Moar Because...

I wrote about returning and I can't do that. It's officially my first real week back from college, which is scary, off-putting and exciting. After working until 11 p.m. (long into the night at least in Chicago time), last night, I finally stopped hitting snooze on my cell phone at 8:30 a.m. to finish up the grade checking I was doing. I didn't like it, but it got me up. More to the point, it introduced, politely, the idea that I can't just do what I want anymore and plan my work or studying around it, like I used to at Allegheny. I miss the people, not the institution. After four years of being in Meadville, there are little rituals that feel strange not to be continuing.

It's those little things that make the big difference. Not wearing my keys around my neck, not bringing a card whenever I leave the house, not going to a centralized place for lunch, not putting on a backpack to leave the house (I've been doing that for 12+ years), not walking the 45 seconds to the post office, not chilling in GFC for two or three hours after class are all the things that are interesting, different experiences, that I never would have had if I didn't push myself a lot.

I'm in danger of not pushing myself now. It's very easy for me to sit back and just sit at the computer, refreshing my email every so often and keeping current on whatever subject I'm looking at from afar (economic meltdown, suicide terrorism, future plans of the Wu-Tang Clan). Every fifteen minutes I spend looking at things to stay current is another fifteen minutes I could spend looking at grad schools or filling out job applications or finding driving schools in Chicago.

Scott Kurtz (of PvP) recently announced he was trying to change his habits now that he was working from home so that he actually got work done, getting up earlier to get that "quiet home in the dark" time, better to get up at 5 a.m. and get to it. Getting to it, then.

On the right side of this tab, there are four tabs that all have something to do with driving schools in Chicago. On the left, six others. Two of them CDs. One of them a well-reviewed, but not much purchased PS2 game, one Twitter, one Blogger and another one for Windy's one or two shot campaign. I originally wrote time to choose, but I don't think it's quite that simple. I have to focus and remember, I'm not planning my work around my free time anymore. I'm planning my free time around my work.

Sometimes, the work will be fun. I need to call up my friend anyway and talk to her for a while about how much money she's going to want designing my webpage and what I want out of it, including twitter integration and whatever else I feel like ought to be done with it. If I am going to set something up seriously to be a writer/blogger (for which a personal webpage is needed) about music/videogames/politics/whatever, than that means maybe buying a PS3 makes sense from an economic standpoint. I need to cover these things, right?

Most of the other time, it's not going to be fun. It's going to be depressing, bleak and tedious. But it's a down payment on getting to a place where I can keep growing and have fun while I earn money. But before I can get to the point where it's fun, or I enjoy what I do, I need a plan. That plan involves a lot of honest thinking and questioning what I want to do with my life in the future. I never seriously entertained the idea that I was going to be alive through college when I was in junior or high school.

Now that the future I never expected has come to pass, it means my habits are changing and now...to figure out what, exactly, I want. Once that figures out, the details can be chewed on.

And, because it's me, probably here. More than that, it's tough to stay positive when you don't do that much or few exciting things happen, or as I learned this semester, if I don't go out. And by go out I don't mean party so much as just leave the house and do something. Run or walk or just get out of whatever comfortable space I'm in.

Therefore, while I'm not committed to somewhere, I'm committing myself to these ideas: Get out of that comfort zone. Just keep moving. Keep doing different things, not just to keep busy, but to keep pushing myself. Keep growing.

So then, what do I do with the two boxes of videogames in my home? I'm hopefully not going to do what I did last year, which was park in front of my TV after searching for jobs for a couple months and playing Persona 3 until three in the morning, going to bed and doing it all over again.

A schedule that I can keep. It just needs to be coherent. Even if it goes something along the lines of:

Immediate Future: 9-2.
Future Future: 2-5
Chilling Out That Happens Before Dinner: 5-7
Videogames: 8-10
Daily Show Then Bed: 10-10:45

It's not anything...detailed, but it's something that will give substance to my day, around which I can plan whatever my next big move is on the chessboard of my lifetime. There are two questions left, then, can I get to a point where I see the board, and once there, how do I analyze the information?

I don't have the answer currently, but I think I'm on the right track now and whatever happens along the way, well, you'll see it here, first, as close to firsthand as these instruments on the end of my arms will allow me.

Secret Cartography: Please Don't Shoot Me.

There are some rules you can obey. They can help you get around. They may keep you safe.
Pay attention to your surroundings. Square your shoulders; don't look like a victim. Don't show off money or expensive toys, like iPods. Look alert, don't appear nervous. Try to fit in. Stay away from small, poorly lit streets.

All the advice I've ever gotten means the same thing, at the end of the day: there is nothing you can do. None of these rules work. Nothing can keep you safe.

I live in arguably the most dangerous city in America. About two years ago, the murder rate spiked dramatically and hasn't abated yet. This is not inner city violence, segregated to "bad neighborhoods" and late nights. Philadelphia is a city of neighborhoods: Queen Village is another world from Kensington and neither are like Strawberry Mansion. And when something awful happened in a poor neighborhood, a dangerous neighborhood, it was okay. Not great, of course. But easily ignored. And it was easy to get around. Stay to the nice neighborhoods, with nice people, and you will be safe. Only the foolish, the suicidally naive and the badly intentioned ventured beyond such invisible and subtle boundaries, but now children and police officers have been shot in broad daylight. The unrest in the city is bold and shameless, never showing respect for the leylines that are class and privilege running in the streets.

When I was in second grade, a boy was beaten to death on the steps of my parish church, because some other kids felt like hurting someone badly.

My cousin was murdered when he was 21. He hadn't been a cop for a year.

For those of you with good memories: There was a shooting outside the house, my Fort, eight months ago. Zach and I were sitting on the same couch I'm posting from when we heard it.

There is no rule to follow. There's no direction to take. There never was any place safe.
I live in fear. Everyone does, I think, and I won't deny my own. Any place and time could be the wrong one. I make myself sick sometimes. I've lived here as long as I've been alive.
I am not making some tiny plea to stop the violence. I haven't nearly such an idealistic spirit. I'm just telling you, I feel lost now. I can't comfort myself with behavior rules and made-up boundaries. I can't map my movement by time or street. There's nothing to do, no secret cartography. Nowhere to go.

In which the theme is subverted, slightly

The world lies before me, continents outlined by a cerulean sea. My cities are tiny vector-graphics gems of green against the black of the united states. On the other side of the world, a red constellation marks the homesteads of the Soviet Union.

Words flash across the screen--DEFCON 5--and a warning klaxon sounds against the eerie ambient backdrop: orchestral swells and human voices, garbled radio and the coughs of the dying.

I will have only moments to place my radar dishes and silos, my airbases and fleets. Only moments to prepare for this, the final war. In only a few dozen heartbeats--DEFCON 4--the fleets will begin to move, and soon thereafter, fighters will scramble--DEFCON 3--as bombers are readied, and battle will be joined in the seas and the air.

Carriers and battleships will explode amid the tangled swarm of fighters and bombers dogfighting above the seas--DEFCON 2--as submarines attempt to slip by undetected, carrying a fatal payload into the heart of enemy territory.

And then--DEFCON 1--the missiles will come, first from submarines and bombers, and then from silos as defense is abandoned in favor of the annihilation of the enemy.

Cities will die. Nations will fall. And the irradiated ruins will linger for thousands of years. I will count myself extraordinarily lucky if I maintain even half my population through the next fifteen minutes.

This is Introversion Software's DEFCON, and it doesn't have to deliver its compelling tactical and strategic gameplay at the breakneck pace above, but I have never experienced anything else quite like the experience of watching the world go to hell in less than fifteen minutes.

Change the game-mode, and you can dial back the speed as far as you like, micromanaging the naval battles and watching the missiles arc slowly inward towards your city, portents of doom for millions of people.

You can watch, gripped by an incredible sense of anxiety, as missile after missile pour out of your air defense silos to intercept. Sometimes they succeed, but sometimes... a bright burst of white, an abscence of noise so loud it hurts, and emotionless text to fill the silence, telling you what was hit, and how many are dead.

The strategy of this game is deep, and can include metagame options, like forming and dissolving alliances, that, combined with its online multiplayer modes, provide games that can last for hours and still feel gripping. However, the online community is fairly small.

When the game came out, the usual forum suspects at Penny Arcade had a Game On thread, where they arranged games and discussed them afterwards, and generally exchanged stories. This thread died down after only two or perhaps three days, which confounded some members of the forumes who had only picked up the game a few days later, and come looking for people to play it with.

Everyone in the thread agreed that the game was beautiful in its simplicity, that the graphics were compelling and unique, that the gameplay was polished although some felt that Europe's position on the map gave it an unfair advantage. Apparently, the real world's geography was not created with game balance sufficiently in mind.

But the overwhelming response on the part of the thread's participants was that, while they had enjoyed the game, in some instances immensely, for its gameplay and opportunities for treachery and backstabbing, they felt that they had experienced everything it had to offer, and were comfortable moving on. And there was something eerie about experiencing nuclear cataclysm through such a stark and uncompromising lens.

The game's tagline, after all is Everyone Dies. Scrolling information in the background of the main menu discusses likelihood of surviving various levels of radiation exposure, and the halflives of radioactive subtances and isotopes, or the kiloton yield of the first nuclear weapon tested by each nation in the world. This is not a happy game about achieving your dreams and saving the world. There are no Pokemon here, nor any invading alien menace.

I find it intensely compelling nontheless. I always play with the score set to Survivors mode: you get no points for killing, only for keeping your own citizens alive. Of course, you can still reduce other player's scores by destroying their populations, and I do this, although usually only near the end of the game. In the beginning, I focus on destroying their offensive capabilities as quickly as possible, while maintaining my defense at all costs. Every time, I am hoping that maybe this time I'll make it through without losing a single city. Maybe this time, I'll find some cause for hope.

You see, I began playing this game while taking a 400-level Political Science course, Nuclear Deterrence Theory and Defense. While I know the game is in no way an accurate simulation of real world technologies--for one thing, the defensive missile emplacements I rely upon have no basis is reality--it feels significant somehow, even if it is just the toy soldiers version. I like to think that even though right now in the real world there are half a dozen nations with nuclear weapons ready to launch at any moment, maybe everything will be all right.

Of course, if things have gotten to the point that this game loosely simulates, we're all probably all doomed anyway. Unless we aren't.

Last night, I was sitting on a couch at my ex-girlfriend's, watching a movie, when we heard explosions outside. We'd been hearing fireworks all night, but these were way louder and closer, and a lot of them close together.

We convinced ourselves, briefly, that it was nothing. Just earlier that day, an entire string of firecrackers had been set off just down the street. She'd remarked that it sounded like a machine-gun going off.

When people started to gather outside, and discuss loudly, we decided otherwise. We heard "nine millimeter", "shotgun", "body" and "ambulance". A quick glance out the window did, indeed, show an ambulance going past, and a car whose windows were full of bullet holes.

The next couple hours were... highly unpleasant, as we tried to come to terms with the fact that someone had just been killed outside, and to get in touch with her room-mate, who had gone out to walk her partner home about half an hour before this happened.

When we finally calmed down, decided to go to my place for the night, and went outside, we talked to the cops, and asked what had actually happened.

We remembered eight, or maybe twelve gunshots. They told us it had been fifteen. Two men, one in a car, one on the street, had gotten into a gunfight, and exchanged shots at length. End result?

One man uninjured. The other lost a toe. He was the one in the ambulance.

Sometimes, mutual destruction isn't quite so assured after all. But don't bank on it.