body parts

if you were the sleep in my eye
i wouldn't rub my face when i woke up -
i'd let you hang around until
at least
the early afternoon.

or maybe even longer. maybe
i'd let you crinkle there the
next night, and the next night -
you'd accumulate, at first just microscopic
building til I wore you-goggles and
my world would get kaleidoscopic.

if i was a booger in your nose
i bet you'd pick me, but then
would you flick me? or would you peek
each way - the coast is clear! - then tuck
me right back where you found me?

how i spent my day off

breakfast; then, a sweaty walk
to museum nipples rendered
vibrantly in colors like nihonga blue.
carded at the bibliotheque but
no bouncers keeping me from
Rumi and Talgrode, names I chased
and didn't know would lead to
Sufi mysticism at the oriental
pavilion in prospect park.
after mango nuts and salsa i
ascended rusty ladder
shaking sawdust flakes into my hair.
the sun, a diffuse spotlight
rained magenta solar grey; if i'd known
someone was watching i would not have
sunk beneath my headphones, dancing
like smoke out a sadhu's pipe
across the silver rooftop stretched
along 7th avenue.
you caught me naked in my clothes!
with eyes you eavesdropped on my
conversation with my
self, and now i'm sitting
in a whipping wind, gluing
words to paper
so i can remember.

concrete

I can never remember things
like argyle
until I see it.
sort of like poplars, thrushes, walpoles, and asphodels.
all usable words, meanings unknown.
i weave ideas, i stitch notions, images
of my life
of your beauty
i know nothing of nature
i can't identify the trees
clueless to the flora and the fauna
all their many names
elude me.
i'm a creator birthed of concrete
i buy what i own; i earn what i eat
Whitman has a mile on me (or more)

i sing bridge songs
landscape lullabies
beneath a sky scratched emerald, yellow, pink
before the sun, behind the smog.
i tunnel-crawl and plunge
beneath the river
but never am i wet.

Not before

Not before the other shoe drops
We'll wade among people
like saltwater
mouths closed, eyes wide open up above
the crests
Not because the sun is spinning us
But because the passion of our blood will always
out-
weigh the push
and pull
of infinity around us.
Gravity
has nothing
on you
and
me.
Time is a mosquito.
Space is beneath the thrust of our bodies.
For us, the sour can be sweet;
the intangible is malleable;
the straight and narrow dips and curves;
we are technicolor grayscale.

a glenn gould kind of lover

nimble fingers
rip roar blanks
undoing buttons
flimsy against flesh
and pressure
curling digits ending
feet - first, slide
so safe at
home with you.
melodious in all your
expectations/baroque
are my expressions
this love of mine
has variations
tempo pitch andante
revving your
undoubtable bends.
bombast gives way to
splendorous pianissimo
a whispered hum
the notes are sharp

s'wet

hashmarks on hot paper
pressed between palms
s'wet
i'm on all fours on the
dusty floor
my unkempt unswept
cerebellum. bella,
you confound my senses.
i keep smellin' loneliness and
feelin't he waft of clean dish scent.
believe me, i am mostly harmless,
i'm just overstocked on
sentiment. love makes of me a
sentinel. it challenges my
sentience.
i've got automatonic love
you've got automatic allure
meet me halfway
draw a line in the sand
then dare me to cross it;
your body is a beacon

your absence was a presence

fire circles intertwining
eyes and hands and love,
communion
every splinter vibration,
every well-worn welcome
streaming from the center
this is coming clearly
from a straight place
o, so arched and curvy

is it here not dark
but missing light
indulging in the connection
of a frozen companion
stillborn into sympathy
yet wriggling

I'm not choking
not asphyxiated
by a lack of your
you. you of many forms.
you are elusive.

knuckles clench
the sigh heaves
door swings in
and mind blows out

it's the radii
between our eyes
that send mine
crossed in circles

yes, there is a pathway carved out for all my words before they actually get there. they fit between the lines. i make them. i fold them.
i run away into a sentence
i hide inside a word.
let's pick a word.
anaesthetic
masculine
feminine
athleticism
precision
mutuality
love
there's no shame to be had in holyness

floatation

I arrived at the room number in the building where Blue Light was...and didn't realize that the floatation tank is run out of this guy's apartment. He was a really mellow guy and when I remarked about my surprise at the fact that the tank was just in his apartment he told me that he had ben doing it there for 23 years. After I used the bathroom, he showed me the room where the tank was, opening it briefly to allow me to see inside and see where the light switch (well, button) was.

The tank itself was essentially a modified jacuzzi that he had built into an isolation tank, surrounded by soundproof walls and in a soundproofed room, about half the space of which the tank itself took up. He closed the tank up, not wanting the treated atmosphere to leak out too much, and we went into the living room where he gave me a prep talk. He had a gorgeous living room with high, stuffed bookshelves. I saw one shelf that read DMT: The Spirit Molecule, LSD: My Problem Child, Tripping: An Anthology, etc. from left to right. A glowing crystal adorned one corner table, African style carvings peppered the high tops of the bookshelves. The whole atmosphere in the apartment was remarkably calm and relaxing.

I was given some instructions on how best to settle into it, different positions to try, and then was left in the half of the apartment with the bathroom and the floatation tank. He cut himself off from that part of the apartment with Japanese sliding doors and I went into the bathroom to shower - he doesn't want the saltwater mixture to get too polluted so it's important that you wash your hair and body thoroughly. Then I went, naked, to the floatation tank. Yep. I was naked in another man's apartment the other day. Go figure.

When you enter the tank, you want to do your best to minimize the amount of disturbance you inflict on the calm water. It is a viscous water, far thicker than I expected, even knowing how loaded with salt it was. I shut the door behind me, then I sat back into the water and then leaned back. The sensation was very unsettling. Instant buoyancy came up from beneath me. I laid back, steadying my hands on the sides of the tank and holding myself still while the thick water sloshed back and forth, and with my left hand turned the lights off.

The water was lapping the sides and I was holding on, my eyes trying to deal with the fact that there was absolutely no light. Or was there? I thought I could see the contours of the tank, which was as tall as a regular shower stall. But could I? My eyes started playing tricks on me immediately. I lay my head back in the water, only my face protruding, my ears submerged, and I hear my heart beat loud and clear. It doesn't take long for you to become hyper-aware of the lack of audio or visual input coming from the outside world. I could hear myself blink. It was crunchy.

I was very uncomfortable and couldn't find the right position for my arms and legs. Relaxing your body, even in a semi-weightless state, is not as easy as you might think it is. I tried breathing deeply, but a terrible anxiousness was creeping over me and I came very close a couple of times to just throwing in the towel, getting out of the tank and just quitting. It was really bothering me, the amount of "What do I DO with myself?!" that was bubbling up inside me. But then I realized how much of a parallel there was between this need to let go and the need to let go when tripping. And I realized much like when tripping becomes overwhelming in the come-up, that I was a source of most of the things distracting my mind. I was being my own worst enemy.

I calmed myself down through deep breathing and tried to do a yoga exercise the owner told me about, where you scan your body with your mind, thinking about the individual parts and trying to relax them. It was a very strange experience, because I would become aware of my calf muscle...there would be a sensation there as I would think about it. My mind would jump to label it pain or discomfort, but that was just because those are the only times when I am really in touch with my body, when it is hurt or uncomfortable. This was something else, this was just a throbbing awareness, an is-ness on the part of my muscles.

Meanwhile, my arms were tingling from the elbow to the fingertips. Absolutely felt like all the cells in them were vibrating. MY upper back muscles hurt and so did my neck so I tried floating with my arms stretched behind my ahead instead of at my sides. I immediately grew far more relaxed and was able to give myself over to the experience...

By the time I was really getting deep into the float, and letting go to it, I don't think there was much time left. I entered this semi-dream state that was unbelievably pleasurable and relaxing. It felt like all the best parts of being asleep, while being aware. With my eyes closed (though there wasn't really any difference between having them closed or open) I would see slow, unfurling explosions of the darkest purples and browns occurring behind my eyelids. With my eyes open, sometimes I would see little vectored lines against the darkness.

Towards the end of the float, there are speakers in the bottom of the floatation tank, and he begins to play light, soothing tones when you have a few minutes left, so as not to startle you from your trance but gently wake you from it. I really did feel like I was waking up from a dream. I sat up in the water, breathing heavily, feeling quite a glow all around me. and in fact, I thought I saw light in the room. I thought to myself, wait, is it really lightproof? I sat back and took in the last few minutes by soaking in the darkness, and I thought I could discern where the corners of the tank were, how far I was sitting from the walls.

I reached out my arms to where I thought one wall and one corner would be and realized I had absolutely no idea what angle I was sitting at and where anything was. Laughing, I turned on the lights, which are dim so as not to hit your eyes too harshly. I then rinsed off in the shower and dressed, and went back out to the living room where a chilled cup of delicious herbal tea awaited me. I sat drinking it for a bit while the proprietor prepared the tank for his next customer, then he came out and we discussed the experience a little bit.

I told him that I saw a lot of parallels between the psychedelic experience and the float, especially in the beginning of the float when you really need to Let Go and give yourself over to it. Sometimes when I trip I try and lay back and just quiet my mind and it will seem so unbelievably hard to do. There are so many distractions. And just like in those moments tripping, when I was trying to relax in the tank I realized I was creating all those distractions myself. Despite his impressive collection of books on psychedelics, he seemed less than eager to follow this line of conversation.

I told him that one part of my body I could not calm down the whole time was the underside of my belly, and he told me that was where the Hara, one of the chakras, is located. Apparently there are schools of meditation where you try and quiet the head-mind by redirecting your energy flow down to your other mind, which is located in the Hara, and that you can attain a quiet state that way. He gave me the names of books to read on the subject which I scribbled down. Then I finished my tea, walked out on to the street, and was quite aglow. I walked about 40 blocks feeling like I was on air the whole time.

So what did I get out of all this? I'm not quite sure, to tell you the truth. I wasn't entirely mentally prepared for the experience, which is kind of how I have been feeling in regards to many of my consciousness-expanding pursuits lately, especially my adventures with dimethyltryptamine (DMT). This experience reaffirmed my feeling that I have a lot of work to do on myself, on my mind, on the way I process information and float through the world and let the world float through me. My mind is not quite open enough, I'm not as prismatic as I aim to be. But I also realized I can't overthink that and I just need to BE it.

What do I mean by prismatic? Well, I can't stop thinking about that idea after this experience, because there was so little coming from without into me. I had a vision once, on LSD. Everyone I looked at had a prism nestled deep in their being. And in fact, they were an extension of that prism. The basic unit of human life was this prismatic soul. Each one formed completely uniquely, with its own bends and divots. Each prism accepted external input, and as that input crossed the threshold of their perception is was bent and bounced around inside them in the way only their minds could singularly bounce those ideas and concepts and things around. And then we each would refract those things back outwards. There is breathing in, and breathing out.

In the tank, when I breathed in, my mind was completely empty except from the knowledge of being alive and breathing. And when I exhaled, my mind would rush, scream, sing, yell, ideas would stream like hi-speed traffic in between my eyes and out my third and into the æther. I'm able to process input. I'm able to flow through life quietly and suck it in and experience it and engage with it. But the goal now is to attain a level of quietness and consistency in the way I exhale the world, the way I breathe back into the spiritual ecosystem that's nourished me all my life. I must learn to quiet my monkey mind. Every day is a step towards that. There's no attaining quiet mind on the turn of a dime.

I'll definitely go back into the tank. I don't know when, but I will. It was an experience I don't quite know how to process, and that is what is drawing me back to it, though it may be some months before I try it again. Much like tripping, the experience is a question mark. And I know it will never be the same twice. And while I don't necessarily have anything to hold on to or show for what it's taught me, it has left me with something, even if that something is nothing more than a quiet moment that can serve as a reference point for the more turbulent times in my life.

finishing and starting up

[last year, in the coat check, he wrote:]

A book is not a worthy investment of your time and energy unless its final words send chills joyriding your nervous system. These words don't have to sum things up, they need not be eloquent metaphors or intricate symbols. They can be any words at all, as long as they are the right ones - the ones that bring the totality of the novel rushing back to wash over you as you consummate the act of completion. You read them, and all the arrhythmic stop-and-start moments you've spent exploring the world between the covers builds back up out of fragments riddled with interruptions to become a beautiful, significant whole. You don't always achieve some sort of "deeper understanding," sometimes you don't even feel fulfilled, but the words tell you that the story ended the only way it should have. The words, they wring you out like a sponge swollen with fiction and images. Only you don't drip your learnings into any sink, down any drain, they just pour back into you from different angles, arranged in different formations, like a piece of wood shattering into millions of splinters and reforming wholly renewed, identical on the outside but completely reconfigured on the inside.

The right words make it hard to put the book down. You push your forehead up against its cover and you brush the pages against your lips, letting them flutter against you as you breathe in their scent. You hold it close, then far, seeing it from all perspectives. And finally, knowing full well that there are more mysteries to be unearthed within its bindings, you slip it back on to a shelf somewhere, letting it fade back into the scenery of names and titles that pepper your room, allowing someone else and their ideas to step into the limelight.

There is time, until then, time that fills you up like a blank space, a cinematic moment of blackness when only the ghosts of the silhouettes of the seats in the theater are left drifting across your eyeballs. The words don't let you forget so quickly, move on too soon. That silhouette drags across your vision like the flash from a camera that's just taken a picture of you - and in a way every book you read that has this effect is like a picture of yourself. It takes you outside yourself, and gives you an extraneous vehicle through which to discover yourself in new ways.

Books and photography, they are a-temporal forms of art. Painting and sculpture, too. Unlike music or film, which move to the beating drums of ticking seconds, minutes and hours, books are a self-contained reality. No two people can read the book the ame way, at the same pace, lingering on the same sentences, drawing in deep breaths at all the same subtle moments. Music, movies, they morph time similarly for all spectators but a novel is timeless. it is a floating story.

---

[this year, in the coat check, he wrote:]

Of course, there is the alternate thrill of cracking the spine of a brand new adventure. The inside cover of this book, The Slynx, is a shade of green that invites meadow visions in stark contrast to the barren wasteland that graces the cover, a weed-strewn Mad Max landscape that seems ready to be greeted by the rustling roll of tumbleweed at any moment. Smoggy skies on one side, leaf pigment on the other. What the hell is IN here?!

faces in the tablecloth

putting myself places
breaking myself up
scattering my molecules
gathering the fruit
expenditures, logistics,
no real strategy of which to speak
scraping coal with fingernails
polishing the loot,
inspect it with a lazy lens
send it nowhere fast
keeping time with steady breathing
ins and outs to frame the
in-betweens where everything does happen
so fast, too slow, this is a
race that no one wins.
i get ahead, i fall behind
there's only one real finish
and a set of staggered
goals
kinship
creation
connection
collision
conception
love, all kinds
faces in the tablecloth remind me
anyone can freeze.

fedora thoughts.

"tonight's the night,
tonight's the night."

I want to wear a hat. I want to dress myself in alternate illusions.

Words linger on the horizon of my mind and I turn the cerebral world to my liking, letting the inner sun creep around the bend and illuminate those things that hide from me in dark places. I'm making strides. I'm taking down fear. I'm not running away from it, or sidestepping it. I'm facing it and moving, passing, right on through it. And when it is gone past, only I shall remain.

Funny. I just spent seven and a half hours coat checking for the who's who of the NYC fashion scene, riffing on them for being such superficial fucks and yet here I sit, admiring my reflection in a subway mirror with the Brooklyn skyline as a backdrop, contemplating how to construct a persona for myself, thinking that now that I have some money I'd like to spend it on new clothing to help recreate myself. But hey. It's a form of expression. It's the face you put out to the world, but also - it's a costume. And you can become what you make of yourself.

I exist in a state of narrative lunacy. If there's one thing that acid did to my mind, it was teach it that each point...and by point, I mean, really, everything. Kind of the mathematical definition of a point, which is really just an abstract an idea. You are a point. I am a point. Time is a point. Life is a point. Death is a point. Lobster is a point. You dig? So what it taught me is that each point, is a window to every other point. And that you can tap into various points and receive worlds of wild information from them. I think I've always done this though, and that's my narrative lunacy that I speak of. I think I've always touched into various points of the world and pulled stories out of them.

I say I have no fiction, I say I'm not making stories. Well maybe I'm not writing them. But I'm certainly creating them. You see, I struggle. Because my father and I used to walk the streets, and I'd listen to him talking about various people. People on the street, faces in the crowd, who he thought we were standing high above even though our feet tread the very same pavement as theirs. He used to talk about people like he knew them in and out. Psychiatrists, what else do you expect sometimes? He'd see a person and think he knew their life story. But it always came from an angle with a motive. For some reason, he had to find a reason to put everyone below him.

Me, I see people, and I write their life stories. It's happening every moment. Every single face is a point that I travel through. And I see their life, all of it, tiny details, moments as a toddler, favorite toys, a father slapping them across the face, a mother fucking a strange man with the bedroom door wide open, wide open Kansas skies while driving across the country, corduroy pants on tiny legs, L.A. Lights, the funeral they went to after their friend shot up too much heroin. I feel like I can see it all sometime. The good, the bad. The things that created every crease in their beautiful, terrible faces. LSD has a way of making you feel like you're god and I suppose I'm always straddling this divide between myself and my father, and what my experiences (LSD, and otherwise) have taught me, rushing like a river between my outstretched trembling legs.

I try not to let myself think I know these people for sure. But it seems like each tiny fragment, each moment, opens up into a fractal universe that communicates some sort of truth to me. I wouldn't speak it to them, because as soon as these thoughts are catalyzed into language they complicate endlessly, proliferate unbearably...So I don't let myself think I actually know who these people are or what they've done. I'm not God, I'm just a god, just like each of them is a god, all of us acting very ungodly towards one another.

But there's fiction there. And I create it.

There's a woman who seems to live in my subway stop. She's tall, thin, black, and obviously has her fair share of drug problems. She's a skeleton with her ashy skin pulled taut over her frame, dressed in rags, sitting on a suitcase. Always reeking of urine. When I first moved here I looked at her with scorn - why, i thought, why must you stink up my subway stop perpetually with urine? There's a McDonald's nearby. Couldn't you just piss there?

Then one day it was raining terribly, a fierce torrential downpour. I'd been doing well, as I have been lately, and even though she never, ever asks anybody for money, I saw an empty cup near her and decided to put three dollars in and tell herself to get some soup when the rain cleared up. When I put the money in, she snapped towards me a little, her hood falling back. Her eyes, wild, straining, lost - god only knows where she was just then, not in the 7th Ave. stop with me, there, then - pierced into mine.

"I'll sit here if i want to! Don't you tell me what to do! I don't wanna go! I don't wanna do that! Don't tell me! I want to stay here!"

There was a child in her voice. And now I can't look at her in any way but as a child who never grew up because something simply terrible happened to her. I wonder if she even remembers exactly what it is. I wonder if she can even talk about it, or if she's just stuck there. Tonight, she wasn't wearing shoes. It was less than twenty degrees in that station. I wanted to tell her put her shoes on, lest she catch death of cold. But I felt that was her trip - rebellion against logic, against parental suggestions such as keeping oneself warm. I don't know. Do I know her? Do I understand her? At all? Or am I just creating a fiction for her that is the easiest for me to understand?

i met a kid once.

his name was corey. i met him in the woods in the summer of 2005, among a bunch of hippies having a good time, we camped, we got our fair share of psychedelically intoxicated. he was a big lovable teddy bear. i have fond memories of a brief weekend spent with him, when i escaped from the city for a good time jaunt. it was a good time. i remember his hug like it was yesterday, and it was about 2 and a half years ago. i had brought a bunch of music - i gave it all to him to keep. he remembered that. we'd see each other around the message board we met through, how everyone met that arrived at that wondrous gathering...life goes on. people go in different directions. up, down, that's not for me to decide. it's all sideways til someone loses an eye. corey lost more than that. on new year's eve he lost his life. he'd been fucking around with the Horse and we all knew it was gonna get him in trouble, but you can't make someone stop from 3,000 miles away over the internet. you can just tell them to stay safe and that you love them, even though you barely know them - but goddamnit, when you connect with people, "knowing" them in the way we so highly value in our personal lives, well, it doesn't seem so goddamn important. all you need to know is what you shared. however momentary.

bye corey. you were a lot of fun to hang out with that weekend and a shining presence of positivity on the boards. i really won't forget you. ever. i just wish you'd been smarter than to mix the wrong things and overdose on the birth of a new year. i feel like this is my year to shine, to rise, and i'm sad you can't be here on this earth to turn things around with me. i think we're all gonna turn things around, for the species, for the planet. i'm hopeful. i'm a less than cautious optimist. i throw caution to the wind and scream out, fuck yes. see ya corey. i thought i was writing this poem about myself, and about looking for love. then in the middle of the night tonight i realized i was writing it for you. your screenname was Dreamer. yeah, i am too. but i'm gonna chase mine here on this earth, not down a needle, not down a vein, not to the next phase of existence. my dreams are here for me. see ya corey - i'll see you in The Big Dream. this fucking sucks, you being dead. i barely knew you, but i'll miss you.


so tell me, dreamer
what will you do
if serendipity turns
its back to you?
you've read the novels,
heard the music of chance,
and your mind is awake
to the synchronous dance
of the patterns and threads
in the fabric of breath;
but what if the end
doesn't match your intent?
it's just a hop and a skip
from a leap of faith
down the oubliette.....

(gone, but not forgotten)

the universe is built for our minds to hold
our memories bring you back into the fold
the door never closes
death is nothing but a hallway
to another crowded room
where a flurry of voices carry choral tunes
and through the pinpoint
we drift to you
and bring you back around the fire
singing songs til dawn arises;
this heavy life does make us tired..

Is something missing?

(print above: something's missing, by bre zack)


either something's truly missing
or i've become fixated
on this picture i've created
in my head

maybe i'm chasing symmetry
too closely for true comfort
and my dreams are like projectors
but the movie never ends;

it flushes through my eyelids
and becomes the rain that falls
on prospect park..
the actress is a silhouette
with tresses in a purple dress
who dances in the dark...
and under moonlight's yawning breath
we twist away the twilight hours,
poodle skirts turned loose on dancefloors dj'ed by dick clark;

this is the mirage of my daydream cinema
and when the eyelids flutter open
the reels don't stop spinning, they just
throw a soft hallucination out on to the world;

fractal visions
of a
heart
that's split in two
but always
one

slowly then
i'll realize
that love can be
idealized but only if i
love myself before all others
instead of chasing pop-up dreams
like instructions in a children's book

so i just sit here in this chair
and next to me there's only air
where i think somebody once was loving me

and i can see
the dotted line where she once sat by me
the words are clearly printed - cut here
fold here
color the numbers
but something's still missing

one day
i'll meet somebody
who'll fold for me
like origami
(mm, but doesn't that just sound too easy?)

Who the Hell Does Orson Scott Card Think He Is?

I guess this story starts with Netflix. I am notoriously bad at returning things. Books, movies, you name it. The way I see it, I support libraries by paying more late fees than your average borrower. I also watch a lot of movies. I have late fees at most video rental establishments. I just set up an account, rent some movies, and then a few weeks after they're due, return them to the drop box in the dead of night and never go back. Netflix is the obvious solution to my problem, so I got it. I freaking love Netflix.

About a month ago, I had two Netflix DVDs sitting at home. I'd already watched them, I just can't be bothered to put them in the mail. You know how it is. Anyway, we wanted to watch something new, so I walked down the street and set up an account at Hollywood video. I got the movies, and actually returned them on time. Every time I went there, I noticed this Xbox game called Advent Rising sitting there in the "Nobody will rent me, please buy me instead" discount rack. Each time I passed it, I made a mental note to pick it up and give it a try. I was familiar with it, but I don't like to pay full price for games I'm not really excited about.

The reason I wanted to try Advent Rising is because it was written by Orson Scott Card. Now, mister Card and I don't really get along. Which is to say, I think he's a blowhard with a ridiculous vision of the world who wrote a seriously good science fiction book (Ender's Game). I'm really interested in the branching out of video game culture and I thought this game could be really interesting.

I read Ender's Game as a pimply little fledgling geek and then re-read it a year ago. It held up pretty well. Steal it or borrow it from your local library. Don't buy it, though. Card doesn't deserve to get paid any more than he already has because I'm sure they paid him to write Advent Rising and he doesn't deserve another cent.

This game is utter trash.

It's a half-assed Halo rip-off that doesn't have an original line of code in its entire design. It has this gun and super-powers style of play that is implemented so horribly you're better off just picking one or the other and neglecting the rest. The game Second Sight did this really well, but Advent Rising managed to bungle it beyond repair.

The worst part is that the back of the case listed controls for when you're on foot, in a vehicle, in a turret, and in a space ship, leading me to believe that this would be a game with some depth, or at the very least variety. The game opens and you have to pilot a shuttle into a hangar. The space graphics are really good, and the control is fun. I liked it a lot. You land the shuttle and the story continues and then YOU NEVER PILOT A SPACE SHIP AGAIN. The only good part about this game lasts ten seconds. Sometimes you drive an alien tank which is too powerful to be fun and sometimes you get to use a jeep-like vehicle that is almost identical to the Halo Warthog (which, as Halo players will know, is extremely boring in a one-player situation).

But I'm not here to complain about the design. I'm here to call Card out for his atrocious writing. The main character is a smart-mouthed, cocky pilot (like we've never seen that character before) who gets caught up in an alien invasion. The aliens in question have searched long and far for the human race, afraid of their power. They are called... you are not going to believe this... the Seekers.

The Seekers? Come on, Card. I can hear him now, "Oh man. I forgot to name these evil dudes. Oh. Think, Orson, think. Uh... Um... They're seeking humanity... I'll call them the Seekers! YES! I am so great!"

"I wrote Ender's Game!"

Card shamelessly steals his ideas from other sci-fi stories. When humanity first meets the friendly aliens who try to save them from the Seekers, they are given little slugs that crawl into their ears and translate everything they hear (Hitchhikers Guide). The humans, however, use a computer program called the Universal Translator (Star Trek).

I'm really not sure why they decided to pay someone to write this game. Anyone could have written it. No character besides the main character lives long enough to be developed at all. At least one major character dies in every level.

Card, you are a hack. Ender's Game is great, don't get me wrong. You must have blown a few neurons coming up with that one, though, because your work after that has been utter crap. From sci-fi to politics, you've managed to make yourself look silly whenever you turn your thoughts into words. Stick to World Watch (or is it War Watch? I can't keep track) or keep your unoriginal and inconsistent blathering to yourself.

What's up now, Card?

Police on my Back or Election Wrap-up Article

You may think it's strange for someone like me, who thinks the entire election was a farce, to volunteer my time with the Campus Vote Coalition. You would be right. I had no intention of doing it, I was coerced. I had a few free hours, so I couldn't really say no. As much as I didn't want to do it, it does look good on resumes, and gives me double-bitching privileges. I voted, and I volunteered my time to the election, you will listen to me whine about politicians.

Basically, the Coalition's goal was to get as many students to the polls as possible. A noble aim, for sure. In the months leading up to the election, they helped students register to vote, and on Tuesday, called those who registered with them to remind them to vote, and answer any questions.

Now, I am not a member of this group, but I decided to help out anyway. I made some calls and ate some free pizza. The pizza was cold.

Before I continue, I'll have to explain a little bit about how this whole procedure worked. Anyone living on campus voted at one of two centrally located polling stations. Not very confusing. If they had any questions, it was as easy as "Where do you live? Okay, you vote here." No big deal. The problem is that in the University of Pittsburgh, there is a massive housing shortage. Many students live in a place known as South Oakland. It's like a college town ghetto, a keg on every porch, a loud party every night, the rivers run with Pabst Blue Ribbon and bong water. There were several locations where South Oakland residents might vote, but none of them were on campus.

In order to aid us in contacting these South Oakland residents and getting them to the polls, volunteers were sent to the South Oakland polling stations to check our lists against their lists. That way, we only had to call those we know had not yet voted.

This seemed a little odd to me, but if I had to say "I'm just calling to remind you that today is election day and the polls close at 8PM. Do you have any questions?" one more time, I was going to chew off my hand, so I could no longer dial the numbers and would be excused. Fortunately, I was sent to help check the lists. A member of the Student Vote Coalition, we'll call him Furious Kingfisher, was in charge of the operation, I was just the help. I assumed, and still just assume, that the Coalition had thought through all the legal issues and whatnot, so I decided to just go with the flow.

We arrived at the polling place, a fire hall/senior citizen's center, and walked in. We had trouble right off the bat, as we were expecting to be given the lists with no problem. Earlier that day, other volunteers were sent to do the same thing, and had no difficulty. Trying to appease us with just the total number of voters, the workers there were rather hostile to the idea of giving us the list. Now, it sounded a little strange to me as well, but voting records (that is, the list of people who have voted, not party affiliation or actual vote) are public records, and I certainly don't know anything about election day protocol.

I knew this guy was going to be trouble as soon as he stepped in the room. He was about 5'6'', and pretty hefty. He was wearing a black sweater with a small label stuck to it reading "Election Judge." He had extremely thick glasses and spoke in a high voice.

"You can't have those lists!" he shouted as he waddled over. Waddling in such a way that suggested he was ready to fight someone. I'm still trying to figure out his motivation. Maybe he was just a hard-ass, and wanted to flex his muscles as election judge. Perhaps he suspected us of partisan vote-getting tactics. (A sticky situation, to be honest. While we never asked party affiliation, and it played no part whatsoever in our efforts, we all know which major party is helped by college voter turnout.) It's also possible he was just acting the crotchety old jerk that he is.

We argued for a while, then called our superiors, and they argued with him on the phone. When it became clear that we were not going to get those lists, Furious got a little, well, furious. I believe his exact words were, "This is fucking bullshit! You're trying to disenfranchise these voters!" To which the judge responded,

"I'm calling the police!"

We figured that was the best time to make our exit. We eventually found out that we were supposed to get the lists from another polling station in the same building. The workers there were quite helpful. We never did see the judge again, although we could hear him from the second polling station and planned an escape route should he burst through the door, officers in tow.

I realize my posts have been rather political lately, but what can I do? When you've got your finger on the pulse of American culture, you have to call in the crash cart. I'd like to wrap up my Election 2006 coverage with some final thoughts on the Pennsylvania races.

Governor Ed Rendell (D) over Lynn Swann (R): Rendell is a politician, so I don't trust him as far as I can throw him, but I don't find him to be downright evil. Swann, on the other hand would have been a bad choice. He won a few Super Bowls for the legendary Pittsburgh Steelers team of yore, and was clearly running on that name recognition. Rendell, at least has some good ideas. He helped bring a high-tech wind power manufacturing plant to my hometown of Ebensburg. I never thought Ebensburg would have a high-tech anything. IPods break down when you drive through. Whenever I open my laptop within city limits, it's inexplicably running Windows ME. We could do worse than Ed Rendell.

Bob Casey Jr. (D, sort of) over Senator Rick Santorum (R for religion): My thoughts on this race are already documented here, so I won't go into details. At least we're no longer represented by Santorum. Fade away, you crazy asshole.

Jason Altmire (D) over Representative Melissa Hart (R): My chief regret with this race is that Hart didn't freak out. After the AP called the election for Altmire, the local news guy at Hart's headquarters asked her if she would concede. She started whining about receiving no results from some little district somewhere, and she looked pretty pissed off. Unfortunately, ten minutes later, she conceded. I had really hoped someone would fail to step down gracefully. Otherwise, why bother having all that live coverage?

There it is, PA has done their part to balance the federal government. I didn't do my part, of course, but I was hoping things would work out this way. At least now, the government can stop running our lives and get back to fighting amongst themselves. That just about does it for me. The 2006 midterm elections are over. This is Crippled Vulture signing off.

Voting? That's so Twentieth Century

As I write this, the United States is preparing for the next MOST IMPORTANT ELECTION IN HISTORY. This time, it's bigger and more importanter than that last one with what's-his-name... You know who I'm talking about. A week from today, the country will vote, and the stakes are high. If the Republicans remain in control of Congress, we will likely continue to spiral down into violence, environmental devastation and economic hardship. However, if compassionate, intelligent folks can "get out the vote" and put the Democrats in power... They'll probably thank them for the access to all those bribes and then proceed to do their part to bring human civilization to its ugly and brutal conclusion.

A common misconception about Karl Marx is that he hated capitalism and thought communism was the be all and end all to human society. The ratio of people who talk about Marx as if they've read him to those who have actually read him still stands at about 20 to 1. Marx praised capitalism as a necessary step forward in humanity's social progress. Who can seriously argue that capitalism is worse than pure iron fist despotism or feudalism? Marx was simply pointing out the inherent flaws and encouraging us to learn from our mistakes and evolve. Nowadays, he's just conservative talk radio's favorite effigy (excluding Bill Clinton, of course) when they're in the mood for burning something.

I didn't really set out to talk about Karl Marx, here. Bear with me. Here in Pennsylvania, we have a Senator named Rick Santorum. Rick Santorum is a crazy person. Aside from being the worst kind of religious nut (the kind in government), he is also a ranking republican senator and thus wields considerable influence. How could the democrats possibly take down a powerful member of the establishment like Rick Santorum?

There is only one feature a candidate can use to overcome such odds. Intelligent, progressive ideas? Nope. A critical approach to American government and society? Get serious. Good looks and a winning smile? Getting warmer.

Name Recognition.

Rick Santorum's opponent is a man named Bob Casey (Jr). Fellow Pennsylvanians will recall his father, Bob Casey, former governor of our humble commonwealth, and that's exactly what they're counting on. You see, Casey (Jr) is in favor of overturning Roe v. Wade. He supports the war in Iraq (albeit he is in favor of changing strategy, whatever that means). He is against legalizing same-sex marriage and even allowing same-sex couples to adopt children. Basically, in a week's time, we'll have to decide between one guy we know is a jerk and another guy who says he is, but hasn't proven it yet.

Democrats in Pennsylvania, particularly social progressives, have been sold out big time. The whole point of ousting Santorum would be to get rid of his ilk. Contrary to what these men may believe, there are some of us who feel that the government does not have the right to interfere with our personal lives.

Since I never trusted them to begin with, I don't feel like I've been kidnapped, raped and beaten and left in an alley with my kidney missing (politically), but that's how people should feel. I'm talking specifically about all the people two years ago waving "Kerry Edwards" signs with a rainbow pattern on them. The folks who thought that the democrats were the party that really wants social equality. Come on, man. As long as you're outnumbered by old people and hicks, they're not going to lift a finger to help.

Don't get me wrong. I'd rather the democrats win. As long as there is opposition in Washington (base, petty, partisan opposition being better than none at all) then we can avoid going too far down either road. Government works best when it's not working at all.

Marx was always hesitant to lay out a plan for the future. He disdained utopian thinking. He saw human civilization as always changing, evolving, learning from the mistakes of past systems and trying to do a better job next time. This kind of social dynamism is precisely what we could use right now. Like Marx, I don't know exactly what the future will look like, but I do know we could certainly use a clean slate right about now. When the two philosophical arms of the government are running the exact same candidate, something is very wrong.

There's nothing I'd like more than to see Rick Santorum filling out lobbying job applications after this election, but I'm afraid Casey's just not good enough for me. I proudly "threw my vote away" to Ralph Nader in 2004. I did this because he was the candidate I actually wanted to see in the white house. I won't vote for the lesser of two evils, especially in a case like this where the lesser is only slightly less evil.

I don't have a solution for this problem. Well, I do, but I don't want the government to make me disappear and water board me for the next ten years without charging me with anything (which they can do now!), so we'll leave those thoughts in my head where they belong.

The Art of the D10

Good crapper reading is important. One's time on the mighty porcelain throne is an opportunity to shut out the demands and frustrations of the world for a short time, a time to engage in some light pleasure reading and reflection. Some prefer magazines, others go with books that can be read in short bursts. But, while I'm dropping off the kids at the pool, there's no finer reading material than role-playing books. Sure, you laugh now, but the right gaming book is a well-written and impressively thought-out piece of literature.

Back in high school, my friends and I played a variety of tabletop role-playing games published by White-Wolf (most famous for their vampire game, which we didn't actually play). While similar, in form, to Dungeons and Dragons, I speak from experience when I say that they are quite different in practice.

I'm not speaking of White-Wolf exclusively. We also played a game called Blue Planet, a science fiction adventure set on a remote, ocean-covered planet called Poseidon (Biohazard Games). I've heard the Call of Cthulhu game is very interesting. The point is, there are others.

The difference between D&D and these other games, I think, is that they strike an excellent creative balance. The world of D&D is pretty formless. The players are provided with an endless array of tomes detailing unique character classes, monsters, and weapons. That's all well and good, since the Dungeon master is free to create a unique world, but they seem to end up even more formulaic than the more concrete worlds of the more structured games. All D&D games take place in an endless fantasy landscape dotted with towns surrounded by caves and ancient castles to explore. It's Tolkien as far as the eye can see in every direction.

White-Wolf's games take place in the World of Darkness, a world just like ours, but with their large cast of magical beings lurking in the shadows, in the forests, and manipulating world events from behind the scenes. Their most popular games, Werewolf, Vampire and Mage rely heavily on mythology and folklore from different cultures to empower the characters.

It's been years since I've played. I recently tried to get a game going among my friends in Pittsburgh. My efforts were met with either apathy or hostility. "[Crippled Vulture]," one of these prospective gamers told me, "we're too old for role-playing games." This brings me to my point.

"No, 'we' are not too old for them."

The image most folks have of the tabletop gamer is not an attractive one. Pimple-covered, thick-rimmed glasses wearing, physically and socially stunted youngsters sitting in a basement pretending to be Grog the Devastator. They cheer in triumph as Grog cleaves open the head of the Orc chieftain who, if not actually named after the captain of the football team, is at least a psychological stand-in.

It wouldn't be a stereotype if it didn't happen. To be fair, our early attempts at these games suffered from their own maturity problems as well. Fortunately, the White-Wolf games resist this sort of self-indulgent impediment to real creative entertainment. By setting up a world with just enough structure, providing the players with factions, rivalries, and overall themes which the players are encouraged to accept or discard, the games tend to stay focused enough to avoid the more childish possibilities. The "Dungeon Master" in White-Wolf games is referred to as the Storyteller. It's an important distinction. To be fair, the other group of kids in our high school who played once boasted to me that their vampires killed Martha Stewart by shoving a rocket launcher down her throat. We never played with them.

This level of attention paid to the setting is also what makes the books good reading in general. I haven't played in years, but I can still name all the werewolf tribes.

Wizards of the Coast, the publisher of D&D, has a new ad in magazines that shows a house with two or three dark rooms with players staring like zombies at computer screens, presumably playing an MMO. The living room, however, is well-lit and contains three guys laughing with tabletop RPG stuff on the table. I want to shake that marketing dude's hand.

Remove yourself from all the social stigmata associated with RPGs. How would you rather spend an evening with friends? Staring at the TV? I think not. It's a smarter, far more creative and engaging form of entertainment. Working together to tell a tale in a well- crafted fantasy world. What's so wrong with that?

Sadly, you can't force someone to play these games. A half-assed attempt is worse than abstaining entirely. I never give up hope that I'll play again. All my reading and planning on the john will pay off, because I've got hours and hours of gaming in my head and ready to go.

Until then, I wait and read and plan. And dream.

(grunt)

The Rite of Peace, also known as the handshake part

I stand up and walk to the podium, adjust the microphone, God's microphone. I clear my throat. Jesus is behind me, dying for our sins, and he's looking down at me. I want to turn around and say, "Hey Jesus, lay off, man!"

That's how it looks in my head. I haven't gone to church, save Christmas and Easter, in six years. This November, I will read from either the Old Testament or the New one (minus the gospels) at my grandparents' 50th anniversary mass. It will be the biggest sacrilege I've committed since I ate the wafer at Easter last year.

Losing one's faith is a Catholic rite of passage. It's not easy to suffer through sixteen years of obligation, obtuse rituals, and school on Sunday (!) and come out of it still believing in God. Looking back, I can pinpoint the exact moments that shook my faith. Like the time all the Sunday school students were issued envelopes and told that they had to donate to the church every Sunday. This would not have been so bad if I hadn't recently figured out that all the money donated to the church didn't actually go directly to the poor (an impression I must have picked up somewhere, but probably not in the real world). Or the fact that the all-seeing, all-knowing, all-forgiving God of mercy and love doesn't want to hear my fucking sob story for forgiveness unless I tell it to a priest in a weird little room.

I digress. There's still a pang of guilt when I commit these little blasphemies. Granted, this pang of guilt is far less uncomfortable than the awkward conversation with my grandparents when they find out their eldest grandson ain't a church-goer anymore. Sometimes you just got to eat that wafer.

There's a part of the Catholic mass (and maybe the other ones, too) where the parishioners turn and greet each other with a handshake and a "peace be with you." Sometimes if you catch someones eye but they're too far away for physical contact, a cool guy "what's up?" head tilt will suffice. This is called The Rite of Peace, and it's my earliest memory of church.

When you're a kid, the service as a whole is as esoteric as it is dull. "Blah blah blah sit. Blah blah blah stand. Blah blah blah kneel." All of a sudden, everyone turns around and addresses you. I still get a little tingling sensation before the rite of peace.

While having an argument with someone when I was young and my faith was faltering, I was told that the function of church, by which I mean the reason the church and most of one's peers find that a mere personal relationship with god does not suffice is that the church is there to serve as a community. It's a gathering point.

Which makes it even more of a political institution than it seems.

It's not like I have much right to complain, hypocrite that I am. I can bitch and whine about how problematic these things are, but when I eat that wafer next month, (and oh yes, I will eat it) I'll be just as big a fraud as any of them. That's the bitch about religion. You're messing around with world views. They're more than world views, it's a way of life and a comforting presence and a world view all rolled into one. The line between critical thought and flat-out insult is practically non-existent.

Peace be with you.

Fucking Hippies.

Some words were made to be married to each other. Like “fucking” and “hippie.” What is it about those two words that makes it so palatable to the ear to hear them linked together? Is it the phonetics of the words themselves? Or is it the meanings of the words especially modified as they sit adjacent to one another? Could either of those be extricated from the other, once the words are said? I’m not sure. Either way, fucking hippie just about seems to sum it up.

Fucking. Hippies.

What is fucking? Well, that could be answered in a number of ways and there are an innumerable amount of chain e-mails perpetually shooting their way around the internet about the very nature of the word. But I think it’s pretty clear that right here, in the hippie situation, we can equate the use of the word fucking to that of the word “goddamn.” Why not just say goddamn then? Well goddamn doesn’t really carry its own weight in the context of the hippie – to put it bluntly, goddamn doesn’t have enough goddamn in it to explain the goddamned goddamnness of those goddamn hippies. I mean, those fucking hippies.

Maybe kids growing up today won’t hold the word Fuck to higher standards the way recent generations have, coming from the prudish 50’s when saying “goddamn” was enough to get you suspended from school. But on the list of condemnations, fuck is clearly ranked higher then taking the lord’s name in vain or saying damn. So you’ve got to say Fucking hippies, rather than goddamn hippies.

Something about starting off with that fricative F rather than the gutteral G just brings the ferocity and wholeheartedness of the statement to a head. Fucking hippies!

Unfortunately the phrase also summons some images to mind that are of a most unsavory nature. After all, who really wants to conjure up the thought of two grizzly, greasy, grimy hippies going at it like a pair of crazed baboons while bluegrass blares from a tinny radio at the front of their filthy van, the scent of patchouli mixing with marijuana fumes in the air in a desperate attempt to suppress the far more powerful forces of two weeks worth of unshowered body odor?

Which reminds me to remind you that the term “dirty hippie” is absolutely acceptable as a replacement for “fucking hippie” but only if the context is such that emphasizing how dirty the hippies in questions are really is necessary. Otherwise, please use the blanket term “fucking hippies” and just assume that everyone already knows how dirty hippies are as a basic rule. And even though I extolled the frictative F at the beginning of Fucking as a modifier for hippies, please do not replace “dirty” hippies with “filthy” hippies unless they are truly stained in their own filth, which can sometimes be the case when dealing with this most fascinating race of American gypsy.

What is it about the hippie that commands such quick dismissal, such a quick rise in the anger spectrum from not modifying the word hippie at all to straight up Fucking it? Fucking hippies! Maybe if they weren’t so dirty. Maybe if they didn’t make a mess everywhere they went – and yeah, I agree that a lot about how society is run and the corporations, MAN, but you know, it doesn’t mean you have to live like swine. Have you ever been in a venue after a jamband show and seen the carnage left behind by a crowd of fucking hippies? It’s unbelievable the amount of refuse that goes hand in hand with peace and love. Maybe if hippies didn’t try to push their trip on everyone else, and if they realized they’re sometimes guilty of being just as closed-minded as the “systems” they “revolt” against by, ya know, rolling around in the mud outside the Spectrum in Philadelphia after a Widespread Panic show tripping balls on 8 grams of mushrooms and two hits of acid having a conversation with the mystical goddess Kali, naked and flailing, then maybe, MAYBE they wouldn’t be such Fucking Hippies.

Forumlaic Primetime Fantasy-Drama Syndrome

On September 20, CBS aired the first episode of Jericho, the tale of a small town in Kansas cut off from civilization following a nuclear attack on the United States. I won't lie to you, I'll watch just about anything post-apocalyptic. What struck me the most about the show is its very strict adherence to a formula that other new fiction TV shows follow.

It started with Lost. Although HBO and other cable channels had been successfully fielding fiction television, the networks were mired in an endless parade of recycled reality programming. I watched very little TV during this era, but I'm pretty sure I once caught five minutes of a show where people cleaned each other's houses. That does not count as entertainment in my book. Lost was, to say the least, wildly successful. It held a viewer's attention by slowly unraveling the mystery of the island while making each episode relevant and somewhat self-contained through the flashback format.

The people rejoiced. I did, at least. Fiction television had returned. As a bona fide Trekkie, and Babylon 5-ie, I was willing to overlook some of the show's shortcomings and just bask in the knowledge that my television was going to show me something besides that reality TV world of confessionals, alliances, backstabbing, and weeping… oh the weeping. Lost hit the airwaves in 2004. The following year, ABC aired Invasion and NBC came up with Surface. These shows not only sucked, but didn't have the decency to try to be original. The guiding strategy of the reality era hadn't left with their shows' popularity, "Hey that worked, let's make twenty more shows just like that!" The shows were not renewed for second seasons.

Like Invasion and Surface, Jericho appears to have a severe case of what I'm going to call Formulaic Primetime Fantasy-Drama Syndrome, or FPFDS. Yes, they're addictive. And, yes, they're a refreshing change from reality television, but we can't encourage them. I'm a fan of this trend of sci-fi and fantasy TV shows, but if it's stagnating already, that's not a good sign.

The problem isn't Jericho, it isn't even Surface. The problem is that TV is, at its heart, all about money. An inventive show is less likely to be picked up than a show that has a strong proven demographic already attached to it. This is not new information, particularly for anyone who has ever been a fan of a TV show of the FOX network.

If the past few years is any indicator, the audiences of these types of shows are a little harder to fool than others. LOST has its problems, but still manages to be interesting. Whereas the first round of copycat shows was scrapped after a season. My concern is for that idea that never got to have a pilot. There may have been a really creative show in the works that didn't make it because Jericho tested better.

These things usually work themselves out. It's not all bad news, either. While LOST may be getting stale, the new season of Battlestar Galactica has begun, and NBC's Heroes is showing a lot of promise. In the end, Jericho is going to show us something new or get canned. It's a shame. I actually like the premise. I like it less when I can predict almost every line of dialogue.

Fun With Recylced TV

Now you, too can get in on that sweet advertizing cash. Just follow these simple steps to create your own Primetime Fantasy-Drama.

1. Start with a series of interconnected characters.
A group of people connected in ways they may not even understand are brought together in a random fashion. Rich people, poor people, even people of different skin colors. Not too many ugly people, though. One or two at most, you know, for comic relief or something.

2. Put the characters in danger, isolated, paranoid, co-dependent.
This is what your show is all about. Something beyond their control or even their understanding has turned their world upside-down. They might not get along, but they have to work together. This is where your show-spanning rivalries will start. Hot-shot, no rules hero guy and dependable, "let's stick together, gang" hero guy will go at it immediately. If they seem to survive just by luck, that's fine. We'll come back to that later.

3. Let loose the amorphous antagonists.
Nothing's creepier than a crazy enemy you can't see or don't understand. These bad guys don't wear a uniform, they walk among the good characters of your fantasy-drama, gathering information and offering tantalizingly small bits of evidence to their true identity every few episodes. Your characters get even more paranoid. Don't forget the obligatory witch-hunt episode.

4. Slowly unravel the mystery.
Usually the obsession of one or a handful of characters, the mystery of their situation will be explored and enlightenment will be achieved, though usually at a high cost (Kill off your least likeable character, or the actor who's asking for a raise). Reveal things only in short bursts, and only during sweeps. Go ahead and try to explain away some of the weird stuff you did in earlier episodes. When in doubt, there's probably an internet group already deciphering the mystery and predicting the show's outcome. Steal their stuff.

5. Throw in some sex.
Not quite ready to reveal the next chunk of the mystery? Have two of your main characters totally do it. Fans of the show will watch anyway, but the writing is easier. Plus, it's even more interesting because you might actually be dealing with a "last man on earth" situation.

6. Don't forget the end of season paradigm shift.
Everything. You. Know. Is. Wrong. You have to end the season with enough information to blow their minds, but enough wiggle room for a new set of mysteries next season. Everything must change, but stay essentially the same, after all, new sets are expensive. And if it needs to be said, someone must die, and several other characters must almost die. Tune in next season to find out who bit it.