In Which I Complain. Par for the Course, Really.

What is up, gentle readers?

Elevennames's's state of neat constant exsanguinated nature is none of your concern - the surviving writers are all terribly distracted with going to shows and being hippies and not actually knowing that they are still writers here. I, myself, spent he past few weeks building a deck! And it has yet to burst into flame. So, perhaps if this blogging thing doesn't work out (snrk) I can always just rely on improvised carpentry.

Regardless.

I feel I should address the constant, near plague-like scourge that is striking down our good celebrities, leaving only younger, less-in-every-way balls of semi-sentient filth in their place. Tim Russert, George Carlin - both dead, like doorposts and doornails and other parts of doors! Knobs! Repeated consonant door similes! Or that guy from Monty Python!

There is, sadly, no greater wisdom to be had in the deaths of these individuals. They were about as connected to my life dead as they were alive. I had an old college roommate who once insisted on listening to George Carlin stand-up for hours at a stretch, which is where I was first introduced to him in a non Bill-and-Tedly fashion. He was observant and cranky, which are really the two best qualities you can have when you're a comic, but he was also a bit self-righteous, or at least came off that way. Always sounding like he was rallying the troops to invoke social change or whatever. Tim Russert was the grinning fat man who was also kinda clever on Meet the Press and sometimes other nebulously irrelevant news programs on MSNBC.

So when they died, what difference does it make to me? Knowledge of their continued existence is not going to make my work day go faster or slower, nor is my daily sustenance dependent on their continued removal from the lifestream.

It shouldn't make one whit of difference, but I am still made sad because these were intelligent men who, in their respective ways, were each insightful and creative and not at all the sort of miasmatic dullard which is so commonly found in popular media these days, and in their passing, there is no immediate heir to their standards, no Hamlet, but a plethora of Claudiuseses, each one a Mencia or an Olbermann, a medium-talented individual not seeking the same excited creativity that Russert and Carlin possessed, but rather, just to exploit a niche.

And not to say that there's anything wrong with that - I wish I had a niche to exploit. But it is a sign, an indicative symbol of the loosening gyre of the world, expanding and growing more distant from itself. More than individuals die, in other words - their examples are the foundations upon which we build ourselves. When they die, we realize that we cannot grow on them anymore, that they have become finite, that it is then our turn to take up the mantle of idealism, and try to project it forward.

More swearing and less soppyness in future posts, I swear.

In Memoriam: Tim Russert

One of the pre-eminent political analysts, commentators and journalists of our time is dead. Tim Russert, host and moderator of Meet the Press, died of a heart attack at 58 today, and if you liked political discourse at a reasonable level and wanted, say, insights in the campaigns running today, you could tune in and watch Meet the Press or, quite frankly, whatever show on NBC he was asked to speak for two or three minutes on, he should be very sorely missed by you.

If you don't know who he is, click here and then come back when you're done. It's MSNBC's report on his death, and the people speaking about him include President George W. Bush, Tom Brokaw and Harry Reid, current Senate Majority Leader.

His research on the people he interviewed was career-spanning and unspeakably deep, so he knew his politics and was polite, but unrelenting in his pursuit of the truth. But that polite part is incredibly important. Russert made his name by being persistent and civil, and kept Meet the Press afloat, to the point of four million steady viewers on Sunday morning. It wasn't exciting television, mind you, but important television. It didn't have the host or the guests fighting for who'se voice could rise above the others, which usually drives ratings elsewhere. 

Here's an example. Back when Mitt Romney was still a viable Republican candidate, Mr. Romney had been making a bit of backsliding about his views on abortion and women's rights, and he'd been catching some flak for what was a drastic shift in ideological belief, which seemed to coincide neatly with his getting chosen by the Evangelical (which, by the way, sounds a lot better than saying arch-conservative) leaders of the Christian community in America. Now. Russert went one step further and brought in a video clip of Mr. Romney saying in his gubernatorial bid in Massachusetts that he would "preserve and protect a woman's right to choose", was to do so inspired by his mother to be "devoted and dedicated" to his protection of a woman's right to choose. Watch it yourself.

Russert catches Mr. Romney in his run-around game, and does so in a polite, civil manner, without gloating or raising his voice. It's the combination of research and civility that made Tim Russert "the best political journalist in America, not just the best television journalist in America", according to Al Hunt, the former chief of the Washington desk for the Wall Street Journal .

His death leaves a vacancy in American politics the size of which I cannot even outline or fathom. If you want to understand politics, he could speak to you about it in a way that synthesized it and made it understandable for the laypeople and not just political junkies. Insightful barely covers it. He reported the happenings, put the questions to the people who made the happenings and did it all because he loved America and he loved politics. 

For our American readers: Go on YouTube and do a search for Tim Russert and learn about the political landscape around you.

For our international readers: Go on YouTube and do a search for Tim Russert and get insight about American politics from its foremost reporter and treasured son.

His influence is huge. His shadow will loom over American politics, but more heavily over the commentators who don't ask the tough, probing questions. He was pre-eminent because he asked the hard questions, because he stayed civil and polite and because he did the legwork and homework to back it all up with facts and not bluster.

When he said something, those words were given gravity that no one else in the field has. His hard work, insight and politeness were why.

Suffice to say he's missed.

I would put a grander title here, but I'm not too confident in my writing on this.

Let's talk about democracy, shall we? There's been some discussion of it here, mostly in relation to the Democratic primaries, and how most of us are fairly apprehensive about the whole process, knowing what we know, and believing what we believe.

The Democratic primary finally wrapped up, and the DNC made the official decision on what people already knew: Barack Obama is the presumptive Democratic nominee for the Presidency of the United States. 

Ah, but you see, there's a catch. The catch is a figure in Illinois politics called Tony Rezko, who was recently convicted on 16 of 24 counts of wrongdoing, which boil down to handing out dirty money to Illinois politicians. There is supposedly, sealed testimony in the Rezko case that is damaging to Obama that the judge didn't let out.

Obama has yet to accused to wrongdoing, but it doesn't sound good for his campaign that the guy that helped the nominee buy his dream home committed the ultimate sin in Chicago politics, getting caught, and lends credence to his now vanquished opponent's thesis that there's an October Surprise that could be a game changer in the general election.

Cynically, this means that I have a choice this year, between a charismatic young politician who has zero experience running anything large scale and John McCain (whom I apparently must prefix any comment about my beliefs of his policies with "I respect his service but...") whose conservative views frighten me, and his economic plans make no sense. I want another Conservative Christian in the Oval Office like I want a cerebral hemorrhage. 

One could say prospects for the country do not look good, and that's not even mentioning the crippling national debt and loss of goodwill the current President has left us with. And this is what democracy has brought us, I hear liberals across the internet say.

Here is the contrast:

I was recently in South Africa, and yes, the xenophobia was on everyone's lips, it was the topic of conversation. The xenophobia, of course has roots in the current democratic system. To get elected, the current president of the country (Thabo Mbeki) made a lot of promises to low income, rural citizens who didn't live near Cape Town that if they moved into portions of Cape Town that had yet to be built, but were somehow eligible for voting, that if they voted for him, he'd give them jobs and homes.

Well, he hasn't.

The people who moved, then, instead of moving back to their old homes and face a certain amount of disappointment and chagrin, made their own homes in portions of the city that have sporadic running water and power. I have seen these slums, and they stretch for miles as far as the eye can see. If you are lucky in there, your house's roof is made of more than one large piece of metal or wood, and houses less than eight people in a glorified studio apartment.

As you can imagine, resentment builds.

So. These residents begin to see the success of immigrants from other countries around South Africa and become envious, who live far more comfortably than they do. Some are immigrants from Zimbabwe who came to South Africa to avoid persecution at the hands of their fellow citizens. The city government of Cape Town, having to come up with something, begins to build small brick houses with access to water, and an electricity scheme to help those same disadvantaged residents to supply electricity for themselves and the people around them. In some cases, I don't know how many, these small houses are turned around and sold by the residents, who then claim the government does nothing for them.

Before we continue this story, I ought to mention the sizable gap between the rich and the poor. Within a 15 minute walk of the docks, where there is a sign saying it has been six days since a risk of a debilitating injury, there is an Aston Martin dealership, a truly world class shopping center with two movie theaters and a five star hotel.  Too much too quickly?

But. Grievances stack up, and so something finally snapped in Johannesburg. Immigrants homes and businesses were broken into and torn apart. (Some enterprising business owners took the opportunity to deface the property of their business rivals who were not South African natives. You go xenophobia and capitalism!) What makes this so heartbreaking for some South African citizens is because those same countries from which the immigrants are from helped South Africa defeat apartheid, so natives violently ejecting immigrants is particularly cruel.

Xenophobia spread and Thabo Mbeki was conveniently out of the country, while South African residents were left with the clothes on their backs as the city police had to bring in riot police to stop the violence and intimidation, while also trying to bus the immigrants away from the danger. Why mention that? Because Mbeki and Mugabe, the strongman in charge of Zimbabwe are friends.

A decade or so on in democracy in South Africa, the common refrain is "we've come a long way", and by and large, they have. But, what they're starting to learn is that democracy once they get it, is not a pannaccea that fixes problems the minute we move to the form of representation and social organization. It's something that must be actively engaged by the population to continue its good operation. Democracy, then, is not something passive or robust. It is, in fact, quite fragile. It must be worked at.

We have seen what happens when the current electorate is not informed. It leads to abuses, and the world has suffered for it. I'm not going to list the ways for fear I've missed an important one, the list is that long. Democracy, this little thing of ours, (typed with not a little bit of frivolity) despite the large, expensive buildings that exist to serve justice do not serve their purpose if the people filling them and paying for their upkeep don't also believe and work towards democracy.

This isn't to say that "look, we could be South Africa, and by comparison, isn't America or democracy great?", but instead that this kind of representative system is something that is tied to, and will become more and less responsive to the people it is supposed to serve based on how much feedback it gets and how much the people interact with the offices of the state. South Africa, then, is learning about how dangerous representative government can be, and I think that some people ought to be reminded that just because you dislike the two major candidates is not proof that the system doesn't work, but instead that American voters made a choice, even if that choice was, in some people's minds from a small palate of options.

It means something to me that the palate is there.

Elevennames: Offensive Summer

James and Zachary have been nattering away at me to write something, and I responded to them by ignoring their texts and never logging on to instant messenger. I am far too busy with important things (like chopping wood and selling scrap metal and City of Villains) to bother with this thing! But last night even my precious Rogue Isles were invaded by Zachary, asking me politely if I would think about updating.

His innocuous request of course reverberated about my skull and spread about its loathsome spores, and now I am all like "I would love to update." SO HERE IS YOUR DAMN POST YOU MONSTERS.

Let us start where we last left off - I think around the point that said I'd keep writing for this thing as long as someone else was hoofing the bill. Ha ha, savage lies! It can be assumed that beneath the tepid and calmly witty exterior we project here at Elevennames, we all dream only of one thing: the brutal murder of our comrades. Or maybe that's just me! Whatever. SUFFICE IT TO SAY there was something of a kerfuffle, and Cate and Beth are not here any more. Maybe more will go, too! We are like a tiny medieval village, and one amongst us is a murderer. Can you, the reader determine who is behind the crimes before another person meets their grisly demise?

Hint: We are all the murderer. All of our party games are brutally objective moral judgments in disguise. Enjoy reading useless blogs on the internet in the face of devastating tragedy!

In these awful instances, it is easy to become disconnected from the actual human tragedy of our times. I can only hope that the Offensive Summer (what? What did James call it?) we can provide some kind of entertainment with both brain and heart. And maybe a fair helping of guilt.

Eleven Names: Summer Offensive

It's a popular time to come back. Electronic Arts announced they're going back to basics after spending $620 million to acquire BioWare and Pandemic Studios, both not exactly suppliers of mainstream bread and butter content. The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, after a long hiatus are doing a summer tour with the Dropkick Murphys. Shai Hulud is putting out a new full length disc, after the last full length disc took roughly seven years to be released. Sega announced that it's publishing games from developer Platinum, which means that this is the official return of Clover Studios (You might have heard of Okami...) brass to work on new IPs.

(Mind of Mencia is also getting restarted, which means that if you like thoughtless "racial" humor that involves making fun of Mexicans and saying dee dee dee, you have something to look forward to. It means I'm going to want to submerge my skull in lava.)

Speaking of Skull (the mascot/lovable troll of webcomic PvP), he's leaving PvP. For good. 

Finally, us! We're doing new things with Eleven Names, or, to be precise, we're doing old things again. We're going back to theme weeks, when the four of us reconvene (with luck, this week), announcing new sources of content (soon!)  and hopefully having great content in store for  you. My perspective, is of course, quite different from Tom or Zach's. It's my hope that there's something more scheduled and regular for you, Zach is more of a "take 'em as they come" spirit, so there's a bit of friction there.

We do want to extend a lot of thanks to Mrs. Kennedy and Mrs. Beth for their contributions, and among other things, we owe them a drink for their help in the birth of the site.

I would call this an indefinite hiatus, since, technically, we don't know when all of us are going to be on the internets at the same time, and our schedules do conflict, but, we are certain we are going to bring you new, as at least one banner suggests, juice from our mind grapes. It might take a while to bottle, but I think you'll find it's worth it.

Haunting Pluto

This is something I wrote on deadline, for a class on comic books. As it was written very quickly, somewhat intentionally overlong, and in a style that at least tries to pay lip service to the idea of academic standards while actually just rambling on however it likes, it may or may not fit in perfectly with the tone here. It's about Pluto, a manga I've been intending to discuss for quite some time. Later this week or next I'll probably make another post about Pluto, delving into a specific idea I found interesting; consider this post background and introduction for that one, and feel free to just skim through and look at the pretty links if you want.

Pretty much everything I say here has the potential to be a spoiler, at least for the first few chapters, so just go read the darn thing first, and then ignore my essay because you've read it for yourself. You'll be better off that way.

TEARS AND ZERONIUM ROUNDS:
NAOKI URASAWA'S PLUTO

Pluto is a manga written and drawn since 2003 by Naoki Urasawa. It is not yet released in the United States, but fan translations, or scanslations, are available on the internet. Urasawa, who has been producing manga since 1983, has received some of the field of manga's most sought-after awards, twice including the Osamu Tezuka Cultural Achievement Award: first in 1999 for Monster and then again in 2005 for Pluto. This is highly appropriate, as Pluto is an adaptation of Osamu Tezuka's Tetsuwan Atomu story "The World's Strongest Robot". Tetsuwan Atomu translates roughly as "Ambassador Atom" and was renamed when it was adapted as an anime and, later, exported to the West as Astro Boy.

Astro Boy is the grandfather of all robot anime, the first example of Japan's pop-cultural obsession with robots, and its influence can be felt in everything from the Mega Man series of video games (and by extension dystopian posthuman rock operators The Protomen) to everything else that uses robots as a primary genre element to, according to historian Helen McCarthy, Japan's enthusiasm in the face of technological advances and industrial shifts in their society. (Sabin, 227) Astro Boy taught us that a robot can be a hero, and Japan, at least, has never forgotten that.

Nerds like me are probably vaguely familiar with Astro Boy from Adult Swim or Cartoon Network as a seemingly primitively drawn, childish robot blasting about on boot-jets to save the world, and might wonder at the fact that a single storyline from this ancient robot anime has been unearthed and given new life across an entire manga series that has lasted for five years and 52 issues, seeming only now to be drawing near a conclusion. However, while Pluto is in fact a decompressed and deepened retelling of the story, the depth of Osamu Tezuka's storytelling and the questions posed by the original remain completely compelling and valid: in a world populated as much by robots as by humans, why do humans create robots for the primary purpose of battling and defeating other robots? Given the capacity to create life, why must we turn our creations towards destruction?

In a world where remote-controlled robots armed with machine-guns, shotguns and grenade launchers are patrolling alongside soldiers in Iraq, a world where the CIA used an unmanned aerial vehicle armed with hellfire missiles to eliminate a carload of terrorists in someone else's country, these questions seem almost to take on some kind of real-world importance. Certainly, we don't live in a world with artificial intelligence and flying robot children, but as unmanned weapon systems become more autonomous despite international efforts to keep a human being in the loop this debate may take on a real world context. For now, though, bring on the arm guns and boot-jets, the combat shells and electromagnetic tornadoes: Pluto is here.

Pluto does not begin as an Astro Boy story; its version of the character, named Atom, does not appear at all until the 7th act, and remains, at least as of May 2008, a secondary character, albeit a central one. The main character of Pluto was a minor character in the original story: a German police detective robot named Gesicht (meaning 'Face') who finds himself investigating a series of murders. (He's pictured above, and throughout. Seriously. Go read this.) The victims are split into two groups, one of humans who were involved in a four-year old military investigation during a war in Persia and one of robots who were instrumental in ending that war, robots who are classified as weapons of mass destruction. These are the most powerful robots in the world, and Gesicht is one of them. All the crime scenes have two things in common: makeshift horns placed by the head of the body and a complete lack of physical evidence left behind by the attacker. This leads Europol, the agency for which Gesicht works, to believe that the crimes may have been committed by a robot, making it a case of even more historic and political importance.

The story that proceeds to unfold takes place across three continents and ten years of backstory, through an intriguingly realized world where robots and humans have begun to find ways to coexist, with a robot bill of rights having been signed into law and robots finding service in all branches of society. It is the art that really sells this idea--there are no footnotes ala Shirow's Ghost in the Shell here, and no narration to guide us through. The world is not incredibly well developed: it is a place expressed in a cartoony style, full of simple, easily read technologies; a place where society has changed less than its trappings have, and a fairly traditional science fiction future--which is actually a bonus, because this iconic representation of a world allows us to invest more fully in the emotions and philosophies of the characters, and appreciate their social struggles better: the transparency of the world allows us to more easily inhabit it.

Emotion is at the core of what makes Pluto function, and it is the ability of this manga to nearly wrench tears from my manly eyes of flint that compels me to value it so highly. The saga of Norse #2 learning to play the piano is at first glance a highly clichéd one, and at second glance, no individual element of it seems like high genius: he is a cartoonily drawn robot, face perpetually distant and sad, serving as the butler to a cranky old composer in a Scottish castle, trying to overcome his master's prejudice in order to escape his memories of war. And yet, as I read the story, I cannot help but blink back tears. It is not the writing alone that does this: I can see its claws coming for my heartstrings, and usually this would irritate me and pull me out of the story, but whenever the plot becomes too blatant in seeking to force me into a reaction, the art comes through with such brilliance that I cannot help but be drawn back in; whenever I grow scornful of the sad robot's unchanging face the hollowness of his words makes me forgive him. Every time I read the pages, my vision blurs--and I am no easy mark for such cons.

Graphically, Urasawa conveys emotion using every trick in the book, from facial expression to varying background to repeating the face of a robot policeman's expressionless wife until we somehow see it as sad. As the story continues, and intensifies, his robot protagonists begin to swap memories and send pulses of data in their death throes. They exchange parts of their minds and souls. These events are handled with transcendental skill, using abstract and impressionistic effects to convey the experience not only of love, or sadness, or murderous hatred, but of encountering someone else's experience of these things and recognizing it within oneself. Scott McCloud brings up the possibility of these effects in his work Understanding Comics, but Pluto makes its emotional sigils mind-searingly real, and, further, has the characters aware of their existence, meaning and extraordinary potency. I am not ashamed of the fact that I feel things when I read this book: this is a book that can make, and has made, (admittedly child-like and fictional) robots cry.

In terms of overall structure, this is a thriller, slow-building and multi-layered, with each issue revealing a little more of the puzzle and moving the protagonists, and therefore the reader, a little closer to the solution,. While I speak of puzzles, and the complexity of the backstory is certainly puzzling at times, this is a thriller which draws inspiration from hardboiled stories and is as much about how the characters solve the case as it is about solving the case itself. We are here to suffer with them and sympathize with them and cheer them towards hopeful victory rather than to attempt to solve the case before they do. Despite having a detective as a protagonist, this is a story about robots fighting each other, and sometimes that sensibility will win out, but the pacing and plot structure are pure hard-boiled detective yarn the entire way, except with more heart.

Looking more closely at individual chapters, nearly all of them end on or just after a revelation of some kind, major or minor, and these revelations are given large splash panels to emphasize their importance. Frequently, these revelations are artistically moving in addition to narratively important, and they serve as set-pieces that force the reader to react. The other panels vary both by size and word count, with the word count per panel sharply decreasing in times of tension and stress, leading to the feeling of rushing through pages, ever closer to that onrushing revelation or development at the end of the chapter. Sometimes, after an explosive chapter like this, the storytelling will drop back into a more placid, environmental mode, but it comes back faster and hits harder every time, building and building without becoming too pressurized to believe through the magic of the manga storytelling style done well: moments and places are invested with such a sense of timeliness and timelessness that the emotion invested in them fills the page with self-evident truth.

Some of the story's best moments take place in these respites between the explosions, revelations and sorrows: sometimes, I am perfectly content to watch Atom pick up a snail or eat ice cream. The poignancy of these moments lends depth and meaning to the rest of the work; the joy in small things makes the enormous scale of the heartbreak even more heartbreaking. The emotional investment makes the action sequences compelling on a level seldom seen in western comics, and the overall quality of the storytelling is nearly impossible to beat.

Pluto is a masterpiece of comic-style storytelling, with art that perfectly suits its purpose, and it addresses one of the genre concepts I most adore, albeit in more complex and less direct ways than a superhero comic might. It is not high literature, or the answer to life the universe and everything, but it knows exactly what it is and embodies that concept to the fullest possible extent. Among the manga I have read it is peerless.

References:

Roger Sabin, COMICS, COMIX & GRAPHIC NOVELS: A HISTORY OF COMIC ART, New York: Phaidon Press Inc, 1996

Scott McCloud, UNDERSTANDING COMICS: THE INVISIBLE ART, New York: Harper Collins, 1993

Paul Gravett, GRAPHIC NOVELS: Everything You Need To Know, New York: HarperCollins, 2005

The backmatter to volume 1 of the collected version of Pluto, as yet published only in Japan. Published by Shogakukan, collected from serials that began being published in Big Comic Original from 2003 on.

Author Unknown, “Pluto, by Naoki Urasawa”, Tezuka in English Database. 2006. Accessed 2008. Permanent Link: http://tezukainenglish.com/?q=node/147

Demos: Disgrace Is the Color of Red

Behind the scenes, there's been some significant discussion about what we're doing with elevennames, if none of us post and are overworked. I gave up on posting, angrily, a while back, and return now, for no other reason than it settles my mind and gives my mind something else to focus on than my papers.

There's news in the world, but I presume that you might like to know Nine Inch Nails released their new (non-instrumental) disc, the Slip for free, and you can download it, with a registration, here. More whenever we get around to it.

Eleven Names is dead! Long live Eleven Names!

Between Facebook’s new chat application (which you can’t opt out of) and the power outage on campus Thursday, a lightbulb turned on in my head. The big social question of our lives is how not how can we be more accessible, but how can we protect the few points in our lives where we are not accessible?

Consider, briefly, that airlines are thinking about allowing cell phone calls on flights. Can you imagine a multi-hour flight next to a businessperson or vapid human who needs to be speaking and in communication, and you can’t get away from it for another two hours? Or if it’s more than one person?

When the power went out during my Philosophy class (we were watching a movie), I exhaled. Suddenly, the reality of being in a basement in Montgomery, and having the comfort in seeing people’s faces in less detail, shrouded in shadows sunk in. There was a comfort in not having the lights on, and feeling just that much cooler, temperature wise.

For a couple moments, it felt like being in Plato’s cave. As the Germs might say, what we do is secret, and it was that remoteness and isolation, if only for 30 minutes, tops, made my day. (I suspect the classes in Alden were significantly less pleased.) Because the power was off, suddenly, the ability for people to contact me just got axed. I don’t think I brought my cell phone with me, so for those couple moments, I, truly, was unavailable. You couldn’t call, email, Facebook poke, IM (instant message), or text me and expect a response.

For that moment in our lives, nearly everything with a microchip was of no avail to me.

We (as a society) are quite attached to our electronics. This isn’t to say it’s bad, or wrong, but it’s happening. We vote with each new phone we purchase, with the video-feature, with every use of the mobile web feature, with every qwerty keyboard installed on that phone. With every new instant chat widget in an email client, social networking scheme and every single twitter update, we condone and support this hyper-connected behavior.

This is what we are becoming. At almost every point in my day, I am accessible. If I am not checking my multiple email accounts, updating blogs or chatting over IM I can also pick up my phone. I mention this to say I’m a part of it too. Do you want this lifestyle? Are we aware, that as a generation, we are making the decision to become connected and accessible at almost every point in our days and lives?

The answer is no. And, I presume, because I don’t see a discussion about it, that’s the problem. That’s what struck me and made me so angry about Facebook’s chat feature. There isn’t now, a way to simply update Facebook without being accessible.

I see a presumption that there that more accessibility is better and desired, and that’s what annoys me. It’s not true, and I think we’re losing something.

Quite what it is, I can’t put my finger on it, but I know, that as I have my IM client engaged, two email accounts open and my phone by my side, I won’t be anywhere close.

SCIENCE TIME: Feet for the Modern World

This may come to a surprise to some of you, but I am in some respects a filthy hippie. A filthy technophile carnivorous hippie who likes fisticuffs and swordplay, but a filthy hippie nontheless.

As such, these just about made my day. (Warning: Feet.)

Yeah, that's right: science feet to wear over my regular feet! Shoes with toes, that will let me feel the pebbles without being cut or stabbed by sharp objects underfoot! All they need is variable electromechanical properties, and they're perfect superhero wall-climbing gear.

Now, in light of what I've already said, this may not surprise you, but: I hate shoes. Hate them with a burning passion. Specifically, their design. Men's shoes that are designed to be practical, like sneakers and hiking boots, are designed by the same kind of minds that brought us the great websites of ten years ago, and more than half of them cause my feet to sweat uncontrollably. I've already abandoned the majority of shoe design for dead. I own maybe two pairs of shoes, and wear the same ones every day: they are a web mesh of straps and laces, light and flexible, and they still annoy me just by existing. What I want on my feet is an impermeable second skin, a layer of dermal armor that doesn't restrict my movement. These seem to fit the bill.

I don't know if they're actual comfortable, and the designs are nothing to write home about, but I want future-feet, dammit. I will use them to leap about from table to table in the smokeless bars, making deadly slashes with my neon katana and tracking my opponents' positions through my contact-lens HUD. And then I will climb a tree, or maybe go splash around in a stream, and check my text messages.

These shoes are grade-A cyborg-ninja awesome, and I want some. Even (maybe especially) if they get me funny looks.

(Thanks, Boing Boing!)

We're Not Dead Yet

Oh poor elevennames, do not fear, we have not forgotten you . . .

At least I haven't. So I will write you something. It may not be wonderful or especially deep, but it will be all for you.

Admittedly, I have never been very good at keeping up with current events. Normally I find anything that has happened in the last 400 years or so to be "boring". I like ancient history, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, up through the late Middle Ages. My reasoning is this: if you study enough history you will learn that there are linchpins in time, and those moments are what make history interesting. These are moments that define everything that come after them. For example, unless you have a firm grasp of Rome during the late Republic and early Empire, you probably have only a superficial understanding of anything that happened during the Renaissance, the Enlightenment, or the American Revolution.

There are other members of the elevennames staff who are far more interesting in the happenings of the here and now. However, since they have been otherwise occupied during the past few weeks I will try and talk about what has been happening out there in non-internet world.

Well, John McCain went back to visit his old high school, apparently his nicknames were "punk" and "McNasty". And this is a man who might be our next President. Yeah, American, feel reassured. The school called an assembly to celebrate McCain's visit and once student actually asked McCain what he thought about the fact that the entire student body had to attend what was essentially a political event. McCain didn't really have a response, but I think that girl kicks ass.

Lets see, Obama and Clinton went bowling together earlier this week, supposedly Obama did not do well. The Clinton campaign is using this as victory point for Hillery, who is apparently very good at bowling and even owns her own shoes. Acording to some this makes her a good canditade for running our country. You know, in case bowling is the key to protecting America from future terrorist attacks.

So yeah, thats all I've got for tonight.

Hopefully we'll have more to write about later.

Admittedly, we got nothing.

I would say this is a little something to stop the bleeding, but writing this feels heavier than anything I've written in months.

Rest assured readers, that Tom, Cate and I are well aware that there hasn't been posted anything here for a week. For some of us, it has been a rough week or so, I can only speak for myself having exclaimed, "lover, my muse has left us" and "muse, my lover has left us" at different times, so our ability to write about responsibility (or anything else) has been impaired.

But. To continue the theme of responsibility, to pick up that broken flag, I write. I held a crying woman (twice) in my arms, and was held by a different one attempting to explain that I really didn't know if I was doing "Okay" or not. I can watch as my friends, for one reason or another, tear themselves away from the group and school, counting and crossing off the emotional pillars I have come to count on fall away.

(I'm writing this listening to Thrice's MySpace page, or specifically, Come All You Weary and Broken Lungs. It's very Christian, but hell. It's Thrice. Give the songs a shot. Broken Lungs makes me wish I had a guitar and could sing "are we fools and cowards all" half as well as Mr. Kensrue.)

My responsibilities, to those women I have held is to hope and ease their burdens, for a moment, by telling another human being. I have no answers to their problems. I hold no solutions, and can find or imagine none in my mind. I could offer advice, in one case, "consolidate what you've got, then use that to figure out what you want". In the other, of which I dare not speak, my two responsibilities (show up and don't ask important questions) seemed easier to do in retrospect.

I held one of my friends as he asked why a promise made was broken, between portraits of young artists. He knew why. It had to be vocalized. Just to know someone is there. Something, somehow. He asked if anyone would care. I outlined how, where and when it'd hurt me in the deepest detail I could offer.

I cannot take the pain away. I cannot wipe the tears from the young woman's face in the airport terminal, and it would take hours before it appeared she truly brightened up. I told the young man to press on, not to give up hope. I cannot wrap my arms so wide as to stop the cascading waves of culture and fear from those I hold.

I can't. I can only offer my shoulders and arms. I'm sick and tired of seeing how brave we can be. I've watched it eat up my friends. I'm watching it eat up me. But so long as there is still a banner, tattered, broken and dropped, it's my responsibility to pick it up.

My back is strong, my shoulders are wide, and we must press on, through the sadness, through the despair to whatever's greeting us on the other side of tonight. Let's talk on the way.

Celebrate Easter with Our Happy Family

Ugh.

I've spent all day online, arguing with Zachary about Achewood and unsuccessfully convincing James to do crystal meth with me. ENJOY YOUR QUOTES YOU MONSTERS.

James: what did you think of my update?
Thomas: ...What update?
James: on elevennames.
Thomas: OH RIGHT
Thomas: You mean *my* update.

Thomas: LETS DO CRYSTAL METH
James: NO, LETS NOT.
Thomas: I HATE MY TEETH THOUGH

Thomas: Are you saying I should not be smoking crystal meth because I can't eat a sandwich?

Thomas: It's holy week! Yesterday was okay thursday, and before that, alright wednesday.
Thomas: But it's good friday now, and tomorrow? Awesome saturday.

Thomas: HAY ZACH WHO ARE YOU TEXTING
Thomas: IDK, MY BFF CHINA LOL
Thomas: *heads of baby boomers explode*
Zachary: I always assume that is the silent punctuation to every third line or so you write. Of anything.

Zachary: ...I still need to write the story of Osteotto, the messenger pigeon.
Thomas: I thought they were all dead!
Zachary: They probably are!
Zachary: That just makes the story even sadder than I thought it was!
Thomas: Unless you set it in WWII. Maybe you could have some matchstick girl dying of tuberculosis.

Zachary: Also, I hear you loathe achewood.
Zachary: http://achewood.com/
Zachary: Loathe today's!
Zachary: And/or this one and the one following it:
(Zachary proceeds to link to Achewood comics for forty minutes)

Cathleen: We'll pour molten chocolate over James or something.
Thomas: And then cover him in rose petals!

Thomas: Lolporn? Hmmm
Zachary: Hm.
Zachary: No.
Thomas: "I can has orgasm nau plz?"
Thomas: "Nom nom nom"
Beth: ....
Thomas: "Lonleez iz watchin you masturbate"
Zachary: ...
Beth: If you need me, I'll be in my room.
Zachary: "You has a flavor."
Beth: CRY-ING.

Zachary: And yes, surprise zombie buttsecks.
Zachary: There was, in fact, graphic surprise zombie buttsecks.
Thomas: Surprise zombie buttsecks!
Thomas: Surprise zombie buttsecks?
Beth: Discard it, Thomas! Let us never speak of this again!
Thomas: Surprise! Zombie buttsecks.
Thomas: Surprise zombie! Buttsecks?
Thomas: Okay.

Zachary: Okay. Any other issues?
Beth: You're gay!
Thomas: YOU TOTALLY ARE!

James: Did you see what I did there?
Thomas: I did indeed.
James: You are supposed to say, Yes, I see what you did there.
James: For the purposes of crazy quotes.
Thomas: YOU ARE NOT THE BOSS OF CRAZY QUOTES

BUNNIES SAY HIP HOP AND YOU DON'T STOP.

Theme Week: Responsibility

Having responsibility come next in line of topics after hedonism week made me smile when I first heard about it, too. By now, it's pretty clear that we're not keeping up a post a weekday, for reasons alternately comprehensible and incomprehensible to me.

 

To keep this from getting hopelessly abstract: Let me elucidate the theme into my life right now. I will deconstruct my tenuous responsibilities during a week that I have off of school.

To my classes: To do the readings and work that I have neglected to do during the semester that I have gotten away with not doing.

To my friends from that same institution: To say what's up every so often, and hope things go well. Basically, keep lines of communication open in case something important happens, so I can be available in case of an emergency to offer support or something similar.

To my friends from home: Do try to keep in touch and possibly set something up for meetings, but they're all back in college as well. Fantastic.

To my family whom I love dearly: Spend quality time with them. Talk about important things on my mind, whether it is about my psychological profile or the current election cycle. Say the right sentences that will make my parents proud of me. Word those sentences carefully with the pauses before the Big Ideas, use the right words to show I'm learning more, expanding my vocabulary and otherwise learning and growing up. Keep my schedule open. Write something every so often.

Keep my schedule open enough, and keep it in the back of my mind that I can get a brutal phone call at any time for the next couple of months from reality that says "Drop everything. You're coming with me for a week."

To this very website: to write something for Friday today.

To myself: Find a way to be happy for an extended period of time that does not involve dating a girl. Also, to have fun and relax above all before Sunday. Laugh a lot. Get some distance. See Crime In Stereo. Actually enjoy myself. Smile and mean it when I say I had fun over break.

My responsibilities are pretty easy and pretty clear. Less so is when they come into conflict. Speaking to someone with the power to prescribe me mind-altering medication is when the responsibilities of having fun and relaxing (No, really, I'll take you around for a day, and by the end of it, you'll understand that relaxing and having fun are a responsibility, and not something that just comes easily. Were it not for my deep, abiding love of ska music, I would be the polar opposite of Big D and the Kids Table video for Noise Complaint, though that could also be expanded to say, their two other videos for their disc, Strictly Rude, which, coincidentally, you should buy. But I digress.) come into conflict with enjoying myself.

These kind of things, I trust you understand, require you to go over the worst portions of your life for the purpose of (among others) getting prescribed medicine for your head (leading me to the inevitable "Am I not good enough as is?", which is quickly pushed out by "Yes, you are, and you should know better than to ask. You're admitting you need help."), without also mentioning the good moments in between them. It is a bitter, bitter responsibility to drag out the words to recall the feelings of pain, betrayal and even more memories I don't deign to shred my throat expanding on here, and continue. 

Repeating hurt just seems to lodge it deeper in me, but to explain just how, where and how I bleed and from which arteries and how profusely, so I can help an authority decide whether my depression is deep and abiding enough to warrant medicine to alter my behavior patterns does not make my life much happier.

I am responsible enough to concede I need help, responsible enough to walk in the door, responsible enough to sit down and go through all this again, and it leaves me with no small amount of chagrin that I might not be responsible enough to enjoy myself.

Lest you think my world is all doom and gloom, there are also good things, little projects in my mind and disseminated in the world that make me smile, that I get updated on every so often, which in fact, are some of my other responsibilities, which I hope to be able to speak about soon. 

It's a hell of a break.

Responsibility, and the Dark Side of Being Fancy

The expérience grande continues, gentle readers, as we struggle to turn things in by certain due dates. I will be your host for the day, and I would like to know what you think about certain issues. Extra fancy issues.

We here at Elevennames are, to a (wo)man, relatively fancy. We have individual pursuits (that we mock each other for in private) that we demand to be of high caliber. We enjoy expensive sandwiches. I enjoy fokesy indie freak-folk, and would jump for joy if I heard that Jose Gonzales would do a cover of, say, Massive Attack. Ha ha, excuses to link, how I love thee (also, bonus points for having some of the most needlessly "I am showing off to the internet" analysis I've ever read in the comments). We are each pithy little autodidacts in our respective areas of fondness, holding well-studied and extremely personal degrees in junk we enjoy. And there's nothing wrong with this, because, as we discussed during that week of debauchery we call Hedonism Week (which was oddly prescient of this whole Elliot Spitzer thing, no?) it is OKAY TO LIKE TO DO THINGS THAT ARE FUN.

But there is a big, angry bird lurking on the other side of this coin. A big angry bird that wants to show off to you, and never! Stop! Talking! About! Itself! Vide ghoulish semi-wit Sebastian Horsely. His youtubes are unpopular! He has written a book! He has visited many whores! He has a sort of costume! He wrote a book named after a T. Rex album! He is very fond of himself, and wishes you would be, too. I am not sure of other people's interpretations, but I find the man grating. Like two grates, grating against each other, while another grate watches, from the shadows. Smoking.

Very grating indeed.

Too often, I feel, we fall in love with the exterior of something, the big famous bits that make us ignore flaws. People love Voltaire when he's zinging the government, less so when he's zinging them. Atlantic Ocean hater Oscar Wilde is great when he's young and speaking endlessly of himself, but less so after his stint in prison (though he did get that awesome teardrop tattoo and join the Bloods) and he started caring about others. Self reflection is not, strictly speaking, what is lusted after, unless we can control what we reflect - we seek not a mirror of truth, but one that contorts our own Dorian Grayish visage into something that we can tolerate. Indulgence is well and good, but it's a razor's width away from delusion.

Which brings us back to Horsley. And his badly-written adulators (as opposed to me, who I guess am a badly written detractor). Listening to the man talk is like one of those anti-drug commercials starring Peter O'Toole's boring younger twin.

This is not a tyrade against dandies, nor against dandyism as a whole. I fancy myself one (more of a raconteur, really, but that's beside the point), so it distresses me to think that what I think of Horsley, other people think of me. Which is terrible! I mean, I can understand when some people dislike me for a good reason (such as saying that they are hungry ghosts, or dead!), and for that I apologize. To be so consciously unconsciously offensive, though, is mystifying.

Ultimately, I suppose it's merely self-image that I am concerned with, an ouroborosian cycle of trying to divorce myself from my own negative qualities. I do not want to become so self-interested, however, that the only thing I can talk about is myself - I am not universe, no world replete with hidden wonders. To assume that I am, in my opinion, is to become the most dreadful kind of boor, the conversationalist who can only speak of their own novelty. Unalloyed with seriousness, compassion, intelligence, or responsibility, self indulgence and general frippery are merely the pastimes of those faeculum-class of human beings that seek political office. Hedonism requires responsibility in order to make it worthwhile - otherwise it's merely flash and glitz with nothing beside, a fading firework, gone before it's even night.

Theme Week: Responsibility and Pokemones (UPDATES)

Teenagers in Chile calling themselves Pokemones are having oral-sex orgies in public parks.

I'll wait for the "Herpes, I Choose You!" jokes to die down.

...

Whenever you're ready.

Okay?

Good to hear. Since this is responsibility week, it would be fairly simple to say that "the kids ought to know better", and they should. But that's not the entire story. They're experimenting teens who are just starting to have monetary freedom in a world where the Cat-hol-ic (as Tom would put it) Church is an omnipresent force in their lives, a very conservative omnipresent force, I hasten to add.

Let's not forget that this has certain parallels to American History, both socially and economically.

And so, it does not take a psychic to tell you that the Church is going to use this as an opportunity to say "look, I told you so, and the kids are craaaaaaazy these days". If the Church is going to present itself as the upright moral members of society, which I will bet they will, they ought to direct the kids to a STD center where they can get tested and learn about what, precisely they may have and how to deal with it later on in their lives.

Being the moral center of the country means that the Church will sometimes have to lead the sheep, calm them down and tell their charges it's okay. I don't see the (Holy Mother, as my mother might say) Church doing that. I don't think they will*. If they do, it will be against a comfortable precedent. I hope the Church gets uncomfortable.

I hope, far more fervently, that not too many STDs and horrible consequences befall the teenagers. We all were once like that, and I just want them to learn and be given a pass, but I know, to my great Dismay, that it just won't happen.

*This is of course, not to say that the Catholic Church is evil. I see a precedent. I see young, impressionable, and soon to be scared kids. This is not ideal. I hope for many good things for these teenagers, whom, in another life, I suspect, I would be fairly close to. I write this listening to Lagwagon's Automatic, a song about the habits we fall into in a life, off of a disc that was spawned and written from when a good friend of the band committed suicide. It's an interesting juxtaposition.

**There is at least one person on Kotaku who says that Newsweek is full of crap, and has terrible sources, so in keeping with the current era of the internet, I point you to that link to continue your education on the sensual expressions of Chilean teenagers. 

I'd say I'll keep you updated on the matter, but frankly, I don't want it to become a theme.

Theme Week: Responsibility

This is an experimental theme week, which is to say it is slightly more experimental than usual. For a single week only, we are going to try to post on a set schedule, each of us falling into place behind the last like the gears on a jewel-encrusted cog.

If, somehow, we find ourselves taking a liking to this alien conceit of scheduling, we may continue it in the future. That is not a promise.

What does it mean to be responsible, and why are a bunch of young internet hooligans like ourselves trying it on for size?

Well, we aren't, really. I mean, our last theme week was Hedonism Week, and it stretched on for a decade, during which we frequently forgot to write anything at all for years at a time.

So maybe this is responsibility week because it's time for a bit of a change. Maybe this is responsibility week because we've tried nearly everything else. And maybe, just maybe, this is responsibility week because we're out of better ideas, or because it seemed like a good idea at the time.

That is more or less our motto.

But I would hold that we are no more irresponsible than the average citizen of this benighted world. We may take up amusing affectations, don curious clothing and spend far too much time reading, listening to music and thinking, but I find nothing inherently irresponsible in these acts. We are not betraying our country or the world by devoting ourselves to intellectual and aesthetic pursuits. One must appreciate beauty in order to create it.

The day before yesterday I was interviewing protesters in Pittsburgh, when I suddenly found myself the target of interview myself, by a freelancing journalist. Asked to comment, I found myself spewing forth an incredibly optimistic rant about internet communities becoming involved in real-world politics, and how I felt this was a positive sign of the times. The bemused journalist found herself struggling to keep up, and after a moment or two I found myself feeling foolish as I recited back a few of the more sensical sentences to her.

The urge to run my mouth has apparently not subsided. I'll probably be speaking to you again tomorrow about the protest itself. There are pictures to be shown and tales to be told, and I get to look somewhat dashing, or at least silly, in my Goggles of Truth.