Paul's Blog

2009-08-21T16:46:00.001-07:00

Belgian Dubbel (notes)

2008-12-21T11:14:00.000-08:00

Ingredients.
Yeast: White Labs #500 Trappist

Method: Countertop partial mash. BYO took the link down. Will post a doc here later.

Brew date: 12/1/08

Mash temp: 159 (->148)
Sparge temp: 180 (->158)

OG: 1.072-4 (much higher than recipe estimated).

Additional sugar in the recipe made for a very contaminable wort, so I aerated very vigorously for a solid minute before pitching the yeast. Placed glass carboy in a cabinet with a 40W bulb to maintain a decent temperature at night.

Maintained 67-70 degree temp for the first day and krausen activity started at roughly 24 hours. Weather dropped the house temperature to 58-60 at night, so subsequent primary fermentation happened in 65-68 degrees. Krausen didn't "blow out" as it did on prior brew.

Racked to secondary (bucket) on 12/10/08. Tasted remaining trub; some sourness in the yeast had me worried about contamination.

Let fermentation continue at house temp (no bulb), but towelled the enclosure for some semblance of insulation.

Bottled 12/20/08. Tasted the hydrometer sample and brew was delicious, with a hint of carbonation already present.

FG: 1.012-4. So ABV should be between 8 - 8.5% (quite surprising)

Slight mishap when adding the bottling sugar: a stray drop from the side of the pot landed in the brew. Unlikely to contaminate the batch, but I'll know the cause if this occurs.

# of 22 oz bottles filled: 21. Placed by pellet-stove to maintained higher temp for the first few days. Will put in a cool room around Friday.

Overall, should be a very successful batch and quite possibly a personal favorite. The flavors are much cleaner and harmonious in this recipe, since less emphasis was placed on hops, which the seven bridges kits just don't seem to handle well. May need to build on this recipe.

Gurren Lagann and ... Brewing?

2008-12-01T14:24:00.000-08:00

After completing the first season of Honey & Clover, I'm watching a couple of series in tandem. Dennou Coil and Tengen Toppa Gurren Lagann. Both are fairly light-hearted and fall outside of the "slice of life" anime I've gravitated toward lately. Dennou Coil has a definite Hayao Miyazaki innocence in its premise, combined with some creative twists on the concept of "augmented reality" (a constant virtual world visually overlayed upon RL). The other, Gurren Lagann, falls squarely in the shonen mecha genre but is rather clever & has a great set of characters. Gainax even pokes fun at itself on more than one occasion, even lampooning it's own ecchi tendencies in one of the episodes so far. When I get tired of the shonen/fanservice overload, I switch to Dennou Coil, then back to TTGL when I need a kick.

Anyway, the above image was found on the BSS fansub site, and I thought it uncannily encapsulated a combination of my current interests. Looks like another brewer out there likes his/her TTGL!

Microblogging is killing this blog

2008-10-21T15:55:00.000-07:00

My activity on Twitter, which eventually lapsed to Facebook (I should really be updating my statuses via Twitter but forget constantly) has all but killed my desire to sit and compose long blog entries. I'm not sure how I feel about that yet.

In a sense, blogging feels like a good exercise, both in terms of compositional practice and in the attention I pay to topics that would become material for the entries. On the other, blogging can sometimes feel inefficient or futile when one's readership is so small and one's topics are so personal and/or esoteric.

In any case the rest of the current entry will serve as a brewing log, and a short one at that.

I bottled my IPA on Sunday evening (19th) which in retrospect was probably a few days early, since I'd forgotten that the initial brew was put into fermentation on a Tuesday. No incidents whatsoever during the bottling process, although I really could use a second pair of hands to tip the bucket for the final gallon of siphoning. Unfortunately the siphon usually occurs around 11PM, when the house is asleep, so I have to rely on my tenuous dexterity (and some luck) to get the job done.

Final gravity was 1.013, which probably would have dropped a couple of .001 if I had waited a couple of days.

Here's the calculation of the ABV:

ABW = 76.08(OG-FG)/(1.775-OG)
ABV = ABW (FG/.794)

So ABW = 4.774
ABV = 6.09%

Side note: the thickness of the trub was roughly 2 inches... quite noticeably thicker than the previous batch, which leads me to think that the Porter's original gravity was deficient resulting in less yeast generation.

First true partial mash experiment

2008-10-01T20:40:00.000-07:00

Using the instructions laid out on BYO, I undertook my first real partial mash brew last night. I don't consider the last porter batch a "real" mash, since I was largely clueless about how much water to use, how to keep the temperature at a consistent 150, and how to sparge effectively. The OG without the extract was probably pretty deficient, and I could taste the astringency from oversparged husks until the beer matured. The brew eventually turned out fine, but I knew I'd flubbed the mash & sparge steps and wanted to do better.

This last batch, an IPA, went extremely well, with only a couple of hitches.

The spigot on my mash container is a bit on the slow side, and my grain bag constantly sunk down to the valve, restricting the flow when I needed to drain the wort. Re-circulating didn't seem to work as conceptualized in the instructions since the bag was not the floating filter that I'd envisioned... perhaps it depends on the malt? In any case the wort cleared nicely in the boil, making this is my clearest batch to date.

I plan to do less re-circulating on the next batch, since my bag is fine enough to keep most, if not all, of the husk out of the wort and the filter concept just doesn't seem to work with my 3-gallon container.

I underestimated the amount of ice needed and have learned to ere on the side of too much ice, rather than too little. The wait for the final drop from 85 to 75 was excruciatingly slow without it.

As much as I tried to pre-filter the wort before it went through the funnel mesh, the pour into the fermenter still ground to a halt several times, requiring vigorous stirring to get it all in. Not sure what to do about this except switch to 100% whole hops (my bittering hops were pellets).

Anyway, here's the recipe I used (with the exception of the mashing which used BYO's method).

Also, I've decided that unless some compelling reason presents itself, I will not rack the beer to a secondary fermenter. The step seems useless as far as clarification goes, and it actually introduces another window for contamination. From now on the plastic bucket will solely function as a bottling bucket.

~~ Some personal notes on the batch, for future reference ~~

Mash and sparge water volume: 5.87 quarts (based on the BYO guideline of 1.375 quarts per pound of grain). Obviously eyeballed the volume.

Initial mash temp: 159, dropping to 147-8 in the grain. Ered on the side of a lower temp to increase fermentability.

Sparge temp: 180, dropping to 167 in the grain bed.

OG: 1.057-8. Right on target.

Aerated much more vigorously before and after yeast pitch, and also allowed the yeast a full 12 hours to warm up prior to pitch.

At 18 hours, krausen has started to form. Wort is nice and clear.

Teleslug!

2008-09-18T10:39:00.000-07:00

Back before the web was established as the de facto transactional system for students at UCSC, most enrollment activity consisted of navigating a phone tree, and calling for help when the tree was deficient (which was often... class swaps were usually a nightmare requiring manual intervention).

Brandon McInnis apparently used this system quite a bit, enough for it to enter into his music repertoire. The track certainly brings back memories.

OK, iTunes 8 is nice but...

2008-09-11T10:16:00.001-07:00

For Mac users who really don't care to see Genre in their browser here's how to disable it. Kinda ridiculous that they took this out of the preferences UI.

Why MMORPGs basically suck

2008-09-04T10:46:00.001-07:00

2:30 onward really sums it up quite nicely.

And yes, I am aware of the apparent contradiction of spending upwards of 2 years in an MMO and making this declaration. People are complicated, eh?

Plans for the next batch

2008-09-02T13:26:00.000-07:00

My partial mash Porter was bottled this past Saturday, and as far as I can tell from a "sneak" drink at bottling time, will taste great in about a week. I'm very impressed by the improved clarity of the brew and I want to give this a go with a paler variety of ale again.

My next attempt will be a partial mash IPA, because I just like the style and I'm encouraged by the prospect of a clearer batch. I've studied up on a better partial mash technique posted at BYO, which to me sounds optimal for my purposes. I get the fun and flexibility of using a wider variety of grain, improved clarity, and more manageable equipment requirements than the full grain method. As much as it intrigues me, I really don't think I have the drive to go full grain. Maybe when I have a few more months of partial mashing experience? It just seems to open up a very time-consuming and, to my taste, overly complicated area of the hobby.

In addition to changing my mashing method, I plan to reduce fermentation to one step. The last racking to secondary seemed superfluous when the brew was mostly clear to begin with. Why introduce another potentially contaminating step? I also plan to use the new hydrometer I received for my birthday (thanks, Zak!). It's time to start taking OG and FG readings on these experiments.

Good luck at the debates, McCain.

2008-08-29T21:32:00.000-07:00

...especially after attempting to deflate such a speech with what is becoming increasingly perceived as a huge political blunder for the party (a few ignorant voters excluded, I suppose, but those probably aren't going to swing the election).

Amazing.

Ron finally did it.

2008-08-20T19:22:00.000-07:00

My favorite poet, Ron Silliman, has finally fully published a work he started back in '79. The Alphabet (in it's entirety) is ready for pre-publication orders. I never thought I'd see his work gathered into a single volume, but had my hopes up after Age of Huts came to fruition. Nevertheless, I'd been picking up whatever fragments I could find over the years.

It's hard to describe how momentous his accomplishment is. I honestly think poets will look back on his work as current schools of poetry look back on Zukofsky, although I'm not quite sure if he would take that as a compliment or not. In any case, kudos to one of the most important poets in the past 3 decades.

Fighting Games... Don't get them. Neither does Yahtzee.

2008-08-20T13:19:00.000-07:00

Today's modern equivalent of ping pong or chess, I suppose? I guess I can understand the appeal, but I still think the fanbase exceeds the merit of the genre.

In any case, Yahtzee finally reviewed Soul Calibur IV. Check it:

Anticipation...

2008-08-18T13:29:00.000-07:00

Sometimes it is commensurate with the object of desire, and ... at other times it exceeds it, leaving disappointment in its wake when the object falls short.

I've been looking forward to trying my new IPA batch, but after sipping a few of the bottles I filled on Thursday of last week, I don't think extract kits are going to cut it for the more amber varieties of ale. This one basically tastes like an "estery" Belgian dubbel with more hops. It's decent, but definitely not an IPA. The character of the hops and yeast may improve over time in the bottle, but the malt just isn't right for the style. Live and learn, I guess.

Edit 8/20/08 - After waiting for the full week after bottling, I'm more confident that this IPA will improve with a bit more time in the bottle. It currently tastes like an IPA (yay!), with a little of the esters still peeking through. I expect that flavor to diminish as the yeast goes dormant and more of it drops out of the brew. Also, the hops have become noticeably less astringent. I guess I wasn't expecting these initial flavors because the raw Stout had masked much of it due to the strength of the roasted malt. Patience, young padawan.

So I've reverted to a darker brew for my next batch and purchased a partial-mash Porter (more grain, less extract). The preparation went quite well. The extra steeping and sparging steps weren't excessively complicated and resulted in a cleaner wort, at least in my perception. There seemed to be much less hot break, probably because less extract was used (4 pounds or so, I believe). Unfortunately, the sales assistant at the homebrew shop also gave me whole hops this time, which derailed a little experiment with whirlpooling that I tried during the transfer to fermentation.

Whirlpooling the wort allows you to siphon the liquid into the fermenter and leave the trub in the center of the kettle (rather than using a filtering funnel), which purportedly works well and avoids waste... as long as you don't have hops petals floating in your brew to clog up the siphon. I had to revert to the meshed funnel, which resulted in 4 gallons of liquid in the fermenter due to the sizable volume of unfilterable sludge at the bottom. This loss of volume bugged the hell out of me, so I added a gallon of sterile distilled water before pitching the yeast.

In any case, this batch started fermenting much more quickly than my last (24, instead of 48 hours), which I'm hoping is a good sign. I suspect that some of the esters in the flavor of my IPA might have been caused by stray yeast infiltrating the wort before the ale yeast could take a foothold. Here's hoping the good yeast will dominate this time.

Another object of my anticipation was the much-hyped German board game Agricola, which Z-Man games had announced it would be publishing in February of this year. After seeing the date pushed back month after month, I'd essentially forgotten about the pre-order I'd placed. And since my card was charged back in January, the shipping notification I received from them this month almost felt like ... an early birthday present!

I was actually unable to play the game for a few days after I'd received it due to various projects, including the above brewing activities and a fence that needed to be replaced & reposted (fuuunn).

So I'd been scratching my head over the instructions every other night or so and finally managed to sit down for a solo session last night to make heads or tails of the rules. The rulebook is rather poorly written, opting for a scoping structure of overall goals > phase/round description > action descriptions > scoring > appendix (containing detailed explanations of all cards). This works in concept, once you know the game, but they really should have included a brief walkthrough of one or two rounds to provide an overall picture of how it all fit together.

Anyhow, crappy documentation aside, I can say that the hype was entirely warranted for this game, and I'm not surprised it has finally dethroned Puerto Rico as the #1 ranked game on boardgamegeek.com (which hasn't happened since circa 2002). I'm tempted to introduce this to our casual gaming circle soon, since I'm getting a little bored with the usual Carcassonne and Ticket to Ride fare we've been playing. The only problem is that the components are a bit too numerous and colorful and could prove too tempting for a group of spectating toddlers and 5-year-olds. But I like the lower-key competition in this one (compared to TtR), which could be more relaxing for some of the players who are more prone to Analysis Paralysis and hand-wringing when the pressure ramps up.

25 Annoying Things About Non-Gamers

2008-08-07T20:49:00.000-07:00

Every single item, from 1 to 25, is spot on. Bravo!

Strings

2008-08-06T22:27:00.000-07:00

While watching the finale to this season's So You Think You Can Dance, the last group piece, choreographed by Mia Michaels (the most talented contemporary choreographer alongside Wade Robson) was performed to a Vitamin String Quartet cover of Hallelujah to great effect.

You would not have recognized it as a Paramore tune, unless you're a fan of punk pop, in which case I would implore you to listen to something else. I didn't recognize it as a cover until I googled around a bit. It was certainly a beautiful piece of music (the cover, that is, not the original which I had the misfortune of finding on YouTube).

Well I must have been living under a rock because this "Quartet", actually a protean group of string artists under the Vitamin label, have been creating cover albums for quite awhile now and their library is amazingly extensive, spanning all genres from David Bowie to Radiohead to ... Disturbed. It literally runs the gamut, and I'm still digging through their collection.

One of my readers will be interested to know that they've made no less then four Foo Fighters tribute albums.

At the moment I'm pondering whether to buy the Bowie or the Massive Attack tribute. That's right, Massive Attack. And yes, it owns.

Most if not all of their albums are fully streamable on Lastfm. Yes, this includes one of the Foo Fighters tributes (/eyeroll).

What eyeroll?

Random. Beer Update. Go!

2008-07-29T22:01:00.000-07:00

Is this thing on?

Ok, let's see... Beer. Yeah, beer.

Stout's been done for at least a week, and it's delicious. More than the typical "passable" ale for a first-timer. This one is actually quite tasty, which surprises me.

So now that I've gone through most of the 12oz. bottles and have given away a few of the 22oz (like any self-respecting homebrewing friend-spammer), I've started a new batch.

Preparing the IPA went much more smoothly. I decided to work with 2.5 gallons of wort and add chilled distilled water at the end of the boil to bring the temperature down. Although it only managed to drop the temp to roughly 100 degrees, the cool-down period was decreased substantially, and I "fussed" over the wort quite a bit less which also lowered the chance of contamination.

The only hitch I encountered was during the transfer to the fermenter. Much like the last batch, this one contained a substantial amount of hops sediment which clogged the built-in sieve in the funnel, requiring quite a bit of stirring and scooping to get the last couple of gallons into the container. I need to find some method of filtering the wort before it gets to the funnel sieve. Or... not. It really depends upon how much I want to fret over this aspect of the process.

The batch was placed into fermentation on Sunday night and the yeast became visibly active approximately 48 hours after the pitch. I don't enjoy this long wait (and potential contamination window), so I plan to brew a yeast starter on my next batch. Not too difficult, really... It just requires an extra 24-hour buffer to prime the yeast before beginning the brew.

I've gradually come to the realization that there is a fine balance to homebrewing, one which varies from person to person, between the scientific need for precision and control and the artistic ability to just roll with the process and let some of the elements fall where they may. I'm obviously still seeking that balance, which will probably come with more practice.

For now, I just want a process that feels enjoyable yet somewhat controlled, from start to finish, and I think I'm close to getting that down.

You Suck at Photoshop

2008-07-28T20:58:00.000-07:00

I think I'm a latecomer to the series, but I'm totally fascinated by the bizarre melding of quasi-PS-tutorial and mostly dark humor. The guy who performs these (Donnie Hoyle) is obviously brilliant, from the scripting, to the delivery and acting (not the mention the hollow basement reverb). Wonderfully, depressingly funny stuff. Highly recommended.

Shiki Shiki Schweine...

2008-07-24T12:55:00.000-07:00

I think the screencap says enough.

Bottled.

2008-07-22T10:07:00.001-07:00

I've bottled my batch as of Saturday evening. Now comes the hard part. Waiting...

Ok, I did cheat yesterday and cracked a bottle open. A little raw (still on the sweet side from the bottling sugar), but the carbonation is coming in nicely and the beer tastes like it's shaping up to be a very good stout!

And this in spite of all of my little snafus during the brew process and a late transfer to secondary fermentation.

My next batch will be an IPA, although Greta warned me that the malt that 7 Bridges includes in their kit might be a bit on the caramelly side for the style. Knowing this, I might try dry-hopping during secondary fermentation.

The Hip Hop Files

2008-07-19T09:50:00.001-07:00

A little interesting viewing:

Courtright 2008

2008-07-14T15:23:00.000-07:00

I haven't been able to attend the Courtright trip every year due to various circumstances, but I was glad to have the opportunity to come out this year.

This iteration of the camp was somewhat more relaxing because of a variety of factors. The weather was comfortable, for one, and the temperature was low enough to keep most of the bugs away. A permanent porta-john has been installed at the site now, so there wasn't any need to scurry around with a shovel looking for an adequate "squatting" site while avoiding used spots (always fun to do at night -_-). The firearms afficcionados also decided to discharge their weapons in a more remote area, away from camp.

Since Dad and I were late-comers, we ended up at site that was a bit removed from the main hub, which was actually OK with me. The basic reason I've attended the campout in past years has been to spend time with Dad and chew the cud, and to get in some fishing. I've never really gotten into the other aspects of the event that some of the younger attendees have gravitated toward in past years... firearms, drinking, "dipping," and generally flailing the testosterone around.

I pretty much feel like myself most of the time, so I don't have that pent up need to "unwind" in various ways when I'm away from the family, but to each his own, I guess. Don't want to disparage or anything... I just feel more comfortable hanging with the older more sedate crowd, and I'm actually kinda glad that Dan set a "no alcohol" rule last year to settle things down a bit.

Anyhow Dad & I had a good time riffing our ideas, thoughts, philosophies, rants, memories while driving up and down the mountain, hiking to and from camp, and idling by the fire. He's a really fascinating guy, and I feel like I learn a little more about him every time I do this with him.

All in all, I had a great time and hope to be able to do it again next year.

Jack Spicer poems up at poetrymagazine.org

2008-07-14T15:10:00.000-07:00

Saw the post over at Silliman's blog and thought I'd put it here for my own future reading:

http://www.poetrymagazine.org/search_author.html?query=6473

I've always admired Spicer's bizarre concept of composition, and I do enjoy reading his work occasionally.

Here's my favorite of the poetrymagazine bunch:

"Any fool can get into an ocean..."

by Jack Spicer

Any fool can get into an ocean

But it takes a Goddess

To get out of one.

What's true of oceans is true, of course,

Of labyrinths and poems. When you start swimming

Through riptide of rhythms and the metaphor's seaweed

You need to be a good swimmer or a born Goddess

To get back out of them

Look at the sea otters bobbing wildly

Out in the middle of the poem

They look so eager and peaceful playing out there where the

water hardly moves

You might get out through all the waves and rocks

Into the middle of the poem to touch them

But when you've tried the blessed water long

Enough to want to start backward

That's when the fun starts

Unless you're a poet or an otter or something supernatural

You'll drown, dear. You'll drown

Any Greek can get you into a labyrinth

But it takes a hero to get out of one

What's true of labyrinths is true of course

Of love and memory. When you start remembering.

Final Fantasy XIII

2008-07-14T13:50:00.001-07:00

Strange news from Joystiq... It appears that FFXIII will not be exclusive to PS3 and will be released simultaneously on the Xbox 360.

I was hoping to leverage FFXIII as an "excuse" to get a new console, but it appears I might be able to save $400 and still play the game.

That said, if the 360 RROD's again, my Microsoft gamesmanship might come to a close regardless of this title.

Age of Conan... ouch!

2008-07-09T09:36:00.001-07:00

I checked on this digg titled "How to Outsell WoW" out of idle curiosity, and it turned out to be a humorous Age of Conan video. However... I was floored by the comments. It's actually quite disappointing that Age of Conan is shaping up to be such a stinker. Despite my aversion to MMOs, I was hoping to check this one out to see if it offered anything different. Looks like it needs to "season" a little before it's ready for prime time.

Some updates

2008-07-05T21:24:00.000-07:00

My next foray into anime hasn't been quite as rewarding as Mushishi, but has been enjoyable nonetheless.

I'm nearly finished with Planetes, a 26-ep series about the life trajectories of a team of "orbital debris" collectors. The episodes start unevenly, focussing on "wacky" interpersonal situations but eventually get to the pith around the middle of the series, where some interesting collisions occur between Hachimaki's personal ambitions to achieve escape velocity from his old world, and the ethical/political ramifications of the space race that is giving him this very opportunity.

It's unfortunate that they had to waste a few episodes on what I consider to be fluff... albeit they do flesh out some of the characters a bit more and give a fuller sense of the bureaucratic posturing that permeates their work environment.

Edit (7/6/08): After viewing the final 5 episodes of the series, my opinion of the story arc is much more favorable. The focus changed from political strife and intrigue to something more deeply personal, revolving around Hachimaki's increasing estrangement from humanity, or rather his perception of humanity. His "epiphany" is a bit corny, but Tanabe's rather gritty self-discovery and encounter with hard realism defuses what could have become an Evangelionesque farce. All in all, the series picks up the pace furiously in the end and really conveys a moving message to ponder after the viewing is done. I'd rate this as a "worth owning." The slim pack is nicely priced, too, so I might pick this one up.

So... beer. As of last night, I've set my first batch of homebrew to fermentation. I did the whole thing solo while the family slept, and I learned a few things in the process. It takes a ridiculously long time to get 5 gallons of water to boil, even using 2 burners, on high. It takes an even longer time to get these 5 gallons to cool down to a decent 75 degree temp for the yeast pitch at the end of the process. And carrying a 5 gallon pot of boiling wort to the bathtub is not something I would really care to repeat.

So... when using malt extracts, I think I'm going to simply boil a couple of gallons of water and go through the normal process, then add chilled distilled water at the end to drop the temp. I also made a mental note to aerate the wort a bit more vigorously, since I think I killed my first yeast pitch with a combination of high temperature and bad aeration. In any case, the second "emergency" yeast pitch this morning set the fermentation process underway nicely. It's still bubbling and emitting a pleasant odor of hoppy goodness.

In case you can't guess from the color, it's a stout.

On the gaming front I've finally let my Xbox 360 RROD permanently (no more towel tricking) and filed a repair order with Microsoft. In the meantime, I'm dragging out older titles such as the Shin Megami Tensei games I never opened, and some old dusty consoles, including my Dreamcast and Sega Saturn. Hunter's been getting a real kick out of Samba De Amigo, which I hear is getting a remake on the Wii. I don't know about using those nunchuks as... maracas >.> Why suspend disbelief when you can play the real deal? Now if only I could get "La Vida Loca" out of my head again ...

We've also been raising a Seaman, but had to start over when a certain someone shut down the machine during the save process. Doh! RIP Seaman #1. Scout is very enthusiastic about raising Seaman #2.

Mushishi and Sublimity

2008-06-22T13:50:00.000-07:00

The texts that have brought me the most enjoyment and fascination have always been those that confront me with an inscrutable strangeness while themselves modeling encounters with the ineffably strange. For me, these push the boundaries of the act of reading and somehow make me feel changed from having read them.

Viewing Mushishi definitely fell into this category of experience for me.

This anime consists of a series of 26 stories that are mostly self-contained and set in what seems to be the late Edo period (though some of the clothing seems anachronistic in places). The main character is a peripatetic wanderer named Ginko whose profession as "Mushishi" impels him to catalog and contain the Mushi, a life form that both precedes and exceeds our known spectrum of living beings. In the first episode, Ginko describes them with a curiously recursive anthropomorphic analogy: if humans are represented by the middle finger of the hand, which is the furthest point from the heart, and microbes are at the base of the wrist, then the Mushi would be somewhere near the chest.

Sounds fairly formulaic enough, until our first encounter with the Mushi actually takes place. Their first visual appearance occurs in a scene where a child, practicing his calligraphy, watches with exasperation as his Kanji once again float off of the page and prance around the room in a growing parade of loping life forms. This same trope of "living writing" recurs in one of the final episodes, as does another materialization of the Mushi: as a parasitic inhabitant of the human eye. I think these are very purposful "bookend" parallels but haven't been able to fully analyze their significance yet. In any case, this isn't your typical series of ghost stories.

Each episode consists of increasingly bizarre manifestations of the Mushi and the situations they create for their hosts, or the society that surrounds the host. Sometimes these situations are seemingly symbiotic, only to reveal deeper problems that have gone unaddressed in the host or his surroundings. At other times an initially hostile infection or possession by Mushi comes to be understood as the correct course for all involved. This isn't as clinical or strictly parasitic as my description might sound, however. The series inhabits an entrancing gray area between zoology, epidemiology, and mysticism, something I haven't experienced since Princess Mononoke, and a few other works.

[SPOILER]

For instance one of the later episodes portrays a seaside village where those who are known to be on the verge of death are sent to an offshore site to be "offered" to the ocean which, on a full moon, will produce small egg-like spheres. A mother is then chosen to ingest one of these eggs and give birth to their "revived" relation. Ginko of course eventually discovers that a form of Mushi is producing these eggs which contain a homunculus-like replica of the living being that was absorbed. The protagonist is called to the village by a woman who struggles with a bit of an identity problem. She has given birth to, and is raising, her own mother, which occasions questions of teleology, the limits of parental love, immortality through progeny, the profound yet familiar "otherness" of one's own child, and so on... I could write an article for each of these episodes, to be honest, so I'll end the synopsis here.

[END SPOILER]

The Mushi and the underground "lifestreams" that they cluster around are as alluring as they are absolutely uncaring, often forcing the character into a tricky negotiation between transformative fascination and self-preservation... one that sometimes pushes the boundaries of what it means to be human.

This simultaneous dwarfing and integration of the individual into the scale of an unfathomably uncaring yet absolutely living universe reminds me somewhat of the concept of the Sublime in the philosophy and aesthetics of the Romantic period, namely that of Arthur Shopenhauer in The World As Will and Representation. But this concept in western philosophy gained much of it's ideological heft by centralizing the self and it's pursuit of this experience, that of it's own staggering insignificance in relation to the larger external world.

In the narrative of Mushishi, the self is usually woven into a larger social fabric, whose intersections with the Mushi are quite a bit more complex than a generalized feeling of wonder and individual insignificance. The Mushi operate as protonatural "drivers", functioning both as a trope that mirrors human problems and as a catalyst toward achieving a certain balance or homeostasis in the character's interaction with extra-human forces.

Where the western sublimist would place the distinct self against a limitless background, the brand of sublimity in Mushishi posits a complex social self in the gravitational pull of an unknown, but constantly interactive, transformative, and sometimes destructive, attractor which is equally boundless.

This sublimity is truly stunning to experience.

With each episode, I've felt compelled to write something until the conclusion of the series essentially obligated me to put something here. Though I feel that I might have diluted the experience of the show by academically blathering about it at such length, I do encourage any thinking reader/viewer with an analytical bent, a penchant for the sublime, and an open mind, to seek out this series in whatever format they can. They won't be disappointed.

Father's Day Rocked

2008-06-15T21:40:00.000-07:00

I woke up this morning and immediately grinned as I heard Scout bellowing out Happy Birthday and getting sooshed by Hunter. The smell of coffee wafted into the room.

I dozed for awhile because this was part of their gift, letting Daddy "sleep in" until the late hour of 8:30. And it honestly felt later as I tossed & turned and tried to remain in bed while the family prepared breakfast and whatever else was in store. Hunter had been more excited about today than anyone, and it had become contagious.

He finally burst into the room with the breakfast tray and a hug, but didn't stay long since he needed to assist Zak with the gifts in the living room. Scout kept me company, and we shared a croissant and some breezy conversation about current events (i.e. the recent trip to the bakery).

After we finished picking croissant flakes out of the sheets, we stumbled into the living room for the grand unveiling of the gifts.

Hunter had made a decorative "stepping stone" at school, a baked disc of glazed dough with a largely symmetrical arrangement of glass "stones" on it's surface: green and purple, which Hunter had selected because he knew they were my favorite colors.

On the hearth lay an angular shape, covered by a quilt. As I lifted it, the first object that came to my attention was a T-shirt that read: "Better Brew For A Better World" on the front; and "I Brew Organic!" on the back. I blinked...and thanked them quizzically. Zak (patiently) directed my attention to the boxes beneath the shirt, the first of which contained a 5-gallon carboy.

The rest of the boxes, of course, contained the rest of the homebrewer's kit (plus a 7.5 gallon pot). Zak purchased this when she'd overheard me drop an idle thought about putting our warm garage to fermenting use. We'd never had the space in our prior homes to really entertain the hobby, but I had been thinking about it more recently.

Needless to say, I'm stunned... And very very happy.

Later in the morning, I was proud to watch how well Hunter performed at his first swimming lesson. He's been nervous in the pool and around bodies of water in general, so he and a friend have been enrolled in private lessons to get the acclimation process underway. He immediately clicked with the instructor, and I can tell that he's going to do well.

We polished off the day with an after-dinner walk to the ice cream shop.

This was, indisputably, my best Father's Day. Ever.

Zak, Hunter, Scout: I love you.

Whelp... It looks like I might have to get Rock Band

2008-06-14T22:38:00.000-07:00

Of all DLC albums they could put out this month, it had to be Doolittle. Christ... It's practically a mandate to buy the game now.

Cloth Car

2008-06-14T19:14:00.000-07:00

Word to those easily annoyed by pretentious gabbing: turn the volume down. Still a stunning concept to see in material form:

UCSC Students Are Funny

2008-06-13T08:54:00.000-07:00

One of my co-workers and longtime friends found a couple of empty kegs and some taps on her back patio yesterday evening, neatly placed (not tossed).

Considering this is graduation week and the Coors kegs were obviously deposited by someone who was... either an idiot or drunk, not to mention poor, she assumed UCSC students were involved.

So she decided to be the good samaritan and attempt to return the kegs to the anonymous depositers.

UCSC students have created a ucsc_chatter livejournal community, which they essentially use as a big bulletin board (slash flaming platform). Several AIS staff, myself included, check it periodically to keep tabs on what students are complaining about or simply for the entertainment value. My friend decided to put this livejournal to good use and posted this announcement.

And the rest is comedy.

Someone needed to say it...

2008-06-12T21:54:00.000-07:00

I really enjoyed the last few seconds of this. I'm sure there are many more gamers out there who are equally fed up with the behavior described. I, for one, have made a point to rate down, vote out, and set "avoid player" flags (and... a couple of times, file complaints) whenever I encounter this online and it's heartening to see other adults reacting in similar ways. Time to grow up, XBLers...

Would you Kindry?

2008-06-10T19:46:00.001-07:00

Don't bother if you haven't played Bioshock (shame on you).

Digg still has it... sometimes.

2008-06-10T09:29:00.001-07:00

The story is meh... but that comment is classic. Here's the full link.

Naked Gun intro via GTA IV

2008-06-07T18:19:00.000-07:00

I have... nothing to say.

The Artifacts of RPGs: So... What's With the Dice?

2008-06-06T09:54:00.001-07:00

Lara Crigger at 1up recently published a brief history of stateside RPGs (i.e. excluding JRPGs). I particularly enjoyed the final paragraph where she stated that many artifacts of bygone RPG technology need to fall by the wayside in the current and upcoming generations of the genre.

"Perhaps what RPGs need isn't reinvention but a good, hard kick in the ass. Forget the inventories and weapon stats and remember the storytelling, the roleplaying -- the transformation of ordinary gamers into extraordinary heroes. Remember the magic."

I expect that some of this will happen "naturally" in due time, if only through sheer obsolescence.

My question is: why have some of these artifacts persisted for so long, and through so many generations of technology? What role are they fulfilling, even as they are thought to be fossilizing the genre? In a compelling article on relationship of D&D to its historical moment, Ray Huling over at the Escapist explores the dice rolling mechanic in particular, and in the process unveils an interesting pedigree in modern day RPGs:

"Because it evolved from tabletop wargames. When wargamers assault each other with massive armies of miniatures, they use dice to represent the element of chance in warfare. In the late '60s, a number of wargame designers - Mike Korn in Iowa, Dave Wesley and Dave Arneson in Minnesota, Gary Gygax in Wisconsin - pushed wargaming toward roleplaying. Wargames downscaled. Miniatures came to represent individual characters, rather than a collection of troops. When Arneson and Gygax published Dungeons & Dragons, it inherited wargaming dice. Fortunately, dice can also model inconsistency and differences in skill level in individual behavior. The randomness of D&D expresses a modern understanding of how people function."

In this context, the old mechanics of controlled, incremental statistics vs. dice-fueled randomness in RPGs can be interpreted as a means (initially intentional, then gradually unconscious) of modeling a concept of personal mastery and improvement on a historical stage where much of our fate is perceived as subject to circumstances that are mostly uncontrollable (by the individual).

Ray seems to imply that this core mechanic has been effectively re-purposed by "modern" concepts of individual dynamics and psychology. While this may be the case with RL roleplaying, I think the above perception of self in relation to historical circumstance is still largely prevalent in today's generation of videogame roleplayers.

Lara's rallying cry for a return to (or preservation of) heroism and "the magic" in RPGs expresses the primary appeal of the genre, one that is realized in a similar historical moment to Tolkien's own first imaginings of Middle Earth in the wake of his experiences in the first World War.

While the old technologies and mechanics that modeled this concept are finally on their last legs, the model itself is still very much a protected feature of the genre, and is consciously perceived as such.

I believe that, much like the Vietnam conflagration during the early stages of the D&D era, the current situation in Iraq has re-engaged our attention to the scale of personal heroism amid forces that have seemingly spiraled out of individual control.

In this sense, the heart of the RPG can be seen as a brand of escapism that allows geeks an alternate space to re-imagine the scope of individual, human agency. Like Lara and many other RPG fans, I do hope to see this heart of the genre preserved and more fully realized, even while the artifactual conventions that made it possible are gradually dropped as technology and expectations inevitably evolve.

GTA imitator takes a different angle

2008-06-05T09:38:00.001-07:00

Now that GTA IV has "seasoned" with players a bit, it has become the subject of a bit of backlash from those who miss the zanier aspects of the gameplay. Enter Volition Inc. and their perennially imitative series Saints Row. While Rockstar was honing the scope of their series and implementing a fun physics engine, Volition apparently decided to continue down the path GTA: San Andreas had trodden on the PS2.

There's something to be said for the approach, and it'll be interesting to see if this direction will earn Saint's Row a few more fans, although it still seems so imitative in all other aspects that it's difficult to perceive this game as anything other than a "ghetto," soulless, version of the real thing.

For instance, I doubt it'll ever inspire people to produce stuff like this:

Good visit

2008-06-04T09:44:00.000-07:00

Well, it took everyone some time to acclimate to being together, but the walls finally came down a bit yesterday as we all gathered at the Mills home up in Coarsegold for dinner. It was nice to laugh and kick back and just ... put our differences on the back burner for awhile.

I still feel a bit ideologically alienated at times. For instance Mike started discussing jehova's witnesses with Dad, expressing his frustration at how off-the-wall and seemingly arbitrary their beliefs are, particularly since they use the same bible as the evangelical christian canon (unlike mormonism). It was hard for me to listen to this and withhold my opinion since, in my view, evangelical christianity is just as selective, arbitrary, and "off-the-wall" in its usage of that text, which itself has been selectively pruned, reinterpreted, and falsely translated over the centuries.

It felt a bit like listening to a discussion about how many angels can dance on on the head of a pin when the listener doesn't believe in angels to begin with. You just get this futile desire to wake people up but you know you'll just end up offending them and reinforcing walls in the process.

But I try not to let that affect my respect for most of the individuals involved.

That and a good dose of humor helped to ease the tension as well ^_^

It was interesting to finally get some details on what Matt does out there in the Iraqi desert, something he wasn't too forthcoming about until I started prying during the ride back to Fresno. It certainly doesn't sound like a fun job, and I'm sure he's relishing his time off.

I (and several other members of the family) hope he'll take advantage of his GI Bill when he returns. It's frustrating to hear Mom push him toward vocational occupations or suggest that he go straight to the police academy. She seems stuck on the idea of avoiding school at all costs, which continues to baffle me.

Part of me wonders if this is rooted in a fear of exposure to new ideas. She still harbors a perception that university professors are responsible for my own atheism, so she may be trying protect Matt from the prodigality-inducing dangers of academia in that sense. But it feels fundamentally disrespectful, and I do wish she'd stop trying to limit the scope his life. That's not what parents are supposed to do.

In all, it was a good visit, if only because I got to share some laughs with my brother, goof off, talk about his job a bit, and just have some time together. I just wish some of this could be experienced without all the baggage that my parents bring, but that'll change once Matt becomes a civilian again and leads his own life.

RROD

2008-06-02T00:02:00.001-07:00

With my brother back from Iraq for a couple of weeks, I've taken a trip to Fresno to spend some time with him & basically goof off. When I arrived today, he had just returned from a camping trip with my other bro Mike, so he was in his hibernate-with-the-laptop mode again. The first words out of his mouth, besides "Hi" were: "So I got a new game. COD4!"

Well, all right! Glad I brought my Xbox along. Game on!

(Wait, he came back from a warzone and he wants to play... ah, never mind; it's all good! Game on!)

So I got it all rigged up to Mom's LCD monitor, hooked up an old router I'd given to her, and got through all the layers of ridiculous pseudo-security shit she had on her computer, without breaking said layers of pseudo-security mind you. When I leave, the crappy little computer will never know I was there. It'll continue merrily churning away for 5 minutes at startup like it always has.

I inevitably resent machines like this, and those who push the software to leave them in such a state. I usually also build up an inept frustration with the ISP who, in their attempts to make setup and security as idiot-proof as possible end up making their service completely inflexible and a general pain in the ass to do anything with besides hook up the modem straight into the PC.

What happened to the days when an ISP would hand you a modem, a password, and let you have at it? Speaking of which, I love you Cruzio, and I want you back! Perhaps we can talk soon?

Anyhow, I eventually got everything set up and played a quick game of Carcassonne, which had Dad spectating. Then I brought in Guitar Hero II to spice up the selection a bit. No one cared, really. I could hear the WoW currency clinks emanating from Matt's machine -_-

So I decided to bring in the big guns: the violent, the seedy, the please-ignore-Lola-it's-not-all-about-that-really-I-swear, Grand Theft Auto IV. And a couple of seconds into it I'm thinking 1280 x 1024 looks really fantastic as a native resolution, so much sharper than the interpolated stuff HDTVs give us in 720p.

As I was marveling at this, the game froze.

A weird jittery freeze, with scanlines going haywire and jutting out in moire hues. In a panic, I hit the eject button, thinking the game just didn't support the 1024 vertical resolution. The box remained frozen, so I shut it down, booted it up and changed the resolution to 1280 x 720 and inserted the game again. It froze at roughly the same point. And I repeated the power cycle only to be greeted by the dreaded:

In some weird sense, this is a relief. The box had been giving me fake dirty disc errors since I'd started playing Oblivion when it was released, and had continued randomly complaining about non-existent dirt on almost every game I'd played. Unfortunately that error isn't the ticket to a fresh (or... "refreshed") Xbox. No, that special treatment is reserved for Microsoft's attempt to defuse an icon that, in gamer parlance, has become synonymous with "Microsoft's hardware design fails".

Incidentally, here's the funniest RROD report I found on youtube. Priceless:

The guy's blog is um... fascinating!

Musing

2008-05-28T14:24:00.000-07:00

Just stumbled across this on an idle Digg, while Machinefabriek was droning in my ears:

Amazing

2008-05-23T11:21:00.001-07:00

Zak and I are both fans of So You Think You Can Dance, though Zak understandably is a bit more rabid about it than I am. The premiere for the new season aired last night, and I was skipping it since the early "audition" episodes of most of these shows usually don't interest me.

I was busy wasting my time with another Cops & Crooks session on GTA IV when Zak attempted to pull me away from my screen in order to look at her screen. I decided to keep playing, but a few minutes later it occurred to me that she rarely does this. I recalled some preview clips of a particularly interesting "popper" on the new season's trailers and figured he might have been the culprit.

I bit the hook, put the controller down, and asked her what it was. She pulled up the recording for me and this is what it held:

I'm stunned...(as were the judges apparently).

Zak pointed out how "intelligent" popping is, when done expertly like this, and I must agree. It's a highly idiosyncratic, playful intelligence that is uncommon in most other forms.

Realism, Satire, and Grand Theft Auto

2008-05-02T13:10:00.001-07:00

Rather than raising the same tired arguments concerning the graphic violence in the GTA series, the environmental realism in GTA 4 is actually drawing attention to the series as a legitimate form of social satire rather than bluntly irresponsible simulation.

Reviews of the prior games had attempted to convey this satirical nature to some extent, but these explanations usually fell a bit flat and carried an apologetic air about them, a comparatively awkward cop-out in the face of the "murder simulator" portmanteau.

Current reviews that explore this satirical angle of the game carry a bit more heft precisely because the satire can no longer be attributed to exaggeratedly cartoonish visuals or completely off-the-wall items and vehicles (e.g. flamethrowers and tanks). Rather, the demarcation as satire now needs to be discerned at the cultural level, suggesting a level of analysis and subjective distance that requires honest attention on the part of the reader.

One could call this an ethical uncanny valley, where the realism of the world the player inhabits only serves to make the player all the more unfamiliar with (and attentive to) the socio-cultural circumstances of their character.

Two of the best reviews on this subject are from Wired magazine (article written by none other than Clive Thompson whose blog I highly encourage readers to visit) and the New York Times.

digg Wired | digg NYTimes

Are We What We Play? Four essays about what happens when games get personal.

2008-05-02T11:27:00.001-07:00

In response to a call to ethics posted by blogger Steven Totilo (itself a response to questions raised in an interview with N’Gai Croal), several 1up.com contributors have written some very insightful musings on the intersections of subjectivity and gaming.

I wouldn't call them "essays" as the article does, but these are excellent reads nonetheless. It's quite edifying to see gamers taking a responsible and reflective stance on the effects of immersive gaming, particularly in the context of the Grand Theft Auto IV release. And I'm honestly flabbergasted to see this sort of eloquence coming from EGM reviewers. As Jennifer Tsao would put it, I suppose it's a matter of the proper "forum" for these conversations, which apparently doesn't include their printed publication.

Some of their discussions of the "parameters" that push the gamer past the identification threshold are particularly fascinating in the context of structuralist and post-structuralist theories of subjectivity in visual media. I haven't been keeping current on the scholarship in that area, but these types of conversations are an indication that definitive changes are brewing in the intersections of popular culture and visual subjectivity.

read more | digg story

Possibly returning to blogging... and life in general

2008-05-01T10:56:00.000-07:00

After wasting much of my time blogging about a virtual world, I've decided to have fun with my RL blog once more.

I've quit FFXI indefinitely, due to time constraints and the gradual realization that the game's function as a social environment was becoming massively overshadowed by the hours of work required to get anything accomplished there (beyond social networking). The costs were outweighing the benefits, many of my friends were quitting due to various circumstances, and I was paying $15 per month for something I just... didn't enjoy anymore.

Not to disparage MMO fans, but this seems to be the inevitable heat death of an MMO player. Jaded. Bemused at the time wasted. Missing friends.

I think this has turned me off of MMOs for a long while, at least until the formula for these virtual worlds changes. The experience wasn't entirely negative, but in hindsight the cumulative costs were not worthwhile.

The Man!

2006-08-30T22:57:00.000-07:00

I saw the one and only Frank Black (aka Black Francis aka Charles Thompson) tonight at the Catalyst at a 'sit-down show'. I really had no expectations for who would be up on stage (people from the new 'solo' group, or some of the Catholics, or...Joey?), or what set he would play (old solo work, Catholics, new solo work, Pixies?). But I was still surprised when he came out alone, with his acoustic guitar, and amped up.

This was, for me, the 'dream' concert... where I could sit up close, kick up my feet (literally), and listen to the man casually play whatever struck his fancy. And it was positively amazing.

It reminded me of one of his live sets recorded in London at the end of the Pixies phase and on the cusp of his solo career, back in '94 I believe. He had played through a huge portion of the Pixies songs with no accompaniment besides his acoustic guitar and shouted requests from fans. I think the only one he didn't play on that recording, regretfully, was 'Hey'. So it felt appropriate that he would be putting on similar performances on the verge of his new post-Catholics solo phase.

When he opened the set with 'Los Angeles', closed it a bit goofily, blaming the wine he was sipping (possibly Châteauneuf-du-Pape?) for his brother's 40th birthday, and moved on to 'Brackish Boy', then 'Holiday Song', I knew I was in for a ride.

No album or song was off-limits, although he did refuse to play 'St. Francis' on the grounds that it had "too many words". It was hard to gauge whether he was being theatrical, casually lazy and intimate, cool & distant, half-drunk, or some mishmash of all of these... but I didn't care. He was Frank (or, um, Charles).

He joked a few songs into the set that nearly every one of his songs ends in a minor chord, and warned any who "might be sensitive" to this. It became a running gag throughout the performance, and he would occasionally play alternate ending chords to 'prove' his assertion, then switch back. He also made an rather obscure joke about his adaptation of the 'Shrimp Song' from the Elvis Presley movie Girls! Girls! Girls!, before playing it.

He went on for a good 45-50 minutes with next to no pauses between songs, phasing from something like 'I Will Be Blue' into 'Wave of Mutilation' without missing a beat. He did throw out a few more Pixies crowd-pleasers, including 'Where Is My Mind', 'Nimrod Song', and 'Cactus, but mostly stuck to his semi-recent Catholics and solo work. I didn't recognize a few of his fresher songs since I don't own Honeycomb or Fast Man Raider Man yet... but probably will in the next month or so.

Highlights for me:

a disturbing a capella of 'Six-Sixty-Six' (forcing people to really swallow those bizarre apocalyptic Larry Norman lyrics and STFU). I always loved Charles for covering this since I shared a rather similar musical "upbrigning" to his and actually heard quite a bit of Larry's stuff when I was a kid.

'Bullet' (my absolute favorite FB & the Catholics song)...

All My Ghosts', the first track from his first Catholics album, which brought back all the memories of playing this for the first time after the long hiatus between Cult of Ray and this new incarnation... back when I was moving from NYC back to California, but flying back to NY on occasion to work in Brooklyn. The song carries a lot of idiosyncratic heft for me.

a solo acoustic rendition of 'Two Reelers'; something I never thought he'd play with such a setup

a chilling screamed chorus on the aforementioned 'Wave of Mutilation'

jaw-dropping falsettos on 'Massif Central' (better than the ones on the album)

a weird, slowed version of 'Headache' in a different key

Curiously, he didn't play anything from Pistolero which was a bit of a dissapointment. I'm particularly fond of his 'narrative songs' and there are two very strong tracks on that album that I think would have sounded amazing on the acoustic: 'So Hard to Make Things Out' and 'Billy Radcliffe'. Maybe next time... I'm seriously considering going to his 11/15 concert at the Fillmore in SF.

He played two closing songs after the standing ovation:

'Cactus', which was a favorite in my college days, especially when Zak was away in NYC.

His final closing was 'Manitoba', the "oh dear god, give us more of this, Frank" closing track from Show Me Your Tears. I think this blew the pre-Catholics and Pixies fans away as the crowd was much quieter than with the first set closer. People were still milling around the stage in disbelief after he left... a few begging for the guitar pick he left on the floor.

--

Full set list (glad someone wrote this down and posted it at FB.net):

Los Angeles
Brackish Boy
Holiday Song
Raider Man
California Bound
Humboldt County Massacre
Bullet
The Shrimp Song
Fitzgerald
The Swimmer
Headache
Where Is My Mind?
Sing For Joy
Six Sixty-Six
Horrible Day
I Burn Today
Massif Centrale
Living on Soul
All My Ghosts
Dead Man's Curve
Nimrod's Son
The Water Song
Two Reelers
I'll Be blue
Wave of Mutilation

encore:

Cactus
Manitoba

Hunter's first day at pre-school

2006-08-08T12:39:00.000-07:00

Israel Kamakawiwo’ole's rendition of 'Somewhere Over the Rainbow' was playing as Hunter and Zak walked out the door for Hunter's first day at school. I was dancing around with Scout in a sort of celebration but also to stave off the tears that were welling up when I thought about how quickly Hunter is growing... and how soon it will be before Scout is going off to school herself.

It gave me a sneak peek at what a wreck I'll be when they both go off to college.

But I'd never trade that mixed feeling for anything; the simultaneous pride, happiness, and heartbreak.

Labor Story

2006-06-06T13:59:00.000-07:00

It was early morning and Zak was now in the bathtub, dozing off at moments but mostly in a state of deep corporeal focus. I was kneeling over the edge of the water, pouring water over her to keep her warm and relaxed. My knees and back were on fire, and I was in and out of full consciousness as I waited for the next wave of contractions.

The whole labor party was exhausted but vigilant; Stephanie and Nikki had left the bathroom and retreated to the birthing room to give Zak and me some space. And it was a space I'll never forget, that point in the labor when I felt we were on the final crest, and it was just Zak and I, the water, and the baby... preparing. It was the moment I made myself remember to write down, much like a promise made to oneself in the middle of a dream as the awakening is coming on, a promise to bring something back.

The progress of the labor had been slower than we had expected for a second child. It was early morning, a little after 7AM on April 27th, nearly 12 hours after the labor had begun, and we were still uncertain of how much longer this would last. Zak's labor had started right as Hunter was being tucked into bed for the night, around 8:30PM. Within an hour or so, the contractions were definite enough for me to call in the team: Stephanie and Nikki for the labor, and Rachel to watch over Hunter while we were away.

I called the Sutter maternity center but didn't get the same anticipatory reception that I had with Hunter's birth. We didn't have the fortune of a midwife appointment during the early stages of labor as we had with Hunter, so prior arrangements with Sutter had obviously not yet been made. Their inital response was that they were booked, no vacancy, but that 'our business was important to them' (hm, ok). We tried to take this in stride, but it was more than a bit demoralizing. Prior experiences with Dominican hospital had not endeared us to the place, and it was difficult to imagine birthing there.

When the contractions became strong enough for a stroll around the block, I got a call from Rachel relaying a message from Sutter that a room had cleared and was available. Within about 45 minutes of walking by flashlight and measuring contraction intervals, we felt it was time to check in.

When we arrived shortly after midnight, the nurse checked Zak and estimated a 2cm dilation. So we resumed our strolling through the maternity center, walking slowly up and down the main set of stairs and the vacant hallways on the lower floor, and pausing for contractions that were strong enough to require full focus and vocalizations (low tones to drop the energy where it needed to go).

We felt we were steadily progressing until the nurse checked Zak again around 1:30 and still estimated a 2cm dilation. It was hard to take, but we did... I remembered the metaphor of the labyrinth from the Birthing from Within class years ago, when we had been preparing for Hunter. Our destination was certain, but the length of the journey and number of twists & turns were completely unknown. The only thing I could possibly hope to do for Zak at this point was to be fully present.

A little before 3AM, we decided to go home and progress there. Zak labored on the living room floor for 2 more hours before we felt the contractions were powerful and frequent enough to go back to Sutter. The nurse estimated a couple more centimeters of dilation at that point, and Zak continued what she was doing. We were no longer taking walks at this point. By 7AM, we were all exhausted and decided to try the bath.

This is where everything seemed to pause, right where I began the story. We all settled into it for awhile, waiting for the next move.

After about 30 minutes, Zak decided that the pause had lasted long enough and felt that the bath was actually slowing the labor. When she got out, the contractions indeed became much stronger and within minutes the tone of her vocalizations took on that unmistakable quality I'd heard when Hunter was arriving, the moans rising quickly and interrupted by the force of the contractions. Her body was ready to push. A nurse confirmed full effacement and 10 cm dilation.

We had to scramble, one of the nurses actually running into the hall to catch a midwife by the name of Marganne who was leaving another birth. She barely had time to get her gloves on as Zak pushed. Within 2 or 3 minutes, Scout arrived still cocooned in her water sack which hadn't broken during delivery.

Hunter arrived with Rachel later that morning, and Scout immediately took notice of her big brother, turning her head to track him as he spoke. He's a focal point whenever he's in her field of vision.

We all went home as a family that afternoon to begin our adventure.

Long time no post

2006-06-05T15:32:00.000-07:00

In the meager time that I have to blog, I end up squandering all of it on my FFXI blog and completely neglect this amorphous, self-conscious little personal blog, mostly because I'm the only one who reads it and I dislike journaling anything (I know my life, I don't need it transcribed for posterity).

So I guess I'll sum up my geek-life interests as of late.

I purchased an Xbox 360 a few weeks prior to the release of Elder Scrolls IV Oblivion; and yes, this was during the period where you couldn't actually find them in stores... I heard through the grapevine (i.e. some random sales associate at Gamespot) that you could get them at Circuit City on Sunday mornings occasionally when the consoles happened to ship in small batches to the outlet here. I lucked out when I arrived about 20 minutes prior to opening time and received a purchase voucher from one of the sales associates who was monitoring the storefront for Xbox campers. There were a good number of us, and yes, we were very much the sorry bunch of store-camping geeks you're visualizing us to be. I walked out of the store with a shiny new premium package and absolutely no games to play on it (woot?).

A few weeks later I played Oblivion, and after the initial shock factor of the graphics wore off, I inevitably started comparing it to Morrowind and found it lacking in many areas. Once I adjusted my mindset toward playing the game, I could enjoy it once again as a mission-based hack & slash, but I had irretrievably lost the immersion the game was striving for in its grandiose over-budgeted visuals and touted 'Radiant AI' (whatever). And it was back to playing FFXI for the most part after that, especially when the Treasures of Aht Urhgan expansion arrived. To reinforce my Oblivion-defiled RPG hardcoreness, I bought this T-shirt, which has elicited exactly 0 questions and 0 knowing nods of recognition in any of my circles.

Sometime between Oblivion and the FFXI release on the 360, my High Def visual ennui began (curse you, Microsoft)... The 360 looked relatively terrible on a standard definition television. The console demands an HDTV setup, but since these are still far from affordable (I'd rather buy a computer for $2000 thank you), I've settled for using the first-party VGA cable and a good quality 17'' CRT aperture grille monitor I had used mostly with the Dreamcast. The picture looks pretty good, although all games default to widescreen resolutions, so I lose quite a bit of screen real estate. Another drawback has been the ridiculous setup time. Since I have no dedicated gaming space other than the living room, my VGA monitor setup has to be erected and dismantled every time I play, and that monitor is seriously heavy.

So, to preserve my lower back and my sanity, I've been shopping around for a good affordable LCD monitor. I eventually settled on a BenQ FP202W and purchased it from Newegg (after a negative experience with a similar Sceptre monitor which I returned to Costco for a full refund), only to discover that none of the resolutions on the 360 scale well to any current widescreen VGA resolution... period. Since all affordable (read <= $500) widescreen monitors auto-adjust the image to competely fill the screen, and most of these have a native resolution of 1600 x 1050, I'm basically screwed. I'm in the process of auctioning off the FP202W (which is great for PC gaming, just not 360 gaming), and looking for a good 1280x1024 19'' LCD in the $300-or-less range. I'm losing $100 worth of monitor budget since I'll probably lose that amount on the auction. To compound my frustration, my auction has been delayed by a week due to a sheisty Ebay bidder who retracted his bid once he hit my reserve price, probably in hopes of swooping in on the auction at the last minute and winning with the lowest possible reserve. This is against Ebay ToS, so I reported him and re-listed my auction, since he'd basically ruined it.

Other than my stupid technological obsessiveness, I've been enjoying my life as a sleep deprived father of two. When I have some down time tonight (hopefully... Scout decided to stay up into the wee hours and game with me last night, so we'll see), I'll blog a labor story for anyone other than myself who might be reading. I'm just not in the proper mindset to do it now (programming and labor stories just don't occupy the same brain space).

It's amazing to watch the minute details of Hunter's development as a little person, and it occurred to me today that I'll never be able to witness this again, at least not on this scale. Once he starts going to school, I'll miss out on those obscure developmental moments we all have during those early years and never completely communicate to anyone, not only due to our facility with language at the time, but because of the general ineffability of some those experiences. He'll gradually start to become a truly independent being with his own inscrutabilities. Watching Scout's growth will be different, since I'll be seeing it through expectations and assumptions that I have yet to develop, but inevitably will develop as I watch Hunter.

Gaming and Academia

2006-03-20T22:03:00.000-08:00

A few years ago, I pursued the (at the time insane) idea of writing a doctoral dissertation on RPGs. This was before the MMORPG boom, and my focus was going to be on the evolution of console based japanese RPGs, while keeping an eye out for things foreshadowed by my early experiences in Phantasy Star Online. I wanted to study this genre from a typically postmodern anthro standpoint, with a little socio-cultural, and post-structural reading analysis thrown in. I say typical because, from my viewpoint, this is the style of academic pursuit that now seems to be the goal of almost any contemporary graduate student who'se been raised on a healthy dose of the pomo canon: Derrida, Foucault, Butler, Silverman, Lacan, Barthes, yadda yadda... Only, at the time, it felt groundbreaking and exciting.

I'm still dissappointed that the History of Consciousness program at UCSC never really picked up on my idea, not just from my own selfish viewpoint but also because it could have used a bit of a booster shot to keep it out of its slow decline into esoteric irrelevance. I mean have we heard anything out of De Lauretis since the mid-90's? There's the occasional contribution from Victor Burgin on photography, but overall... the program seems to be practically dormant. My weird little niche might have stirred things up a bit, with just enough secular appeal to keep it interesting outside of HisCon acolytes.

But in another sense, in retrospect, I'm glad I didn't get a chance to digest RPGs as more pomo-fodder. I've grown wary of the seemingly innate tendency of postmodern/poststructural theory to 'consume' the subject of its analysis and regurgitate it as a mere instantiation of its own lexicon & jargon. And this is very apparent in the recent essays I've been reading in the latest issue of Reconstruction.

Academia is indeed catching onto RPGs, and going a bit beyond the bumbling or cursory sociological studies that usually inaugurate any academic attention to a new subject (case in point: Anime). But it's still in the throes of jargonizing its subject matter, leading to mouthfuls such as this:

This multiform (player, character, avatar) “variable body” questions the “fact” of biological deterministic narratives.
[...]
The fact that players are invited to select a body (rather than being assigned one based on their RL sex) re-envisions “sex” as a possible “choice” rather than a biological fact. Likewise, the necessity for a verbal construction of gender (regardless of the avatar’s gender) further undermines the notion of the physical body as the origin of gender: a female player can play a male character without any attempt to conceal her real world gender and thus be treated as a female regardless of the physical evidence supplied by the avatar. These cross-gendered performances highlight the performative nature of the sex-gender system, ultimately opening it to critique with a wider audience than hitherto could have been possible. This potential for “casual cross-dressing”—or even interacting with the casual cross dressers—of a segment of our community clearly has the potential as a site for the interrogation of gender issues. After all, in the end, we are the roles we play.

This is the meat of one of the essays, which spends paragraph upon paragraph simply describing the act of creating and using a MMORPG character with (gasp!) and alternate gender. This is akin to describing, in excrutiatingly minute detail, how you got up and went to work this morning, with particular attention to the different tie you decided to wear that day. To anyone with any remote familiarity with games, this 'let me put this in laymens terms for ya' mode instantly triggers 'scanning' for the real content. And for extra-generational readers, it probably just leads to a lot of scowling, head-scratching, and dozing, although the author seems to think it will illuminate them somehow, if only by sheer detail and exoticness.

Here's the kicker. The quote above, while interesting, still amounts to a big "See? Judith Butler told ya so!" which I could have gleaned from the title: "Body Matters in Massively Multiplayer Online Role-playing Games" (a lame knockoff of Judith Butler's Bodies That Matter: On the Discursive Limits of Sex). Never mind the fact that nowhere, in the entire essay, including the footnotes, are there any overt references to Judith Butler's works. This amounts to making the entire premise of the article a big pun or inside joke, and a rather uninteresting one, in the guise of detailed analysis.

Now give me back my 30 minutes...

It's this sort of approach that makes me crave more centralized and critically responsible academic programs in relation to virtual/synthetic worlds, or even offline RPGs. Something more than the individual ramblings of graduate students. But I'm ambivalent here as well, since it could just as well lead to more systematic, centralized, pomo-puking.

I guess time will tell. But for now, I'm really not impressed. Gaming + Academia = Zzzzzzzz.

Aw, I was proud of our TALON listing!

2006-02-09T10:08:00.000-08:00

February 9, 2006

TO: UC Santa Cruz Colleagues

FROM: Denice D. Denton, Chancellor and David S. Kliger, Campus Provost and Executive Vice Chancellor

We are writing to provide an update on the Pentagon's listing of a UCSC protest as a "credible threat." (For a complete listing of correspondence and news reports about this issue, please see http://chancellor.ucsc.edu/pentagon/)

Following correspondence from the campus asking members of Congress to investigate the TALON listing, Senator Barbara Boxer convened a meeting in her Washington, D.C. office on Tuesday, January 31. Participants, besides Senator Boxer, were Chancellor Denice Denton; Lt. Col. Gary Testut, representing the Pentagon; staff representing Senator Dianne Feinstein; staff from Senator Boxer's office; and UC staff.

Discussion explicitly addressed the unacceptability of a UCSC event being listed - and, in fact, Senator Boxer agreed with Chancellor Denton in expressing great disapproval of the creation and maintenance of any such lists, noting the echoes of McCarthyism in actions of that type. In addition, questions to Lt. Col. Testut probed the reasons why the UCSC event was listed and the methods used to obtain information about the event.
The outcome of that discussion and a subsequent conversation between Chancellor Denton and Senator Feinstein later that same day is summarized in a letter jointly signed by Senators Boxer and Feinstein (http://chancellor.ucsc.edu/pentagon/boxer_feinstein-letter_02-08-06.pdf).
Key points in the letter include the following.
-- The April 5, 2005 event at the University has been removed from the TALON database.

-- Department of Defense regulations forbid retaining information on Americans engaged in constitutionally-protected activities.

-- Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen A. Cambone has initiated a comprehensive review of the TALON program to determine if Department of Defense officials violated any regulations governing domestic counterintelligence efforts.

In closing, we want to reiterate that we will continue to do everything in our power to ensure that First Amendment rights are protected on this campus and in our country. We have zero tolerance for violence and incivility, but we vigorously support free expressions of opinions, including dissent. Such expressions are hallmarks of a democratic society and are integral to our vital teaching and learning community.

Staying organized

2006-01-26T22:23:00.000-08:00

To keep the blog from becoming too jumbled between my personal musings and my inevitable Final Fantasy XI rants, which will only interest a small subset of the strange people who stumble across this blog, I'm going to launch a dedicated FFXI blog.

In completely unrelated news, scientists have finally solved the puzzle of bee flight. Take that, Intelligent Design kooks! Hah! In all seriousness though, I find it incredibly hypocritical of christians when they discount an entire epistemology because it fails to explain all possible observations, since the cornerstone of their own belief structure is 'faith'... supposedly. And one certainly needs a large amount of that stuff if one wants to swallow biblical explanations. Perhaps their skepticism is misdirected?

You say Apple, I say...

2006-01-12T22:27:00.000-08:00

OMFG...

Robert X Cringley has some pretty mind-blowing predictions for Apple hardware and OS X this coming year. I've been lusting for a new iMac G5, but with this news, I think I can stick with my old hardware for a bit longer and wait for this:

"Apple will eventually announce all the products they were supposed to have announced at this week's MacWorld show, but didn't, including [...] two new Intel Macs with huge plasma displays, but with keyboards and mice as options -- literally big-screen TVs that just happen to be computers, too."

The question is: price? $1700 didn't seem too bad for a 20-inch iMac (it really is a beautiful machine), but if this new hardware can replace my current crap television and my old iMac DV SE simultaneously, I'd be willing to beg Zak for the permission to buy this thing for oh...$3000. Anything higher would be pushing it. If anything, I'll wait for the intel iMac they recently announced, since it'll reportedly be twice as fast as the G5 version.

Even more interesting are Cringley's OS predictions:

"The new Intel Macs will run Windows XP unofficially, and Apple Support acknowledges that they are only days from running XP officially, too. So Apple finally has a solid argument why Windows-centric companies and homes should consider trying a Mac.
[...]
Apple won't offer versions of OS X for generic Intel hardware because the drivers and the support obligation would be too huge. But just as you can buy a shrink-wrapped copy of 10.4 for your iMac, they'll gladly sell you a shrink-wrapped Intel version intended for an Intel Mac, but of course YOU CAN PUT IT ON ANY MACHINE YOU LIKE."

So, we could see Mac machines running XP (not sure why anyone would want this, although it would be nice if users could switch between the two via the startup disk control) and Intel PC's running OS X.

Pardon me now as my brain explodes.

And sometimes, you just need to decide.

2005-12-22T16:24:00.000-08:00

I made the decision, gave people my cell phone number, and bolted out the door at 2:40. Got there right on time. Hunter was more interested in the gadgetry and switches, but it was a fun visit. Even got some "4d" shots. Pictures soon.

Sometimes, work just sucks.

2005-12-22T13:59:00.000-08:00

So here I am, an hour before the only ultrasound appointment I thought I would be able to attend, and I'm waiting for someone, who has no backup, to get out of an unscheduled meeting to move a file and run a script for me. This is an emergency fix for a bug that is currently halting a critical university process. And since the testing will take an hour or more... I'll most likely be unable to be with Zak and Hunter to see our new member of the family. And there's no one to blame really; things are as they are. Two words: This sucks.

Panoptic reversal?

2005-12-19T23:26:00.000-08:00

Just an idle thought for all the foucauldian theorists out there. How will publicly available satellite surveillance re-contextualize the panopical model of specular authority? It seems to turn the tables a bit, as I've discovered in a discussion about Google maps and accountability. Rather than offering a central vantage where the viewer may or may not be present, the model changes to a decentralized vantage where myriad viewers with no monolithic agenda are constantly present. In Foucault's model, this would amount to all prison cells in the Panopticon being possible collective and mutual surveillance mechanisms.

The GBAOTT Phenomenon

2005-12-05T12:29:00.000-08:00

That's "Gameboy Advance on the Toilet" to those who can't psychically decode my acronym there.

From what I gather, anyone who owns a GBA has been known to forego magazine reading in favor of gaming while sitting on their throne. No shame in that.

Well, why should those who haven't been potty trained yet be an exception?

Anti anti-utopianism

2005-11-29T23:12:00.000-08:00

I used the Google blog search to see if I could find any mentions of my favorite science ficition writer and thinker, Samuel R. Delany. I was desparately hoping to find a Delany brain-dump out there somewhere, akin to Ron Silliman's brilliant blog, but instead stumbled across a very nice science ficition criticism blog: Noise Filter. It made mention of Delany in the context of a NY Times article on Frederic Jameson's new book ''Picture Imperfect: Utopian Thought for an Anti-Utopian Age." I hadn't given much thought to Jameson's work since reading his seminal work on post-modernism during my studies at UCSC, so this latest book seemed like a serendipitous combination of two of my favorite genres of critical reading.

But upon reading through the article, I'm growing ambivalent about Jameson's approach to science fiction. In a sense, theorizing utopianism is a politically important vector for socio-political critics to pursue, especially in the current political moment. And the link between science ficition and the critical tool-kit of utopian discourse is an obviously rich one that Delany has explored in his own writing.

What bothers me a bit is the fact that Jameson is not a science fiction author, and probably isn't a seasoned science fiction reader either. Though his inclusion of this genre into his critical field could be enriching, I'm of the opinion that he will have inevitable 'blind-spots' when it comes to the actual dynamics & discourse of the practice of science fiction (writing and reading). This wouldn't be too much of an issue if Jameson weren't such a high-profile theorist, which means this latest book will probably be inculcated into the 'canon' of university reading lists in critical theory courses, setting these unfortunate blind spots into a firmer position.

I'll suspend judgement until I actually read the book, but the selection of novels listed in the article is a bit puzzling. I hope this selection was either misrepresented by the columnist, or was driven more by historical specificity (contextualizing novels as a response to a particular political moment) than Jameson's possibly neophyte 'scanning' of intriguing pulp novels by various seminal 70's SF authors. I mean if we're talking about anti anti utopian discourse here (which I believe is abbreviated to 'negative utopian' to avoid the constant stutter), why address "Trouble on Triton" in favor of the much richer dialogs in "Dhalgren" or the entire Neveryon series? Is he only approaching novels that were marketed as pulp-fiction, and if so, why? From a postmodern theorist's perspective, I understand the appeal; but it could also indicate an inadequate critical approach due mostly to inexperience with the genre.

In any case, I'll be curious to see what Delany's response to Jameson's contextualization of his work will be.

1|\|p|-|0|2|\/|4710|\| = (|2a(|< or Information = Crack

2005-11-28T22:32:00.000-08:00

OK, after the upteenth usage of FTW on the allakhazam forums, I decided to look it up in the urban dictionary. While the definition wasn't very interesting, it did lead me to whimsically look up L337 and see what it's origins were (although in hindsight, after reading up on the history of L337, I now understand that FTW is nowhere in that language's glossary... L337 <> gamer acronyms). Now granted, language usually functions to exclude those who don't speak it; in fact some would say this is the primary driver of most languages, to create an enclave within which the speakers may converse without 'leaking' information to undesirable third parties. But, L337 is such an opaque, inefficient way to communicate, almost the polar opposite of the acronym-laden gamerspeak, that I had a hard time believing it germinated in the same protoplasmic sea of linguistically lazy forum/chat communities. The enclave, so to speak, seemed to be surrounded by peculiar buttresses.

And sure enough, I stumbled across the following definition:

[...] According to "The Hacker Crackdown" by Bruce Sterling, it was an invented language used to confuse FBI and NSA sniffing programs during Operation Sundevil, when the government placed "wiretaps" on the Killer server to find hackers. Used extensively after the E911 document scandal and the theft of Korn 78 and other UNIX programs by AT&T. Google "Fry Guy", "Terminus", "Gail Thackery", "Acid Phreak" and "Phiber Optik" for more information. Discontinued among true hackers thanks to encryption engines and PGP keys.

So there you have it; the illustrious roots of L337. Since I was surfing a good information wave here, I decided to google Gail Thackery (the name rang a bell). She was a lawyer who prosecuted many of the early-90's hackers and was, intriguingly, invited to the DefCon hacker convention in '94, as recounted in a humorous story by Robert X. Cringley.

You thought there was a point to this post, eh? Well, do you ever have a 'point' when you google-surf, hmmm? My basic aim was to trace the meandering trajectory of my curiosity which ended in another link on my blogroll: Robert X. Cringley's page. He's a brilliant and funny writer, in my opinion, and has posted some pretty interesting conjectures lately about Google's long-term plans.

Don't want to say I Told You So

2005-11-20T22:26:00.000-08:00

Here's a snippet of the end of the IGN review:

"Dragon Quest VIII: Journey of the Cursed King may not be the most original RPG on the block, but it doesn't have to be -- it does the standard stuff so well that it doesn't feel so standard anymore. [I'm sorry, but what the hell does this even mean?] To be totally upfront, I haven't played an RPG all year that's had me this excited to see what happens next as Dragon Quest VIII has... even if I could figure out what that "next" was probably going to be. "

Golly, I've never heard that about a Dragon Quest game before.

But, who am I kidding. I'm going to crack it open tonight anyway. ^_^;

No Oblivion for You!

2005-11-06T23:04:00.000-08:00

Looks like next gen gaming will have to wait... Elder Scrolls: Oblivion, the only real reason to own an Xbox 360 at this time, has been officially delayed until 'early next year.' The only other reason for me to own a 360, a non-gimped version of Final Fantasy XI, has been delayed until May of next year. So it looks like this kid isn't going to be getting his Red Ryder Lever Action Air rifle with a Compass in the Stock and this Thing That Tells Time for Christmas. Sniff...

I think Microsoft was a bit too ambitious in releasing their console so soon, since most developers won't get their high-profile games out until months after launch. It's also a bad sign when a straight, no frills, port of the Windows version of FFXI to a Microsoft platform is delayed for 6 months, but this may by Square Enix's decision to synchronize the release with the new expansion arriving around that time. The only decent launch titles will be Perfect Dark: Zero, a game that wasn't even initially developed for the 360 (and is of a genre I don't care for in the least), and Gun, which is intriguing but can be played on all other consoles with the same graphical quality. Oh, and Project Gotham Racing 3, which I won't even bother to link up, for fear of killing unsuspecting readers with boredom. So all I have to say about this launch now is... what the hell was the point? Are they trying to give Sony the upper hand? Shades of Dreamcast, IMO.

I guess this frees up some cash for Dragon Quest VIII or ... something. As an RPG freak, I should be excited about this game, but I'm really not. After playing something as aesthetically ambitious as Shadow of the Colossus, I'm a bit non-plussed by the cel-shading. Been there, done that, have the T-shirt for the 50 million other RPGs that use the same style. I also feel like I'm the only otakoid gamer in the US who is repulsed by Toriyama Akira's character design (must every character have a scowl and no space between the eyes?). But I can deal with ugliness or cliche graphics. I think what bothers me the most about DQ8 is that the hallmark of the Dragon Quest series has always been non-innovation.

You read that right. The more formulaic a DQ is, the more likely it will be perceived as a successful game for the 'hardcore' RPG players. When it comes to this series, I feel the designers listen to their rabid fans a bit too closely, considering most want the same damn game over and over again. If they simply remade DQ3 with updated graphics every year, I think the fans would be eternally grateful. There's something to be said for risking the 'integrity' of a series to introduce some amount of innovation. As much as I disliked Final Fantasy VIII, at least the re-vamped system gave an indication that the designers had taken some time away from lurking in fan forums to create something fresh.

Tequila at Dusk

2005-11-02T21:48:00.000-08:00

Since the DST time change, the afternoon ritual for Hunter and me has shifted. We used to go to whichever park Hunter decided upon, usually the one by the San Lorenzo river downtown, to feed the ducks or climb around at the playground.

We did this every weekday, to the point where Hunter would recognize and search for specific ducks in the pond, and knew which ones would eat out of my hand. He started to get a little nervous about feeding them once a rogue goose became a more permanent resident of the pond, so we gradually stopped playing with the ducks in favor of running up and down hills, flattening mole hills, and climbing the giant sea serpent/slide at the playground.

But the sun is setting when I pick him up now, and a chill hangs in the air, so the playground is no longer an option until the seasons change again.

Lately we've been strolling along Pacific Ave in search of adventure.

Points of interest for now are the fountains (one by the SC Museum on Front Street, the other under the clock tower at the River St end of Pacific),

the bookshop,

and last but not least, street performers. Hunter is a huge fan of guitars/ukulele's, reed instruments, horns, and flutes. There is usually at least one performance of these types of instruments going on in the evening. If there aren't then we make an extended stop at Bookshop Santa Cruz before visiting the clock tower.

It hadn't occurred to me until last week to introduce Hunter to a regular spectacle that takes place at the wednesday Farmer's Market by Center St: the wednesday drumming circle. We watched last week's performance which was very busy, loud, and saturated with the smell of burning sage (and 'other' burning herbs). One of the performers was using a huge plastic barrel, which emitted a powerful bass tone, sort of a cross between a bass drum and a timpani. Another was playing the trumpet. Others were singing/chanting, or drumming on their own tablas or toms. Some jugglers had joined the mix. The look on Hunter's face was one of curious concern, but he was definitely intrigued by the trumpet player, so we lingered for awhile before heading over to Pacific.

This week's gathering was much more subdued but it still had the odd elements of a Santa Cruz orchestra, even with only 4 performers. One played a floor tom, drumming with a bit of a vacant and disarming smile on his face, which Hunter didn't seem to notice. One played the clarinet, which was the focal point for Hunter. Another drummed on an empty cereal box. And a rather odd youngster in sun-glasses (this was at dusk) was tapping away on the implements he had used to eat his dinner: a pot, a water bottle, and an empty soup can. His drumming was a bit out of phase with the rest of the group, at times synchronous, at others completely off the wall. They played the "Tequila" riff for awhile, which Hunter recognized. I started to grow bored after a few minutes, and asked Hunter if he wanted to go to the bookstore, but he insisted on staying. I think we watched this mini drum circle for about 20 minutes before Hunter was ready to resume our stroll.

As I stood there holding Hunter and bobbing to the tune of Tequila in a dusky market, I started to realize how special our tours are. I don't think we could experience these things together in any other place & time. I'm thankful to be living here, in this weird little town. Thankful to be the father of one of the most delightful human beings I'll ever know. And thankful that I was able to be fully present when this realization struck me.

Grieving in my sleep

2005-09-07T09:54:00.000-07:00

Hunter had trouble going back to sleep this morning, when he woke up around 5. Zak gave up, frustrated, so it was my turn. After a few sleepy fits, he fell asleep and so did I, curled up next to him on his bed.

I start to dream, but don't realize it.

I'm driving up Bay to campus. I think I have passengers in the back (co-workers). Once we hit King street, I glance to the sidewalk on the right and do a double-take. Mom is out there, visibly arguing with some kids. I look in the rear-view, and I now see she is on a bike and the kids are following her on bikes as well, and they're Holly, Mike, John, & Matthew. John and Matthew are around the same age, maybe 7 or 8. Holly and Mike are a bit taller and in their early teens.

I still don't realize I'm dreaming. And I just lose it. I start to cry and am absolutely convinced I'm having a nervous breakdown. At this point the co-workers dissappear, and I'm on a bike with Hunter in the back. And I'm going on a wild ride up the hill, trying to spot Mom and my siblings, riding through neighborhoods, weaving through yards. I feel waves of despair and nostalgia, and an overwhelming need to keep Hunter at my side.

Woke up with Hunter snoring next to me.

I don't know why, but I still choke up thinking about the dream, even now...

Another rollercoaster day

2005-08-23T23:30:00.000-07:00

I found out Mom will be OK. CT scan and radioactive dye tests didn't reveal any major heart problems. The most likely cause is her thyroid condition... she hadn't been taking her medication for awhile.

Hunter recited the ABC song by himself this evening, while Zak and I listened in amazement. It was one of those moments that I knew I would never forget, just sitting there listening to my two-year old boy in total awe. I'd heard him recite snippets out of sequence before, but never thought he actually knew the full set yet.

I found a new Linkshell (equivalent of an online guild) in Final Fantasy XI, consisting of players mostly my age, many with jobs and families. I think this may be the definitive shell for the rest of my time in the game.

I attempted to solo the first half of a FFXI quest to attain the next piece of my Artifact Armor (job-exclusive equipment that is mostly good through the endgame), with poor results; namely aggro, death, and EXP loss (not to mention the money spent on invisibility tools). Somewhat dissappointing since I was expecting to at least get this piece of the quest done on my own.

2005-08-21T23:00:00.000-07:00

Strange, stirring, day today...

I learned in the morning that we might be pregnant. We'd been trying for the past couple of months so I'm really overjoyed at this. I think the anticipation is even stronger, now that we've experienced the first 2 years of Hunter's life. It's amazing to think how much of their personality seems to be with them at a very early stage, to the point where it's difficult to not be a bit teleological at times. How much of this person did we create? Is most of the potential energy already...potential when the child is born? Or are our parental decisions/reactions so minute in comparison to the 'butterfly effect' propelled by the vagaries of the child's own motivations that we are deceived into believing our molding is perhaps preceded by the child's disposition? The mystery of the feedback loop I suppose...

I got a call this evening from Dad letting me know that Mom was admitted to the ER, complaining of chest pain and difficulty breathing. The doctors don't seem to think it's a heart problem, though they noticed an abnormality in her EKG reading. They're keeping her overnight for observation.

I'm just not sure how to process this at the moment.

Perfect combo

2005-08-16T09:47:00.000-07:00

What could be a more perfect combination than a Jim Jarmush film with Bill Murray as the lead? Not much...

I got to see Broken Flowers yesterday and left the theatre in a complete daze; something about the last scene just stuck with me for the rest of the evening, and will probably never quite leave my psyche: a moment of pure bewilderment and presence that only Bill could pull off, and Jim could effectively film.

The film has now superceded Dead Man as my favorite Jim Jarmush film, and is definitely in my top 10 fav films list.

Cubified

2005-08-10T15:07:00.000-07:00

It is 3:07PM on August 10, 2005.

I'm in a cubicle in a building

that I need to leave.

Now.

And I need to be back.

Tomorrow.

What was your face before you were born?

2005-06-03T12:50:00.000-07:00

Something Sifu Ted Mancuso said last night during my Tai Chi lesson struck a chord with me. I've been learning the Chen form and feeling rather lost in the intricacies of each move. Each involves so much 'reeling silk' energy, downward coiling energy, and deep horse stances that the physical challenge of the movement seemingly overwhelms the more removed perspective I'm accustomed to maintaining in tandem with a focus on the correctness of the form. It feels like trying to understand the symphony when I can't play the violin yet. And, to my embarrassment, I also don't feel that my scrawny legs can support some of the moves yet (time for more horse stance work).

But at times, I'll perform a movement that just seems to fall into a 'groove', and that feeling reminds me of what I'm attempting to cultivate, though I've been unable to articulate it adequately. In a sense, it feels like doing a move with the unaffected efficiency of a small child, but with a certain strength/power behind it that I can't quite describe.

Sifu was talking about western vs. martial perceptions of the reactions that manifest themselves in moments of immediate danger or threat, when you feel that the entity of 'self' goes away and something else emerges to bring the body where it needs to be (although, in some cases, especially those involving pain, an untrained reaction can cause more pain and disorientation). His theory is that the science of martial arts lies in cultivating this pre-self and going beyond the surface 'trigger' point of a perceived physical threat.

I call it pre-self (though he doesn't, this is my neologism), to distinguish it from a western concept of a sub-self, which is a badly mutated template of misinterpreted psychoanalytic theory. The sub-self is usually associated with baser concepts of 'instinct', 'survival', 'Id' etc. Sifu was theorizing that the 'instinct' or 'survival' aspect that emerges in certain situations is just the necessary tip of an iceberg that eastern martial artists decided to explore further, and did so for centuries. I can't really come up with a better word for it, since 'unconscious' is a strictly psychoanalytic term, and the concept Sifu was addressing just doesn't fit that topography. It seems to actually precede this construct since it doesn't operate along proto-linguistic/symbolic structures but rather an extra-physical awareness that, at least to me, seems closely linked to whatever people choose to call their life-force.

"In a sense," Sifu Mancuso said, "the Koan that asks 'What was your face before you were born?' isn't really a Koan at all." There is no riddle. It's a perfectly valid question. And it's a question that martial artists always strive to answer in different ways.

Reflection

2005-04-21T20:31:00.000-07:00

Heard some news about a recent Li-young Lee reading on Ron Silliman's blog and decided to read some more of his work. In light of my last post, I found a particular poem of his quite touching, so I'll post it here. It makes me realize how much these moments carry, and how their ineffability can be cracked with a well crafted & sincere poem.

A Story

Sad is the man who is asked for a story
and can't come up with one.

His five-year-old son waits in his lap.
Not the same story, Baba. A new one.
The man rubs his chin, scratches his ear.

In a room full of books in a world
of stories, he can recall
not one, and soon, he thinks, the boy
will give up on his father.

Already the man lives far ahead, he sees
the day this boy will go. Don't go!
Hear the alligator story! The angel story once more!
You love the spider story. You laugh at the spider.
Let me tell it!

But the boy is packing his shirts,
he is looking for his keys. Are you a god,
the man screams, that I sit mute before you?
Am I a god that I should never disappoint?

But the boy is here. Please, Baba, a story?
It is an emotional rather than logical equation,
an earthly rather than heavenly one,
which posits that a boy's supplications
and a father's love add up to silence.

Hymns

2005-04-01T20:36:00.000-08:00

Hunter has taken to 'channel surfing' when I bounce him to sleep at night. I'll start singing a tune, like 'Fais Do Do' or 'My Bonnie', and within half a verse, he'll say 'No' and wait for the next song in the queue. He's definitely a baby of the iPod generation. Anyway, I started humming some tunes to see if the lack of lyrics would hold his attention for a bit longer. It worked pretty well at first, especially when I told him what I was doing and introduced a new word to him: "hummmming." But he got wise after I started humming some of his old favorites and he wanted something different.

At a loss for nursery songs that he wouldn't recognize, I started humming songs I associated with my childhood, songs that would make me feel safe and relaxed. I started humming old hymns. A particular one that put him out like a light was 'The Old Rugged Cross'. I've forgotten most of the words but remember the melody in it's entirety.

It reminded me of a 'This American Life' segment on NPR that described a man's effort to record these old hymns as sung in small church settings, without a choir. He was doing this primarily to archive these hymns and the way they felt & sounded to most people who grew up with them. Why archive them? Because they are apparently fading away with today's 'praise' or 'worship' music, which is characterized by repetitive chanting of vapid verse, or words that are mostly stripped of the context that gave them their heft in the traditional hymns (a hymnal Cliff's Notes of sorts). I recall this from my final days as a church-goin' boy in Fresno, when this style came into vogue. In fact I don't recall singing any actual hymns between '86 and '90. There's something really sad about that.

Makes me feel...old, I guess.

Silence

2005-03-18T20:36:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure what has made me go silent on this blog for so long.

Part of it might be it's undefined nature. Am I setting up a public diary, a collection of theoretical musings, a creative writing project?

I'm also second guessing my own candor. How far can I go? My co-workers have found this thing. My wife checks it periodically. I've traced at least a couple of pings from Googlers checking in on me or Zak...possibly old classmates or friends. So the forum sort of changed on me.

It's ironic that this made me go silent, since I initially launched this thing to get out of my vaccuum, to break out of solipsism a bit. But the instant my audience became visible, I froze.

Anyway, in closing this post, I wanted to put up a couple of links that have illuminated some trends I had noticed awhile ago, but had trouble articulating. One of them is the weird category of poetry that I would come across in publications such as Poetry where the writing just didn't seem to fit my idea of a dialog or engagement worth pursuing, but it seemed to be an established expectation for the poetic 'voice' that would get published in such high-profile journals as Poetry. I came across this in the early years of my stay in NYC and was somewhat befuddled and a bit depressed about the state of poetry and its institutions. Ron Silliman wrote a wonderful, incisive entry about this, and came up with a name for it: the School of Quietude.

Another conceit that startled me in my final years at school finally got some validation a year later in 96 when the following hoax took high profile in academia: the Alan Sokal hoax.
I'm a latecomer to the hoax, but I find many of it's political aspects quite fascinating, particularly in the 'poststructural feminism' arena, as it confronts the academic stylings that have spawned from the writings of Judith Butler and to some extent Theresa De Lauretis. I call them stylings because much of the writing about their writing, or influenced by it, lacks the logical rigor that these originators exhibited, and I suspected that this would gradually devolve into a morass of tautological jargon and misappropriation/flawed analysis of 'external' discourses. Little did I know the devolution was in full force when I was still an undergrad, since this finally came to a head in '94, when Sokal actually put pen to paper and decided to make sketch of the Emperor's new clothes.

Pre-Boolean?

2005-01-09T20:04:00.000-08:00

Weather report:

the sky closed
and falling
opens the pavement

Hunter isn't quite finished with his crackers, but he wants a fresh handful. He is sitting with me in the living room, munching by the front window, while Zak fixes dinner in the kitchen. The crackers are in 'mommy territory.' He hands the crackers to me, gets down from the bench, and resolutely runs to the kitchen and tells Zak "all done!" and returns with a couple of green beens. He takes a bite of each, decides he likes both of them, hands them to me, and immediately turns around and runs to the kitchen again, proclaiming "all done!" Of course, mom catches on and the jig is up.

Now...I don't truely consider this lying, since Hunter really doesn't have a boolean concept of true/false statements yet. He just knows what will get the results he desires.

It's interesting to see that language at its earliest stages isn't really rooted in a system of representation. It's not necessarily used to describe what is or isn't there, although that is a supplemental feature. Its primary driver seems to be agency: using the resources and power-structures in your environment to get what you want.

Hermeneutics

2004-12-31T20:49:00.000-08:00

Years ago, a few days after Zak and I found out we were pregnant, I composed a poem, addressing my child in the womb. Part of it described the "cherry tree" by our front door, or rather the roots thereof, growing toward the door.

Due to the moist climate by the seashore, the tree and many of its bretheren became overwhelmed by silver and green lichen. The homeowners association decided to remove the trees. Each tree slated for removal was marked with orange paint and sometimes a red ribbon. Not sure what the pattern was between the paint and the ribbon, as all the trees marked in any fashion were eventually removed. As Zak and I were strolling home from the park with Hunter, I noticed the markings and wondered if the trees were to be destroyed. Zak confirmed this & said a memo was issued about the plum trees, which will be replaced with different & hopefully more resilient trees.

Plum trees...

In my initial perception, the trope in the poem had become suddenly disconnected in several ways. The name of the tree wasn't it's true name. The tree signified slow broadening growth, but the referent changed and was overwhelmed by growth of a different kind. And the referent was eventually absent.

In mulling over this again tonight, I realize that this "interrupted" relationship between trope/signifier, interpretant, referent suffers from no more dishesion than any other utterence eventually undergoes with time. Not an earth-shattering epiphany, but something I think is important for me to remember when composing poems.

Tropes

2004-12-17T17:16:00.000-08:00

A bit of a latency period is upon me again. Observing the days articulating my experience as branches articulated in the breeze.

I came across this article in Clive Thompson's blog today. There's a poem in there somewhere, I think.

Interpretation

2004-12-11T09:50:00.000-08:00

I've had conversations with several co-workers that have concluded strangely, and I usually let the thread of the conversation unravel to another topic. But now I have a pool of 'remainders' floating in my brain, and I feel I need to address it, or at least attempt to articulate it.

I'm currently working on the implementation of a student administration system at UCSC, and this system is driven by the mostly unmodified Peoplesoft Student Admin product. We're moving from an IBM mainframe environment (flat-files, terminal emulation) to a 3-tier enterprise application environment (at it's core a SQL database), and many of our users are making the painful transition in nomenclature, business practice, and strategy... Part of my job is bridging the communication gap between the technical team and my functional team, the Registrar's Office. They call me a "Student Records Process Manager," whatever that title means.

Now back to the abrupt shifts in conversation. These usually occur when I carry the conversation over a conventional boundary that the other party decides not to cross: the 'technical' boundary. They're usually very sensitive to the shift, however slight, in the ground of the conversation from 'how do we work with this system?' (functional), to 'how does this system work?' (technical). In my motivation to analyze a problem, I cross this boundary so often that I forget about it. But I'm always reminded of this conventional split of form/apparatus/function when I engage in conversations with others who don't share my ignorance. They often indicate the breach by asserting their functional status and shying away from taking the next step in the analysis because they aren't 'trained' or 'qualified,' assuming that the rules of analysis and deduction on their functional grounds aren't mappable to the technical aspect of the same problem.

I'm beginning to see it in other areas as well. Many fans of SF are unwilling to take the next step and actually analyze the conventions and assumptions that make reading SF possible...reifying the 'craft' of writing by consuming the end-product. Some will escalate their consumption by performing a 'close reading' (how does the reader work with this story), but the next step is rarely taken (how do these stories work).

I don't always see this fallacy in the geekier spectrum of videogame critics, who are often very familiar with the developer, localizer, publisher, distributor relationships. Perhaps this is because the 'craft' of videogame design is a bit less mystified than the 'authorship' of SF novels, a concept that comes with substantial literary baggage, much of which is left unquestioned by most SF authors and readers (Samuel R. Delany being a very notable exception).

When distribution doesn't 'get it'.

2004-12-08T20:30:00.000-08:00

The past couple of posts on Silliman's Blog have validated my befuddlement when perusing the NY Times book review, or even strolling through a corporately owned bookstore. When I come across whatever they call a poetry section, I'm always a bit puzzled by their selection of contemporary poetry. It's become clear that the readership and distribution of poetry have become somewhat disconnected at the corporate marketing level, often working at cross-purposes:

"A few years ago, I’d see something like the Times Book Review list, and I’d come away seething at the unfairness & disproportionate power an institution like that used to have. Today I see it differently. That list is a relic of a process that is rapidly becoming irrelevant & even now is mostly a sloppy & costly way to connect books to readers of poetry. Poets don’t need it unless [...] the true audience for their work is people who mostly don’t read poetry." (Ron Silliman)

I wonder if the phenomenon of 'going direct' has made waves in the SF community yet. In any case, I suspect this trend might be long-lived, as long as the cost of administering a micro business online remains reasonable, and coherent taxation remains an implausibility.

It has you.

2004-12-07T20:20:00.000-08:00

When did my hobby become another social mechanism? Another environment where time is a currency and the primary drivers are desire and power?

I started out as an escapist videogamer, mostly because of a friend I met while working at the Brooklyn Brewery. This was circa 1996 and I hadn't looked at a game system since the Sega Saturn, which had been released while I was in school and was far out of budget at that time.

His big favorites were the Resident Evil series, the Tomb Raider series, and various fighters (Tekken, Bushido Blade, Toshinden, Rival Schools, Darkstalkers, etc). We played these late into the night in his cave of an apartment in Williamsburg Brooklyn. A description of that place would be a long blog entry unto itself. But I mostly remember the connections we made across radically different social backgrounds, and much of that was channeled through our enjoyment of the things he decided to share with me.

Zak picked up a Playstation and Tomb Raider 2 for me around that time period, and my friend purchased Resident Evil 2 for me. As I played these, I was entertained, mostly because I couldn't wait to tell my buddy what I had done/found in the games, and he would relate his own discoveries and feats in other games.

But as I played these, I remembered the old forms of my escapism: fantasy & sword/sorcery novels. I had been intrigued by the roleplaying games that had been a product of this culture, but had never lapsed into that world, which in retrospect might have been a good thing or my grades would likely have suffered. But in the summer of my Junior year in HS, I did discover another form of escapism once removed: roleplaying videogames.

These were attempts on the part of Japanese developers to adopt the codes of pen-&-paper RPG's, without the interaction with other live players, and without the human Dungeon Master or dice rolls: roleplaying abstracted from it's social environment. So the primary focus was on character leveling (repetitive turn-based combat), quests, and dungeon exploration. It evolved from there, but that was the basic premise in most of the initial Dragon Warrior and Final Fantasy titles, though Final Fantasy had a stronger tendency toward narrative structure and development to motivate the player. As I wasn't much of a social gamer, I gravitated toward these games, though my nose was usually in a book, since they were cheaper and more entertaining.

So when I moved back to Santa Cruz, and away from my social connection to gaming, I started looking into the latest iteration of Final Fantasy: FFVII. I was immediately hooked, though somewhat surprised at how little had evolved in the core gameplay elements and conventions. The narrative craft had noticeably evolved. The result was a bit incongruous: long stretches of leveling and item questing followed by narrative exposition. The translation from Japanese to English was also less than ideal, making for a disorienting, though fascinating experience (interpreting and re-interpreting on-screen dialogue, teasing out the assumptions that would make some of the utterances make sense: you had to perform some fast deconstructions to really get some of the story, which was confusing enough as it was. From what I gather from gamers who grew up during that time period, this was a common skill assumed and required of most console RPG gamers in the US).

I stuck with this genre and its vicissitudes for the life cycle of the PSX, and most of the PS2, but my social environment has changed again...and in keeping with this change, my gaming habits are shifting. The catalyst has been the advent of online gaming to the PS2. I've since become involved in the Massively Multiplayer Online RPG iteration of Final Fantasy: FFXI. And the narrative/social interaction poles have reversed.

Narrative in the game is sparse, but the environment is huge and the social structure has evolved into a rather complex system of roles and expectations since it's release on PC about 1.5 years ago, and 2 years ago in Japan. When I enter this game, I'm struck by the attenuated sense of escapism. I'm simply entering an alternate system, with it's own demands, nuisances, frustrations, joys, and fun. The byzantine class systems that are readerly conventions in the single-player games, take on new meaning when adopted and almost internalized by human players. This, in combination with the team dynamics of 'partying' to increase your level and progress in the game, creates an experience that loses it's sense of escape in compensation for a stronger sense of interaction with other players.

Much of the experience has de-familiarized the social conventions and hierarchical structures implicit in most single-player roleplaying games. I'm beginning to perceive videogames as elaborately designed systems of desire. The games that bring human beings into social interaction also infuse these systems with the dynamics of power. And this, in turn, is having the increasing effect of foregrounding the games that take place in my daily life.

I've been taking notice of the common rule as described in the tripartite structure Samuel R. Delany had developed in one of his essays on the readerly/writerly structures of SF: "The mutual inadequations of language and desire constitute what happens; the mutual inadequations of desire and what happens constitute language; the mutual inadequations of what happens and language constitute desire." ("Toto, We're Back", Silent Interviews: On Language, Race, Sex, Science Fiction, and Some Comics)

Conceit

2004-12-03T21:08:00.000-08:00

I mentioned 'stumbling' across my old writings in the last post. I'm not going to be disengenuous and edit that post. I was rifling through my old material, seeking something to bring my language into focus, something to tell me I could be more than what I've become over the years. An event occurred a couple of weeks ago that jarred me to attention, and made it clear that I need a more questioning and analytical connection to my social reality. Below is something I wrote a week and a half ago during a bout with insomnia.

I should clarify that it isn't intended to be read as a poem. The line breaks represent pauses in articulation, while the blank lines are pauses in thought:

-----------

The strange conceit of fury
at the perceived breach of a border or domain

I put myself 315k in debt for a piece of property
and this investment is made in a con-dominium

these complexes are almost entirely about
communal preservation or incrementation of value

this land is your land

as soon as zak and I move in we're confronted
with the subtler and unintentional? rebellions against

the 'code of the condo'. The main breach is noise.
We don't want to hear our neighbors.

Silence is the matte background to the portrait
of the property we purchased and is

perceivably besieged on a few nights
when the neighbor to the left has said

goodbye to his son for the school year except
the occasional weekend and smokes a bowl and

blasts whatever rock and roll was in vogue in
his day. I can only make out the bass line.

To the right are military parties. Or rather
return from military parties. Mariachi music

abounds as the back patio is the focus of
micro-communal activity. Cooking, music, cards

laughter, yelping. Sister and brother are both
Marines. Parents are retired, father keeps a patch

of garden in shared front yard domain by fence
bordering park. Kids are Marines in a time of war.

A war with Iraq sparked by 911 USA jingoist foreign
policy. At first the celebration of returns and

departures seems obligatory. But with repeated trips to
and from various bases, camps, staging areas

the perception of priviledge wears thin and we
start to become incensed at the border breaches

the foreign culture, the foreign war, the constant
barrage of difference in the form of

music, laughter, gatherings, late into
the early morning.

Complaints, complaints, complaints.
To the neighbors, but sister is hardened Marine now

and simple reply is "I'm a Marine back from duty, we're partying.
Thanks for your concern."

More complaints, this time to the 'communal police' of
the condo board. Letter issued, and subsequent complaint

about ugly 'shack' built to house the parties
was forwarded, and honored by the husband, roof dismantled

but pillars still standing, obtruding over gate
in hopes of reprieve or forgetfullness.

Palpable tension over the fence. The son, who I had never
seen before, approches me a month

later and shakes my hand, introduces himself and
lets me know he's back from camp and off to Iraq

soon and will have a few celebrations. Just letting me
know because he's heard there have been some
complaints.

I tell him my son sleeps in the kid's room right
over the patio (lie, he sleeps in our bed). He nods, pauses

a feeling of disconnection, like we're both
scanning each other but not listening to one
another

asks congenially about the baby, how old, boy girl.
Invites us over, and we go separate ways. Party is still

loud but a bit more subdued, a bit more prolonged.
The walls and stairwell would shake with

his march up and down the stairs, or more like a hybrid
march / teenage tromp-tumble. Plomp-plomp-plomp-plomp-boom.

He approached me a couple more times with
forewarnings of parties and a friendly invite.

Our encounters became a little more personable, comfortable, but
still had the sense of analysis

gauging the opposing party. But beneath this I felt
a need to cut through the crap

and relate as humans and tell him how bewildered
I was by his family, by his choices, by the country's

choices. But I didn't cross that border. His last visit
was sometime in August, and neither of us knew

it would be the last time we saw each other.
He died in the Fallujah offensive last week 11-14-04.

Zak saw the mom on cell phone in tears on morning of 11/15 and
knew immediately. Reporters came by later in the day

And ask her for a sound bite. Under pressure to
come up with something, she describes what she
knows but not what she feels. The parties

and the family's visible sense of pride. The sounds
that seep through the walls at night now are

mourning sounds, weeping I haven't heard from
adults since John died many years ago.

Intermingled with sounds of children playing,
knowing but not understanding why their parents
are here.

Remembering what I went through with John, and
the unbearable isolation of nights with only

memories and nightmares, and the aweful
need for someone, anyone to be awake with me.

The sounds of parties a few days later are
welcome and still bewildering, as are

the massive gatherings of church members & friends a
week later, outside in the cold November night

candles alight, and watching, listening, praying.

How was the conceit of our perceived
border and it's 'defense' any different from the conceit that

launched the war that killed this boy at
the age of 21? This question and fatigue have numbed me beyond
further narrative.

let x = 1

2004-12-02T21:51:00.000-08:00

Tonight, I stumbled across some old writings of mine, typed over the course of my first few months in New York City in 1995. And I felt like I was reading someone else's work. I've periodically looked back at old diaries from my college days, and old poetry from the same period, but I guess the 1995-97 period just felt too contemporary and I had never bothered to re-read much of it. I mean where's the fun in gazing at a mirror...you know what's there. But reading this stuff was the equivalent of seeing someone else in the looking glass. Some of it is embarrassing in it's academic posturing, but there are moments where the writing really escalates beyond the stuff I had been feverishly penning in poetry workshops in school.

Why mention this? Because it was the first time I could see what I had lost in the years that have passed. My engagement with my social and material environment is nowhere near the level hinted at by those old ramblings in '95. And I feel it's time for me to wake up, and get at this again, but maybe without the posturing this time.

As sort of an inauguration of the blog, I'll post some of the stuff that spawned it.

Here's some context.

I had moved to NYC a few months after graduating from UCSC, to join Zak who had graduated a quarter early and moved out there as the next natural step in her Modern Dance career. She was taking company class at the Merce Cunningham studio at the time. I had graduated with a BA in Modern Literary Studies, and left with a fascination for literary theory, language poetry, and science fiction (as fostered under the aegis of Earl Jackson Jr.). I had no 'step' to follow, so I went with Zak's.

In the final months of my stay at UCSC, I had attended a Senior Seminar that made extensive use of email and web communications, something that was still a bit at the fringe at the time particularly in the classroom. Email became the primary means of discussion among classmates, and the discussion eventually evolved into it's own seminar. I still have a large number of the interchanges somewhere on a copy of a copy of a copy of a hard drive. But among these exchanges, there were lapses and breakdowns. Where people started to free associate, or reveal personal resonances with the subject or reading materials, or started composing collaborative, incremental experiments. I lapsed into the latter category with a classmate I rarely saw in RL. Epistolary synergy ensued. Once I graduated, the communications tapered off, most people lost their @cats.ucsc.edu accounts, and my conversation continued over snail mail. Then the letters stopped coming, and I lost all track of my interlocuter. I've never heard from this person since then. But for awhile, I continued the interchange on my own, both because I was hoping I would eventually hear from my friend again, and because the style of writing just kept me mentally engaged with my surroundings. Awake, as Robert Gluck would call it.

This is part of it:

---------------------
pleading guilty is the best defense: transcryptions: 8/9/95-1/12/96

8/9/95 new textures materials words shape nascent ideas along these scribbled lines (new alleys in a sprawling metropolis - where 'new' means freshly abandoned center) NO IDEAS BUT IN THINGS but must add here NEW THINGS ARE NO IDEAS, and NO THINGS BUT IN IDEAS (i.e. things don't guarantee ideas, only assumptions do)
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

elevated
henry flemming could have come
upon the hudson tracks (before
the confused red badge was ever
a thought in his sunset mind)

and stumbled in vivid
error through this elevated
armour: an architecture
of desertion stiff miscolored

overgrown but the vermin
less beckoning, the battles
more distant and in
the wrong direction

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8/10-8/11/95 I've pulled the thread and it's all unravelling. the day's texture wears thin. what form will this cruel contingency take if not a stack of lines between power and chance, a shelf of titles from prices through proust
bright captivity the surface
of earth the surface of earth
the surface of the tongues of
angels the tongues of angels the
tongues of breaks the instinct
for bliss complete collected
stories a car at the door and
midnight oil in search of lost
time in search

and isn't it too much and too easy to claim one self as the worn hinge upon which poetry creaks from one set of furnished meanings to another

when these quotidien coincidences lend an air of rehearsal to reality, a dream through cracked eyelids and its ruse of substance, what will save me from stepping indifferent into traffic over quaint bridges at the end of the story searching for an awakening a punctuation for the senses

these walks when the face need not assume order but can in all seriousness emulate madness or vacancy

permissibly slackjawed expressionless and leaning into sirens or squinting into sewers

and finding verse in a collage of un-authorized bookcovers (a frantic exercise in selective readings a binding of ideas in things a fissure between intent and artifice both present but neither necessary for the other)

so should I remove my"self" from my language and graft my body across and beyond this I this gaunt stereotype

not as a guarantor of meaning but a stabilization of form

with its overdetermined breath and a substance I can only describe as vengefully social

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8/11/95 poems + location (+ form)
like someone coming up to you in a grocery store and saying "show me...unrequited love" and you try to create meaningful metaphors with vegetables, toilet paper, and canned goods all in an elaborate pile or row or whatever (eight buns and six hot dogs blah blah blah) and you eventually fail and sigh and s/he thanks you profusely and "exactly!" and you find yourself trapped in a parable, the meaning of which becomes as indecipherable as the mass of failed signifiers lying deliciously before you.
----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8/12/95 How conflict will sometimes become its own space without intentional processes of selection or combination

the fight has you, your furniture, and your long crooked stride

a stretch by the hudson its provisional resolution

sunbathing on a dock that won't cave in

the sidewalk a similar assumption beneath a geography of faces

at the table a little girl the size of her dad's femur, feet dangling
man: tan & bespectacled looks steadily out the window as if watching his reflection
g: why'd ya move the car dad?
why'd ya move the car?
m: huh? (awkward glance toward me watching without looking)
g: why'd ya move the car?
m: so I can see it from here...
g: what the taxi? (giggles)
m: (peers)
g: the tree? (laughs for herself this time)
m: (chews and peers)
her feet kick at the air

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------

8/22/95 interrupted dream-image - love is a windshield drawing rain on a driven face.
interruption and overdetermination:
platform (outlined a stolen segment of a subway sign that I imagine hangs on the perfected walls of some demented platonist)
interruption and movement:
feeling the body's fragility the day after the subway accident
five words can only say. (perelman)
interruption and work: related discrepancy between "coffee tasting" and material base (the pickers)
c.f. Poetry 166.5 (Aug 1995) p. 262, "The Common Robusta"
and Chris's description of his consumerist appreciation of SF novels (described in all the language of eating, tasting)
interruption, overdetermination, and my experiments with the epistolary form
" " " " " " " elegiatic "
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8/25/95 subway song One day at a time
aged woman clutching One day at a time
posts and a bag Yesterday is gone
of amorphous Tomorrow may never
goodies Be mine
One day at a time
One day at a [subway door slams as she moves to the next car]
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9/5/95 [bat outta hell]

how a day without interruption loses its drive and my verse becomes an aimless transcription of contexts and eavesdroppings

chasing down lost time or finding language or image within scheduled idleness

"You know...
She knew a handful of words
I knew a handful of words
together we..." (forgot everything?)

reading tentative poets their own handfuls desperately clinging to the page with promises and dreams as diffuse and gorged as this premature sunset when red shouldn't be so high

yet all this nevertheless finds its way its early space and cramped time within the sweep of traffic or surf or breeze or jet engine call it what you will as long as it all remains confused and halts the pen in a place where surface exceeds itself, overlaps and feels like a perpetual speed bump flattened with use but overgrown with subtler spaces: ant trails, tufts, and cracks that seem to let something loose under the burden of innumerable readings

and becomes its own form of writing, eventually replacing these words with the ideograms of what surrounds what intrudes what shapes without a voice but a vast inaudible scream.

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errands and chores and the process of writing
feeling as though AF at least partially owns everything scribbled in here
are letters acceptable in a journal? or should it be filled with notes that never "expect" to be read (are there such things?)

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9/6/95 someone scribbled (in graffito ideogram) POTENT in the coffeeshop bathroom where I now scribble also

dream: received gifts from Heather (books) and Elizabeth: journal with assignments written on every page
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9/10/95 proclaiming to myself "as far as I'm concerned its my body and my responsibility" of course inadvertantly quoting a different cause and bringing the two into a simile or metaphor is something I refuse to do so I won't - anyway I had second thoughts about this internal utterance, even on its own terms. If she enjoys my body, isn’t it in some way...hers? Is it like spoiling someone’s gift after they’ve opened it? And if she creates my body every night through this enjoyment am I burning a temple of mutual pleasure (Isaiah 13:21)? am I polluting the breath that shapes both of ours?
reading Chuang Zu, this strange responsibility expands to other contiguities since “this” defines or could be “that.”
the sky could be the window or any pale surface
could be the rattle of a shopping bag
the constant that inconstantly shapes bare hill and thick lake
If one molds the other, what responsibility is this, and who holds it?
Are these moldings - these models that mutually shape one another - what one calls a “trope” and is its responsibility, its ethos, perhaps poetry itself?

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9/11/95 How interruption (cf. 8/22) or sheer excess (cf. 9/5) can bring two forms (Te’s?) into such a relationship (Tao?).

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Dear Bob

Well I found this letter that I barely remember reading, but I must have at some point or another since the envelope was ripped open but was hidden beneath a pile of unopened bills and health insurance forms and pitiful paychecks and pictures of pets that are much bigger and uglier now or have run away into the vast grassy landfills of Pinedale to join other migrant vermin and live the good life. But anyway...thank you for the incredible letter. It really had me thinking for a while, which is probably why I forgot about the letter itself and just automatically drew a mental picture of you, doing the things you want, sort of a negative image of myself here, performing the (hopefully temporary) role of the grunt without ambition, shlupping drinks and paying rent. But now I also realize that you’re probably not even there anymore. And yes I do picture you slightly differently and I’m curious to see the after-Bob, the one with EUROPE stamped all across her like a provocative passport I once found in the altitudes of the Yosemite wilderness: a wry face followed by pages of locales and a muddy footprint...

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9/23/95 Noticed that graffiti’s terse labels resemble/replicate advertising’s current use of single overdetermined words

but ads use aesthetics to codify the word whereas graffiti aestheticizes its very environment/medium/surface/landscape with the word used (e.g. POTENT, RISK), thereby emphasizing its own codified nature (ads only naturalize their own uses of codes)

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how mass (and) transit can become defamiliarized by catastrophe and you realize, no we’re not gliding through a void, but are fragile bodies hurtling, on union tracks, computerized surveillance, real graffiti, solid shadows, actual shafts, there is a material reality a medium that takes us where we’re going but also defines us down to our very bodies, our thoughts bookmarked by stations and unsavory passengers or a jolt from another train shoving everybody back both physically (when, after a pause, you realize the strange melding which was occuring between you and the vehicle) and mentally (which, much less baffling than the above, is really only registered as simultaneous terror, relief, and indignation while you find yourself vehemently agreeing with an armani’d passenger exclaiming I AM NOT WALKING ON THOSE TRACKS THIS TIME)

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Tamara

I felt like writing a tear-stained unintelligible letter to mom last night but comforted myself with thoughts of writing to you. My last few days have spanned so many locations that I felt like I was crafting something despite myself, as if my body were gathering experience with its slow deliberate steps across town and my eyes hopelessly open and clicking in a strange language of their own.
I’ve just been unsutured in so many ways it’s all become excessive and exhausting -- complete strangers noticing this, tapping on my shoulder and inquiring in alluring accents “are you alright” and I answer yeah its just the damn drizzle from the AC’s gets to you after a while you know? and a glance at my orange hospital band (what ward?) sends them on their way and I on mine, proud of both misunderstandings.
So many social locales in 48 hours I’ve just got to write it all down before I sober up, sleep and forget it all in the morning on the way to work
-sliced knee open at work; hospital, the waiting room, the empty op room where stitches were nowhere to be found, TV show about predatory reflections (female of course)
-criminal court next morning [loitering on church steps] with bleeding stiches, a faulty summons, and a battered sign above the judge proclaiming what the whole room felt after six hours of peering through venetian blinds at a day that had finally emptied itself of the weather and now beamed from all the architecture like a great eye above a pyramid: IN GOD W E TRUST. We were money become time for a day, and the judge’s job was to give this day its legal closure by switching us back into money and sending us home as paid balances. we were free.
-Barnes and Noble: a terrific novelist who thought he was a historian read from his book with all the grace of a humble striptease toward the truth of a particular body, the applause as sporadic as my figure, slipping among shelves and looking for the perfect page
-Bar: Mon Night Football, must get drunk enough to enjoy it then try my luck at Fussball and Hot-Shot but give it all up to wander the streets a little more
-Opera: drunk, drifting with and against a tide of wonderful tuxedos and evening gowns
-Times Square: hustled and propositioned (cmon you and yr pretty loooong hair) cut into
-Port Authority Bus Terminal, looking for a seat but they’re reserved for people who are actually going somewhere--finding an audio-kinetic sculpture made of billiard balls and many tracks, some artists idea of a beautiful joke
-and stumbling home, achey and sick from tetanous shot and today being monastic with back spasms and the beat bible

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My dreams, when I become aware of them, always end up at the sea, where I usually find bones of some sort, skulls or entire skeletons
e.g. after scurrying across wet sand trying to guess which coast and digging my hands in search of crustaceans which are much too big, as is the wave that drags me out to sea and has me groping for the shore, I find embedded in a warm dune two burning skulls and hunch over them for heat, hoping no one will find me and ask me to leave

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shard text-

THIS WRITING IS ALL FAKE (COPIED FROM OTHER WRITING) SO YOU SHOULD GO AWAY AND NOT READ ANY OF IT

So after I survive the car crash with Derrida, I find myself wandering on an island full of beautiful, empty homes. I come across a small gathering in a park, something like a storytelling circle, where a gentleman is in the process of describing the history of the "home across the river," which immediately gathers itself in a vision before me. It is somewhere remote on the island, and it (unlike the other buildings) is in shambles. It looks haunted. The narrator tells us this had belonged to a renouned photographer who let the house fall apart in front of him, day by day, as he focussed his unerring attention on the pictures, and nothing else. When the artist eventually died, a huge, empty basement was found beneath the home. It was made entirely of brick and was several floors deep. I was in the process of exploring the second level when I woke up muttering..."that would have been great gallery space"

Reader, where are you inside the future outside the past this letter is addressed to you but who/what are you, some kind of William Gibson plug-in to my virtuality? An audience distant and nameless as the billions of herbaceous plants in the Amazon unimaginatively strange, potent

Beyond

Quit all other applications Switch off VIRTUAL MEMORY, in the Memory Control Panel. Restart. Double click on the BEYOND icon, in the BEYOND folder. Do not remove any of the other items from the folder, they are all necessary to run the program. To move around a panorama: Press-and-Drag the Mouse. You can move left, right, up and down. Zoom in : Press the OPTION key. Zoom out: Press the CONTROL key. Activate a HOT SPOT: Move the mouse (without dragging it) around the image until the cursor changes to a hand. Now click the mouse. Quit Press the COMMAND and PERIOD keys. Contact: zoe@interport.net Web: http://www.users.interport.net/~zoe Copyright Zoe Beloff 1997

"I just wanted to look at the inside of the eye on this carving closely. I thought with the laser-light I might detect crystalline structures, perhaps get a clue to what the eyes were made from. But I saw pictures"...he went back over the rusty sand tongues and purple stone to where the head had fallen. He looked at the whole eye. He looked at the broken one. He did not know what perversity made him crouch before the latter. He flicked on his laser-beam.

Expressionist Painter Oskar Kokoschka fell madly in love with Alma Mahler, widow of Gustav Mahler. After a passionate affair, Alma had an abortion and left Oskar. Unable to deal with his abandonment by Alma, and haunted by dreams of his unborn child, Oskar suicidally enlisted in the army during WWI. Receiving a serious head-wound, he returned home more distraught than ever at the absence of Alma. Seeking solace, Oskar contacted Alma's dressmaker, to commission her to create an exact life-sized replica of Alma. This doll of Alma became his constant companion, accompanying him to parties, dinners, and the opera. The doll was operated by a young maid, Reserl, who just by chance, happened to be hopelessly in love with Oskar. Her love was unrequited. After several years, his friends who had grown tired of his obsession, murdered his doll at one of his parties. Oskar mourned the passing of the doll/Alma, and cured, went on to marry Olda. A flesh and blood woman and live a full life. The maid disappeared.

It's something usesless, sudden, violent; something that costs a life; red, blue, purple; a spirt; a splash; like those hyacinths (she was passing a fine bed of them); free from taint, dependance, soilure of humanity or care for one's kind; something rash, ridiculous, "like my hyacinth, husband I mean, Bonthrop: that's what it is--a toy boat on the Serpentine, it's ecstasy--ecstasy."

But I always repeat you to myself like I check an alarm before falling asleep. I can’t continue without setting something beside myself and measuring it before it measures me. Exhaustion. When spoken words lose their immediacy, wonder becomes a sharp vanishing point, a brief fixture of perspective and moment. Bare minimum, all implication: ghosts on a clothesline.