though, so never mind.

You stare dully at the screen, eyes glossed, jaw slack. Can it be? Are you truly unable to find anything, any goddamn thing at all, to waste precious minutes of your life on? Has Facebook… failed? Your heart pauses a moment in trepidation. Your breath catches in your throat. This isn’t happening, is it? Are you on camera? Is this a dream? Surely there has to be-

…wait.

You click back to the Feed with increasing feelings of panic, your pointer spiraling drunkenly across the desktop. Wasn’t it… come on, where is… there! A sigh of almost unfathomable relief escapes your lips. Your muscles relax. You release your death grip on the armrest of your chair. It’s going to be ok. Everything’s going to be ok.

You found a quiz you haven’t taken.

What’s this? Allow “Which Transformer are you?” to access your information? Shit yes! “Access it all you want,” you think, “as long as I can take that test. I need to know which Transformer I am!” Birthday? “Heck yes I’ll tell you!” Address and phone number? “Take ‘em!” Credit card info? “What’s the worst that could happen?” At last, the quiz appears before you. It’s beautiful. No mortal has ever gazed upon so glorious a thing before. You want to cry, and you do, just a little. Then you man up and answer a few questions. The results are displayed, and you waste no time in posting this to your page for all to see.

Ah. Feels good. Feels damn good. You drink in the pale gray text like a pull from a post-coital cigarette. Some of your fellow insomniacs have already “liked” your work, and you feel slightly ashamed at how much satisfaction that brings you. But what’s this? It appears your endeavor to alleviate soul-shattering boredom in the wee hours of the morning has inspired others to reach for their dreams and refuse to take no for an answer! You scan the News Feed diligently; your well-trained eyes are ready the catch the slightest change. In moments, the results of a quiz appear.

Huh. A bit unorthodox, but you can dig it. Another quiz materializes.

Ok, that’s kind of odd.

Um.

All right, fuck this. Time for bed.

Alma mater

2009-07-13T13:02:00.001-07:00

I took a long, slow walk across campus.

First stop: Mathes. My freshman dorm. Site of countless hours spent with friends. I met a lot of good people in that building: Paul, Bethany, Trevor, Joe, Courtney, Will, Alyse. It was a good year. A year of exciting new prospects.

I walk up the stone steps between Mathes and Nash, casting my gaze over a grassy hill, the view of which I enjoyed during my nine-month residence on the first floor. Memories precipitate across the windswept plains of my mind. Snow blankets the lawn, rolls itself into men, dissipates. I see the world in night vision via Alyse’s camcorder, hear Will droning on about Machismo and the Forums, taste fresh guacamole on my tongue, smell cookies and other Valentine’s Day goodies, and feel the grip of a tennis racket in my fingers as I play makeshift indoor mini-golf with two RAs in the lounge. How many afternoons did I return from class to find Piano Joe serenading the students once again? How many nights did I spend huddled in a study cubicle with a cell phone pressed to my ear, its radioactive transmissions slowly eroding my gray matter? Mathes was a wonderful starting point for my college career. I found many good friends there, and living on campus made the transition to university life a bit smoother. Mathes Hall, you have been and will continue to be missed.

My feet carry me up the steps to the Viking Commons/Viking Union, a dastardly duo of North Campus eateries. My three-month employment with the VC was more than enough to foster an intense loathing of all things food preparation related. How many hours did I spend slicing onions and deli meat, each cut shaving precious seconds of my life away? I shake my head bitterly. “Sodexho…” I whisper. “…you bastards.”

Another place calls to me now, and I make my way there. The Performing Arts Center courtyard. PAC + Mosquito. I recall many afternoons spent in places that were not the PAC courtyard. Truth is, I almost never hung out there. Just wasn’t my kind of thing. But one specific incident comes to mind, and I pause to think of it: I’m an actor. I’m having lunch. This was back in the days when the VU sold burgers; I have one on a dingy red plastic tray, and I’m attempting to ward off a curious gumshoe of a bee that has come to sniff out some clues. That’s when it hits me. This scene, this very moment, this will be what I use for my skit in my acting class. I go on to perform a pantomime of my epic struggle against bee-kind itself (perhaps I embellished the story a bit; it’s the theatre, after all). Audiences are moved to tears. I take Broadway by storm. Paris. London. Daytime television. I’m unstoppable. Bees stage protests. I flex my fame muscles and squelch their grievances beneath my proverbial boot-heel.

Waking from a strange dream, I linger no longer in the courtyard. There is someplace else I must now venture to, a location as familiar to me as my hometown; truly, no journey around our fair college would be complete without a stop here, in the mother of all campus quadrahedrons. Four sides. Four right angles. The shortest wavelength of visible light.

Red Square.

Memories assault me like I’m a twelve-dollar whore on the wrong side of town. I stagger, trip, collapse to my knees. Surely, surely, the gods are present in this Mecca of collegiate activity! Oh, but to recall the times I’ve spent here! They come in flashes, brief syllables of light and sound. I remember… crowds, day after day. Quiet weekend mornings when the campus is asleep. Nights: Fall, cool and foggy. Winter, with ice. Spring, starry above. Summer, warm. The lamps lining the walkway flicker on and off. The fountain: green. Full of bubbles. Empty. Commandeered by pirates. The very bricks themselves, ripped up and put back, time and time again. And the events of the square, too numerous to count. I remember the great snowstorm of 2006, when school was cancelled for two days. Red Square was a winter wonderland, with sleigh bells ringing and not a single goddamn bluebird in sight. I remember a night when it was raining fiercely. I was walking home with Alyse, and on a whim we decided to play soccer with a large rock we’d found near the fountain. Drenched, but happy, we kicked that stone for half an hour at least. I remember the Genocide Awareness Project, three years in a row. How angry people became. How I myself would take the long way around the square in order to avoid the conflict. I remember losing my life and joining the ranks of the undead one Halloween. A zombie club put together a walk, and I signed up on the spot. We lurched across the campus, groaning and snarling and generally making a big nuisance of ourselves. It was great fun. I remember so many mad dashes across the school, racing from one class to another, dodging people in the quad like I’m Han Solo in an asteroid field. “The odds of successfully navigating Red Square during rush hour are approximately 3720 to 1!” a strange cybernetic portion of my mind cries urgently. “Never tell me the odds,” I reply as I make the jump to light speed. I remember looking out of windows in every building that flanks this place, and seeing it at every time of the day and night. I remember joy, sorrow, rage. Meeting friends. Avoiding enemies. Free hugs, WASHPIRG, LaRouche, lemonade, Info Fair, chalk drawings, morning hymns, endless is the list of things I have seen and done in Red Square.

Coming up from my revelry, I carry on. Not much left now. Most of my life was spent on the northern end of campus. Still, I persevere, eventually arriving at a favorite spot: the staircase leading down toward the Communications Facility and the Academic Instructional Center (which, if I may add, is one of the stupidest names I have ever had the misfortune of encountering. Academic Instructional Center? Doesn’t that describe every building on campus? All of them are for the purpose of academic instruction!) just past the Atrium. This staircase is one of my personal havens, for a somewhat mundane reason: it’s a wind tunnel. When the breeze is up, air is channeled between Parks and Huxley, creating an awesome vortex on the staircase. Today is just such a day. For a brief moment the wind howls past me, and I am transformed…

I bust five knots. The wind whips out my coat.

I then recall that I am not on a boat, nor am I wearing any sort of coat-like garment. The moment is lost.

I turn back and make my way toward North Campus again, my journey nearing completion. On the way I stop beside the triangle sculpture, its metal wings warm despite the gray skies above. I like this sculpture. The key is to stand directly in the center; from that viewpoint, triangles appear in almost every direction, crafted out of the negative space in the sculpture itself. A masterwork of artistic design, and a mirror for my life in some ways.

When I stand at the center of this sculpture and see the triangles materialize out of empty air, I am reminded of just how insubstantial my own desires, thoughts, and experiences are. I’ve spent untold hours on this campus. But those hours are over now, and they can never be relived or restored to me. I have only the memory of that time left, and memories weigh nothing, take no time of their own. In an instant I can recall dozens of times I have stood in that same spot, watching the perfect shape come to life around me. Ghosts of the past. Phantoms. No more real that the ghosts of the future. Meaning and purpose are like the triangles that appear out of nothing; only I can create those things, within my thoughts. Only I can give weight to memory. Without my intervention, my memories fade and disappear. Without me, my memories never really exist to begin with, just as those triangles only appear in the mind’s eye.

I turn to go. There is nothing more to see here.

I loved this school. I enjoyed my time there more than I can express. But the future is reaching out to me, and I would be a fool to ignore its clarion call. As I take one last look around the campus that has made me into the person I am today, I can’t help but sigh and wish for Time’s callused hands to roll me back to the beginning. But they don't. I’ve no choice but to move on.

Goodbye Western Washington University.

Weird cartoons from the early 90's... ya know I love 'em.

2009-07-11T21:10:00.001-07:00

Greetings. Today I wish to expound upon an old passion of mine, previously buried in a dark, dusty, cobweb-ridden corner of my subconscious but now brought grumbling into the daylight. In order to explain what and why, let me take you back a moment, curious reader…

The year is 1988. According to my reliable (read: Internet) sources, the Soviets have just pulled out of Afghanistan (unbeknownst to all, this Middle Eastern nation will become the site of further military rigmarole in just thirteen short years). United States agents have shot down an Iranian passenger jet. Whoops. Meanwhile, the legendary Rick Astley was topping the charts… no, seriously. This masterpiece was gracing the airwaves for the first time, and NOT BECAUSE OF CHEEKY PRANKSTERS. Mr. Astley held his own, thank you. In other news (allegedly), Tom Hanks was doing something Big, Bruce Willis was trying not to Die Hard, and John Cleese was swimming with A Fish Called Wanda. But these accomplishments pale in the presence of the year’s biggest blockbuster hit. What film do I speak of? Oh, but to even dare to type the name…

Though I know I should be wary, still I venture someplace scary! Ghostly haunting I turn loose, Beetlejuice, Beetlejuice…

BEETLEJUICE!

His macabre monochromatic stripes cut a dashing figure as he sits askance on the Maitland’s roof. That windblown hairdo. That cheeky grin. That ne’er-do-well attitude. This ghost with the most has a mean streak a mile wide, and the film glorifies his antics as if he’s some sort of undead Messiah. Which he may well be. But our story does not lie with his three-dimensional, live-action, flesh and blood manifestation, boils and ghouls.

No. Our story continues to 1989. For as is often the case with popular cinematography, this movie’s title character became immortalized in another, more artistically liberating fashion…

Animation.

When I was young, perhaps seven or eight, I watched reruns of this diabolically delightful TV show with great regularity. It was my daily dose of weird, creepy, and disgusting. It inspired me to assimilate the phrase, “It’s show time!” into my everyday conversations. Furthermore, it nurtured in me a love of the dismal, the horrific, and the supernatural, a passion that I will expound upon in a future entry. But first, allow me to tell you of the glory that is Beetlejuice, the Saturday morning cartoon.

The show stars the two lovely drawings you see in the screenshot above, namely Lydia Deetz (left) and Beetlejuice (right). Lydia lives in the quiet, fictional hamlet of Peaceful Pines. She is an average preteen girl (her age is unstated, but she seems to be around 12 or 13), and harbors an infatuation with all things creepy. Her pastimes include photography, reading, and summoning the dark powers of the Neitherworld.

Enter Beetlejuice, the troublemaker to end all troublemakers. He and Lydia maintain a close friendship, sharing secrets and hours together. “Doing what?” you might ask. Why, making mischief of course! Beetlejuice is a seemingly unending font of magical power; his paranormal vim allows him to fly, transform into just about anything, and possess people and objects in order to control them. He is virtually immune to injury and fears only one thing: Sand Worms, giant purple and green serpents that occasionally burst onto the scene to wreak some havoc. But I’m getting ahead of myself here.

Much of the action takes place in the Neitherworld, a universe of monsters, ghosts, and other abominations. It is unclear if this is the afterlife to which humans are led, or just some sort of demented alternate reality. Either way, Lydia is able to visit Beetlejuice there whenever she wishes simply by saying his name three times. She can also summon him to our plane through the same means, but until she does so, he cannot appear in his full form. The two of them cause trouble wherever they are, although generally Beetlejuice is the one with the crazy schemes and Lydia is the voice of reason or on cleanup duty once BJ gets himself into yet another tight spot. The show follows a simple formula: Lydia is doing some normal sort of thing. Beetlejuice pesters her, wanting to hang out. She and he go on some kind of adventure. Beetlejuice’s penchant for being gross gets him into trouble, and it’s up to Lydia to talk some sense into him. Conflict resolved, case closed, Beetlejuice eats a bug, everyone goes home happy. What more could you ask for?

Why did I, and do I still, love this show? There are two reasons. First, the puns: Nearly every gag is wordplay of some kind, the majesty of which I cannot begin to emulate here. Beetlejuice will frequently transform into the literal translations of his humorous phrases; for example, if he says, “I’m flat broke,” he’ll transform into a dish and tumble unceremoniously to the floor, shattering into dozens of pieces. Pure comedy gold. This transmogrification has its downside for him, however. Much of the trouble BJ gets into is due to him saying something without thinking, and thereby creating a bad situation; in one episode he accidentally pulls Lydia into his head when he says “I can’t get her out of my mind”, and in another he acquires an irritating Irish tumor simply by uttering the adage, “I’d really like a pat on the back.”

The second reason? Simple. I’m in love with Lydia. Put aside the fact that she is far too young for me—I always imagine her as being closer to my age, and her maturity is generally in that area anyway—and the fact that she is, alas, a cartoon character, and you’ll discover that she’s just about everything I could ever want in a lady. Lydia is kind, thoughtful, and wacky. She’s a snappy dresser. She is crazy about weird shit. I’ll bet a twenty-year-old Lydia would have a tattoo of a spider crawling across her pale hips and enough ear piercings to strain spaghetti on her cartilage. She’d be totally into Silent Hill and H.P Lovecraft. Heck, even in the show she’s already reading Poe and King. Top all of this with the fact that she’s just goddamn adorable, and I’ve found the fictional woman of my dreams. Unfortunately, that is the way things will stay forever, since eloping with an illustration would be both impractical and outlandishly expensive. Sigh.

Do yourself a favor: watch this show. It’s fantastic. My favorite episodes are those written by J.D. Smith (such as Quit While You're A Head and Pest o' the West), but all of them are delightful. You should have no trouble finding episodes on Youtube; just search “Beetlejuice cartoon”.

“But tary a moment!” you suddenly cry: “What if I’m not into this weird stuff?” Ho ho, nervous reader! You’re doing yourself a disservice by refusing to partake of this animated ambrosia! Beetlejuice is as sophisticated as any show running today, and twice as zany! Nowhere on American Idol or Lost will you find a roadster that chases dogs, a closet that physically instantiates the lies told by its owner, a skeleton who works out despite not having any muscles, a tap-dancing spider… need I venture further?

Next time on “Just the place for a Snark!”:

My obsession with all things scary: did it originate with Beetlejuice? A compelling argument unfolds! Don’t miss it! Coming soon*!

*Whenever I get around to it.

8 Things I Hate About Blog Surveys Like This One

2009-07-11T20:17:00.000-07:00

Ugh. I can scarcely believe that I, like so many mindless drones before me, have succumbed to a blog quiz. Oh well.

Tagged by: Molly

8 Things I'm Looking Forward To:

1. Moving into my parents’ house, because the food is free and the amenities are far better than what I’ll have for myself in the coming years

2. Getting a job

3. Dating in the real world

4. Not having to put up with fucking parties or prayer groups or whatever the shit every goddamn night when I am trying to sleep

5. Spending more time working on my writing

6. Getting to know my siblings again after several years away

7. Reconnecting with old friends

8. Moving out of my parents’ house, because let’s face it, no one wants to live with their parents forever

8 Things I Did Yesterday:

1. Woke up at seven, mysteriously

2. Watched a few episodes of Beetlejuice, amusedly

3. Packed up all the clothes in my dresser, nonchalantly

4. Read through old notes and letters dredged from my closet, bitterly

5. Bought a smoothie with Molly, gleefully

6. Rocked out on the Guitar Hero drums, epically

7. Ate Wendy’s for dinner, frantically

8. Felt ill and went to bed early, mournfully

8 Things I Wish I Could Do:

1. Fly

2. Turn invisible

3. Become fabulously wealthy with no effort

4. Commit the perfect crime

5. Learn things just by downloading them into my brain, a la The Matrix

6. Teleport

7. Travel through time

8. Create and destroy matter

8 Shows I Wa- No, you know what? This one is dumb. I’m making something else up.

8 Web Comics I Enjoy:

1. Sinfest

2. xkcd

3. MS Paint Adventures

4. Concerned

5. Kid Radd

6. Triangle and Robert

7. Fanboys

8. Dinosaur Comics

I tag the following people: Charlee… actually that’s it… I don’t have any other friends who haven’t already done this.

Thoughts on a train through Baltimore

2009-07-06T17:27:00.000-07:00

Here I sit on the cusp of my adult life. I'm in a foreign city, but that doesn't really matter, because where is home? Anywhere I want it to be. Is it enough for me to just live my life? Will I ever be satisfied? Or will I exist like so many others, perhaps everyone, for I've heard that the goal of life is to die.

Truth? Observations, observations. Turtles all the way down.

Having just returned from Bermuda, I wonder at the way life can be acclimated to. What we see as a tropical Avalon is just the same narrow streets and stupid white roofs and goddamn tourists everywhere. They got used to it. Maybe living with uncertainty and change is just as easy to adapt to as that. Maybe every day I spend diving for treasure in the aquamarine waters of my dreary, dead-end job will bring me that much closer to seeing heaven as something I must endure, something to escape from, something that--from the outside--seems as flawless as the perfect skin of the hottie on the tabloid cover.

Maybe getting used to adulthood is like getting used to a new shop or street sign. "That didn't used to be there," you tell your friends. "Dude, yeah it has. That's been there for, like, two years." And you stop, and start, and realize that it's true, because your entire life has been leading up to this moment, and every instant you've lived through has just been a preview of what's to come, and now that you think about it, yes, you can remember shopping there or seeing that sign before. You fit right in after all.

No matter where I end up, I'll find the same palm trees and tropical breezes to become bored with. I'll end up wishing I could just, for one day, see something new. And this place, this familiar dirge, so full of potential that I'll just get used to, so perfect that the penitent will collapse before its glory and pray for fractions of seconds to spend there...

This will be my home.