The Church Of the Black Monolith

Alright. I can see that Eleven Names will probably be in a rut for a while, I'm becoming increasingly psychotic, I don't believe Zach will update before the Mayan Apocalypse and Thomas is in dire straits himself.

So. I reached out to a friend of ours and here is Andrew Michael, talking about belief. I figure that's a spartan enough introduction, I'd rather you draw your own conclusions.

So I’ve been doing the Christian thing for about a decade now, and I’ve got to say I enjoy it. Sure, it has its drawbacks, but all things considered I think it’s a pretty good way to spend eternity.

But lately I’ve been thinking. The economy’s down, and everyone’s feeling the burn. Even the hilariously wealthy are in trouble, so I figure it’s only a matter of time before it’s felt all the way at the top. I don’t want to be caught with my spiritual pants down, so I’ve decided that I should pick out a fallback deity. You know, just in case one of those TV Evangelists raptures up their flock or something. I don’t think I could be an atheist; I’m just not cut out for it. I need another god to fall back on if this whole Jesus gig doesn’t pan out.

After much deliberation, I’ve decided that if things go wrong up top, I’m going to worship the Black Monolith from 2001: A Space Odyssey. Oh sure, there’s a lot of religions with more clout. I mean, Islam’s got a billion plus and counting, and Judaism would be a comparably simple adjustment—trade out pork for the ability to charge interest, a few other swaps and we’re good to go—but I think the Black Monolith is the god for me.

Much like the girl who goes out on a few dates with a total nerd after breaking up with the rock singer who kept cheating on her, I’ll admit that part of what draws me to the Black Monolith is that it’s so different from my old God. For starters, Christ is both man and God; the Black Monolith is neither. The Black Monolith is simple and straightforward. It’s an incredibly advanced piece of alien technology. Okay, that’s a bit complicated, but the rest isn’t. It’s black. Its dimensions are a perfect ratio of 1 X 4 X 9. That’s it.

I mean, even simple things like the deity’s appearance in major world religions get argued to death. There’s that whole disagreement over whether Jesus was a black guy, Arabian, or that pleasant hippy-looking dude. Portraying the image of the Prophet Muhammed is a strict no-no. The Black Monolith is much simpler. It’s a black block that has dimensions in a perfect ratio of 1 X 4 X 9. End of discussion. Yet another plus under the “Black Monolith” column is that it is quite possibly the easiest god to illustrate (of those whose worshippers allow them to illustrate them, that is).

Another attractive difference to the Black Monolith is that the Black Monolith never speaks. Now I know, that makes most people think it isn’t a god at all. But personally, I think that makes it a better deity. Because the Black Monolith never speaks, it is never misinterpreted. I need not worry about some cryptic parable that has been analyzed for thousands of years about trying to keep an angry from mob from raping houseguests to death and has been interpreted as meaning that the pretty Asian girl at the ten minute oil change place must obey my will because she was born with a uterus and I was not. I always figured that it was because I’m the one ponying up the thirty-five dollars, and even then she’s allowed to say, “No.” Especially if the focus of my will isn’t related to changing my car’s oil. The Black Monolith is content to wait silently for her and myself to finish our business transaction as equals.

The Black Monolith’s constant silence has another pleasant side effect: anyone who claims it is speaking to them can instantly be written off as a liar. The next time a comet comes near the Earth, dozens of gentlemen of questionable background will proclaim that almost as many gods have sent them messages on the comet’s true nature. Followers of other religions must consider whether or not their god (if He, She, It, or Some Combination of the Above has been invoked) is in fact truly speaking through this individual. Not so for those who worship the Black Monolith. It doesn’t speak. Ever. So when dozens of misguided folks drink their special brews of Kool Aid or Jell-O or other poison-laden sweet treat, the one who claims the Black Monolith sent him will be crying into his poison brew instead of drinking it. Those tears are tears of loneliness, by the way.

Part of the Black Monolith never speaking is another thing I like about it—the Black Monolith doesn’t make any demands. It seems like barely a month goes by without one hearing about God telling someone to do something that no one would ever want to do. You know, steal a bread truck and drive naked until apprehended by the authorities, blow up a schoolbus, etc. The Black Monolith will never ask me to do anything like that. Furthermore, it doesn’t draw lines in the sand that point out what I can or can’t do. The Black Monolith has no qualms with me drawing pictures of it while I eat a bacon cheeseburger I’ve purchased courtesy of money paid to me as interest on a loan. As deities go, it’s very tolerant.

Speaking of tolerance, no deity is more tolerant than the Black Monolith. All the Black Monolith cares about is if humankind has reached a cusp where it most deploy its cosmic-level Swiss Army Knife powers. Now, this wouldn’t be such a big deal if people weren’t so insistent on reading things out of holy proclamations that don’t seem to be written there. For instance, as a worshipper of the Black Monolith, one does not have to worry about eternal damnation for something done with another person in a bedroom.

Since the Black Monolith does not speak and has no holy texts, it’s very difficult to get mad at other people in the Black Monolith’s name. Waging a war over the Black Monolith is almost impossible, since the only offense one can commit in its eyes, or rather, sensors, is to worship another deity. Even that may not be a sin to the Black Monolith. Since it doesn’t speak, one cannot be certain.

Which is not to say that the Black Monolith is without morals. Its whole purpose is to push humanity down the path toward galactic worthiness. It does this when we reach certain cusps of existence; for instance, when the first caveman figured out that bludgeoning a pig to death and then eating it was a viable survival strategy. Unlike so many other gods, the Black Monolith is endlessly patient. Essentially, it exists to help us, but not until we get far enough on our own—it is ready to let us get our temporary license, but not until we pass the written exam. Whether we pass that exam at fifteen-and-a-half or at forty-five doesn’t matter to the Black Monolith. Should we decide to wage war in its name, the Black Monolith will stalwartly refuse to help us until we’re done with our little tantrum. It’s ready to provide us with interplanetary travel as soon as we’re ready to act like adults.

But what I really like the most about the Black Monolith is that it is never a hypocrite. It bothers me when anyone says one thing and does another, and in the case of omniscient beings, I really find it inexcusable. Anyone who knows exactly what will happen at every moment of history now and forever should not have to preach love and forgiveness in one eon and then demand that His followers go Palestine and kill the heathen bastards that live there the next. It’s just unprofessional. The Black Monolith is beyond this sort of behavior. Sure, it may not know exactly when we’ll be ready for it to collapse Jupiter into a miniature sun, but it knows we will be someday, and is prepared to wait.

Did I mention the Black Monolith is full of stars? Because it is. That’s no reason to like the Black Monolith all on its own, but it’s a rather nice added bonus. It’s rather like booking a hotel room and finding out you’ve been upgraded to a suite. You’d never book the suite in the first place (it’s really not worth it. I mean, how much time do you spend in the hotel room on vacation?), but when you find out that you’ve been moved into one, it really brightens up your day.

So when you consider everything, the Black Monolith has a lot of positives without most of the drawbacks associated with most religions. It has a set of morals, it likes progress, and it gently dissuades nonproductive behavior. It watches over us, and is ready to give us a boost whenever we make the right decision. But it doesn’t meddle. It doesn’t ask me to do anything specific, only move towards progress for the human race, which I suppose most people do automatically. It kind of leaves the whole afterlife thing up in the air, but it seems like most of the time that the afterlife is only used as dangled carrot. Rather than waiting for me to die to get my reward, the Black Monolith is prepared to give me neat stuff while I’m still alive. This is a real plus because I haven’t paid off my car yet and I’d hate to leave that unfinished. Plus, I can’t say I’m a fan of dying. And I get these rewards for helping humanity do stuff that’s good for us in and of itself.

Now, I don’t think worshipping the Black Monolith is really going to catch on, at least not yet. Some people would point to the fact that it’s just something that Arthur C. Clarke and Stanley Kubrick thought up forty-odd years ago, and thus people have conclusive proof that it doesn’t actually exist. I’d counter that, when you get right down to it, most gods’ concrete evidence may be older, but it’s not much more rigid. Also, none of them won any Academy Awards for Best Visual Effect, which is another feather in the cap of the Black Monolith.

The big problem is that the Black Monolith doesn’t have any holidays. And that’s why it will remain my second-string deity.

Finally, We Deliver.

I hate to have two introductions to something, but in this case, part of this needs to an introduction. I'm not sure what to officially call this, simply because Zach and Tom aren't around and I don't want to speak for them, but here is the first post, of an unknown quantity (even to us) by Brandi Filumena. Little things about post will hit you and stay with you. For me it was when adrenaline was mentioned and the overall message, which is, nakedly, be more careful and support your local firefighters, EMTs and first responders, but one more pertinent to this blog is that bad things happen in the blink of an eye, when you least expect it. I've been reading Arkham Asylum, Watchmen and the Killing Joke, while staying up far too late last night working on my thesis, so for me, this is reality coming upside my skull with a 2x4.


I won't speak for Brandi in terms of biographical notes. She speaks well enough on her own.



Prologue: I wrote this around 6 PM 15 August, short on sleep and long on thought. It's getting posted rather later, but I wasn't really sure if I should post this on the blog or not – I thought it might be too disturbing. James convinced me it was worth posting. Here it is, but you might want to put your snack down for a minute.


I've had several different topics in my head to blog about this summer, and they will appear later, as I pare my initial writings down to something short and salient. This morning (15 Aug), they all got pre-empted.

As some of you know, I'm on the local hazmat team. We don't get called out often, as ours is a rural county, and in the 3 years or so that I've been with the team, I think I'd been on 5 calls, all of which were for hydrogen sulfide coming from a blocked sewer pipe. I'd missed on a couple of diesel fuel spills, but that's pretty much what we get most of the time. Today was something different. At 4:00 this morning I got the call to go to a semi-trailer accident involving a leak of "unknown fluid". I'm the team chemistry expert, so I figured I'd better get my tail out of bed and go. By the time we'd arrived on scene, the fire crew had determined that the "unknown fluid" was just a mixture of diesel fuel and antifreeze, both of which they know how to deal with, though they had run out of absorbent pads to sop up the mess so we (the hazmat team) supplied them. That was all that I was officially needed to do. In fact, we had enough people turn out that I didn't actually get my hands dirty. The hazmatters who were also firefighters (chief Lud, Sully, and Boomie) were a bit more astute than I was at 4 AM and beat me to it.

This accident got me thinking in a way that none of the sewer-gas calls did. By the time the hazmat team travelled the 20-some miles to get to the accident site, the local firefighters and paramedics had already been on the job for half an hour. The accident was just too disturbing to relate in full – and my aim here isn't to disturb you with gory details. Suffice it to say that a semi hauling about 20 tons of structural steel was going uphill on a highway, and a pickup truck didn't stop at the stop sign before crossing the highway. The wreckage took out two utility poles and two rooms of an elderly woman's house before coming to a rest. (The elderly woman had fallen asleep on a couch in the back room and was fine – in fact, she seemed to be taking it all remarkably well for someone whose house had just been largely destroyed.) When everything stopped moving, the semi and trailer were upside-down on top of the pickup, which was now only about a meter thick and beyond recognition. Miraculously, the semi driver was able to walk away, and his cuts had been treated by the EMTs and he'd gone down to the hospital for the required toxicology tests. Complicating the scene was the fact that the utility poles carried electrical wires, and there were at least two downed but live wires, and the wires remaining were holding what was left of the two broken utility poles up in the air. Wires seemed to be everywhere. At least it wasn't raining.

What really got me here (apart from the urge to remind everyone to drive safely, damnit – and don't drive when you're too tired to notice the stop signs!!!) was the first responders. The volunteer firefighters and paramedics were yanked out of bed for this just as unceremoniously as I was (if not more so, for those who heard the accident a block up the street from their homes and the fire station). There wasn't much for them to do – the possibility of fire had been contained, there was no way to extricate the people from the pickup truck until the power lines were shut off and cut so that a crane could be brought in, and those poor folks in the pickup were beyond help anyway. Mostly, the firefighters and EMTs were waiting for us to bring more sorbents for the diesel fuel, and for the electric company lineman to come shut the power down and take down the power lines so a crane could be brought in to pull the wreckage apart. The firefighters and EMTs who'd been there for 20 minutes and the police who arrived shortly after us were all somber but focused. Folks who'd done all they could do as first responders until the crane arrived were providing emotional support for neighbors. Most of the firefighters, EMTs, and my hazmat teammates knelt in front of the wreckage to say a prayer for the victims at one point or another – some alone, some in small groups.

My hazmat fellows put down the sorbents, and Sully thought to put a 5-gallon bucket under the dripping diesel tank, and that was all we were needed to do. I walked over to say hello to the Coroner, whom I'd worked with at a couple of "tabletop" emergency simulations (think of any disaster movie played out as a role-playing game, without stats or minis). Lud informed me that we were done and that we could go back to bed. I said to the Coroner, "I hope you don't find any surprises in there." We all knew there were two dead adults in the pickup (and no, you really don't need to know how we knew that). He replied "yeah, so do I.… you saw the teddy bear too…." About five feet in front of the wreckage was a brown teddy bear. No one had commented on it that I'd overheard, but I'd seen lots of eyes notice it. No one wanted to give voice to the idea that there might also be a child or infant lost in that pickup. I nodded silently. So did my chief and a few others.

A young woman with the fire company came over to offer us coffee. Knowing that my job as a hazmat member was done and that I wouldn't be there much longer, I replied "you need that more than I do, you're in for the long day. I've been stood down." She replied "Yeah, but we're running on adrenaline now." Strange, mine was wearing off… but I'm not a firefighter. I was finally realizing what a superior breed of human I've had the fortune to work beside.

Now, this wasn't the first time I've worked with first responders – there's always at least one fire and EMS team (and usually 3 or 4) with us for any hazmat call. Plus, half my fellow hazmat team members are firefighters for various volunteer companies in the county. But this time I was really struck. These men and women are up at 4:00 on a chilly dark morning, losing sleep, not getting paid to be there – they're volunteers, but there to make a difference in any way they can. In a small town, they might have even known the people in the pickup truck (though at the time I was there, no one knew for sure who the victims were, and the truck could only be identified as a pickup truck by the tailgate that had been flung 200 feet from the wreckage). These folks have other jobs that pay the bills, and they went to those jobs today after putting in several grueling hours on this accident (for those involved with extrication and cleanup, many long hours). They've all got different reasons for doing it – sense of duty, thrill of the adrenaline rush, wanting to save lives, or maybe for less impressive reasons. Regardless of the motivation, they're out there for us when life gets bad, without pay, often without much recognition, for the karma, for the knowledge that they're making a difference for someone.

The world could use more people like volunteer firefighters & paramedics.

Is your town served by volunteer fire & ambulance crews? Support them – please! The equipment isn't cheap, and neither is the diesel fuel for the rescue vehicles. They're there for you – help them to help your community. Go to the Fireman's Carnivals, buy the tickets for the pig raffles or gun raffles (OK, if you're a pacifist, skip the gun raffle and just make a donation), put money in the boot at the intersection on your main street, send in the money for a membership to the local ambulance service. They need your help so that they can be there to help you. I hope you never need them, but they're there. (OK, it's less likely that you'll need the hazmat team, but I'm there too if you need me.)

And please, please, drive safely, damnit!


Epilogue:

The good news is that the teddy bear came from the bedroom of the house that was hit. There were no unpleasant surprises, other than that one of the victims was from the area and some of the townsfolk knew her. The semi driver didn't have any illicit substances in his blood, and he'd been traveling 35 mph – legal speed. He's OK. The elderly woman whose house was hit is being cared for by friends and family and is also OK.

Neither of the newspapers showed pictures of the wreckage as I saw it – they didn't get in until the crane had rolled the semi out later in the morning, and they only took pictures of the house and the semi. I'm OK with that. What I saw was a little too disturbing. I didn't get back to sleep that morning, despite coming home exhausted while it was still dark out. I didn't sleep too well later that night either. Last night at the hazmat meeting I saw the pictures taken by the Office of Emergency Responders. Even though I'd seen the scene, they were still rather shocking, and I noticed a few details I hadn't seen before and rather wish I hadn't noticed in the pictures.

Firefighters and EMTs see this kind of stuff all the time - every nasty car wreck, they're there pulling people out, putting fires out, tending to the wounded. My first responder friends tell me you get used to this after a while, if you do it long enough. They're made of strong stuff, much stronger than I am. We all knew that seven years ago - but this was a powerful reminder.

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.

Antony and Cleopatra, and the brain.

My dear friends of the internet,

If I may introduce myself, my name is Jack Grey. I'm ever so slightly overeducated, a fishmonger, a drinker of fine teas, and a magician. I'm tattooed and hermaphroditic.

Favourite authors include Virginia Woolf, John Ruskin, and Emily Post. (I thought it best that you were forewarned.) I think that trying to choose one's favourite Shakespearean play is a bit like trying to select one's most useful internal organ.

I'm between world travels at the moment. I'm drawn to antiques, to decadent cultures, to historical moments at which savage civilisations met strange natives.

But I suppose it's best to be on with it. I've heard that we're summoning ghosts.

I can, I think, safely state that we modern Americans are quite madly in love with the Victorians. We adore their fading photographs, their marvellously purple phrases, their stockings, the devastatingly straight lines of their suits, their conflicting romantic notions: prudish and prurient, secretive and enduring. We emulate their wallpapers, and, if I may be allowed to speak for all of us, we miss their manners. Desperately.

I would argue that this love affair with an epoch is well timed. Our empire is crumbling. It is no surprise that we'd look longingly to the culture of the fallen empire that we remember best. Perhaps we want to feel ourselves surrounded by their ghosts. We want to believe that we, too, will be remembered fondly by absurdly dressed Japanese teenagers in some glowing future. Or we want to learn to die gracefully. Or we really do just love the wallpaper.

Besides sharing in the collective obsession with the Victorians, I also like taxidermy a great deal. They were fond of the art, in fact.

They, I think, were doing it in conquest. When they were gaining their empire, they were sailing to strange lands, finding beautiful, naked creatures they didn't understand in the least, and animals of which they'd never dreamed, even in the mythologies of the empires that they themselves remembered fondly. The Pre-Raphealites, for example, were quite fond of the wombat, and there is the famous story of the first taxidermic platypus sent back to Britain: the receiver responded that it was a terrible joke and a hideous fake, that, clearly, no such beast could exist.

Taxidermy is enjoying a small revival, if only in my own mind. We, however, are not trying to catalogue dark continents, or to prove our masculinity or our skill with an elephant gun. We're clutching, once more, at ghosts. As our supremacy fades, we're forced to confront the fact that we've taken more than we ought. We've created quite the ecological mess, and, as a few monumentally populous nations in the East begin their own Industrial Revolutions that, we're a bit shocked to discover, we cannot stop, we note that we aren't dying alone.

I don't know about you, but I want an elegantly mounted gazelle head. I want gorgeous stuffed peacocks, taxidermic piranhas, gorilla skulls, and a stuffed crocodile, which I'll display in my study, so that my friends will understand instantly that I'm a magician of great skill. And I want them because, I'm afraid, their living counterparts may not be long for this world. The Victorians stole these creatures away from their native lands in order to prove that they were real. I'm afraid that we may need to begin preserving them for the same reason.

Yours always,

Jack

Theme Week: Hello?

Saying hello is something every person has to do, eventually. It is an introduction to the person that follows. That's simple enough, but when you're a band who is putting out a new release, with what track do introduce the listener to your new material? How do you present your new artistic statement? Do you start a track that reassures fans that you haven't changed too much? Do you start with an example of your new sound? Do you start with the best song?

If you're Rise Against, and you're introducing Siren Song of the Counter Culture, you start with the absolutely ripping/nearly speed metal of State of the Union, which, by the way, will have you flailing your arms pretending there's a drum set in your immediate vicinity. This CD, of course, contained, their acoustic radio hit, "Swing Life Away", but as an introduction to the "new" Rise Against disc, it worked wonders. Put on the internet by the band a month in advance, the response was electric, and silenced the critics that said their new digs at Dreamworks softened them.

If you're dance-punk collective Head Automatica, and you're introducing Decadence, your best foot forward is the 2:14 ass-shaking "At the Speed of a Yellow Bullet", whose lyrical content is about an arms dealer. "I'm burning houses, baby!" Darryl exclaims and you're wondering just the guy is saying and why your hips are moving to it, but the beat just keeps going, and your body continues its motions.

If you’re math-metal wunderkinds Dillinger Escape Plan, and you’re introducing your new full length Miss Machine, you choose “Parasonic Youth” (currently downloadable on their MySpace page) as your opening track with your new singer screaming WE WROTE THESE PLANS, then you start with the inhumanly fast drumbeat with absurdly heavy guitars and you let that greet listeners who wonder if the 5 years between records and the new singer has had changed Dillinger dramatically.

Of course, if you're former-Misfits-fiends-turned-quazi-Brit-rockers AFI, and the disc you're introducing is the hotly anticipated Decemberunderground, you'll start with "Prelude 12/21" the same kind of gang vocal chanting that introduced your other major label release, Sing the Sorrow, with hints of the "cold-pop" flavor that is to come on Decemberunderground in the background.

If you're genre-defining act Minor Threat, you'll sequence your career discography such that possibly your most angry and to the point song "Filler", a 1:32 song about religion and violence, is the first song the listener hears. The aesthetic, short, fast, loud and nearly incomprehensible vocals would resonate through America.

And if you're me? You avoid the topic altogether, and weakly point back to your original post as evidence that you’ve followed through on the theme before it was announced If that doesn’t work, talk about some bands and releases you've come to cherish, and hope through speaking about the bands, the music, man, you've made a nice introduction to your character.

Oh well. Here’s how I introduce myself in public: nervously. Perhaps with a joke. A self-deprecating shot at least a minute into the conversation. Leave the vicinity as quickly as diplomatically possible, hoping I’ve come off passably.

If it’s an attractive member of the opposite sex, I just aim for not stammering and putting together a couple coherent sentences. Really, it’s all you can hope for in an introduction. Real conversations are for later.

P.S. Tom, as for who I’ve been mistaken for, the ones I remember are Daniel Radcliffe, a couple times every year, someone’s girlfriend (twice in the same week!) by the same guy, various 30 year old women and really, not much else.