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Steve Jobs and the Restoration of Sanity

2011-10-05T21:55:00.022-07:00

In the first half of 2002, I bought a Macintosh computer. A titanium PowerBook G4, to be specific. This is the story of how Steve Jobs and Apple restored my sanity.

For years I hated Macintosh computers.

I grew up on Atari hardware. I started with an Atari 800 (with a cassette drive), moved to the Atari 1200XL and then to the Atari 130XE; next came the Atari 520ST, a Mega ST4, and ultimately the Atari Falcon030.

I hated Macintosh computers because they were too expensive.

I could not afford a Macintosh.

I grew up hating anything I could not afford or which I could not coerce my parents into giving me for my birthday. Sad, but true, and probably prototypical of the middle class in the middle Eighties.

But it wasn't really hate.

Macintosh computers actually scared me. Everything I dreamed of doing with computers was sitting right there on screen. I was scared of where such a machine might take me, in much the same way as receiving a driver's license was scary. It bestowed the power to explore. It bestowed freedom. As Killing Joke's Jaz Coleman once sang: "Liberty in new dimensions, ruthless and spectacular."

After my Atari Days came to a close, I spent quite a few years in the PC wilderness. I had to let go of my Falcon 030 and buy a Pentium-based Dell PC. I loved that beige machine. I really did. But really, no, I hated it. I loathed Windows 3.1. That's when this hideous dance of self-deception truly began.

I spent years claiming PCs could do anything a Mac could do, whilst constantly trying to keep Apple's growing influence on society out of my conscious mind.

I was so happy when it looked like the Macintosh line would wither and vanish when Steve Jobs left Apple. It meant I could stop worrying about Macintosh computers.

So we all moved forward, didn't we? The Apple fanatics kept loving their machines, whilst the PC folks appeared to do the same, moving further ahead. But was it really moving ahead? A new version of Windows. Terrible and buggy, slow. Drivers missing. IRQs? Why is there no sound? How do I uninstall something? Registry? You want me to edit my registry? Books. Countless volumes of Windows Bibles. $69 because it has a CD-ROM with it? Wait, what? Each year? Updated! In step with each new version of Windows. Terrible and buggy, slow. Drivers missing. IRQs? Why is there no sound? How do I uninstall something? Registry? You want me to...

What a nightmare!

Which isn't to say I wasn't achieving things on my PC. I was. I created lots of great things, but it was a struggle, and I was doing it out of spite. I was fighting against the profoundly shitty experience of owning a Windows PC by dishonoring the creative urge. Rolling that boulder up, as far as it would go (Windows 3.1). Letting it roll back down (Windows for Workgroups). Pushing it up the other side (Windows ME). Yes, it sucked that the boulder kept rolling back, but at least I had control of it, right? Right?

Flash forward. College graduate. Couple of shitty jobs under my belt, a decent design portfolio the only thing to show for it, but it was enough to score the ubiquitous (and hideous) corporate job with a real salary. Thus, I settled in with my work PC (boulder == Windows NT).

Then the new boulder arrived on the horizon. It was a big one. They called it Windows XP. I purchased it on launch day, and my entire hard drive became corrupted when the install disc failed half-way through the installation. The distribution media itself was defective, or at least that's what the poorly worded Microsoft error message suggested. A damaged CD-ROM had scrambled my system, rendering it unbootable.

Still, I was hopeful. All that boulder rolling had to be good for something, right? Perhaps one of the new Windows XP Bibles could help? I rushed to the store (the internet was worthless at this point, at least as far as information from Microsoft was concerned). On the way there, however, my mind was coming to terms with everything that I had lost. Most of my work was backed up to ZIP discs (adored those; still do), but I had gone through so many careful pre-install checks. I had made sure my hardware could run Windows XP. I had read article after article about performing this upgrade. I was armed. With knowledge. All of it worthless in the face of a defective Windows XP CD-ROM.

Haunted by Sisyphean imagery, I realized I was basically suffering from a form of insanity, rolling a boulder up a hill only to watch it roll back down, and then doing it again. And again. These were the actions of a crazy person. So I went home. I ignored my dead computer. The next day at work, I found myself on Apple's web site. Something called OSX was in beta. It looked interesting. As I read about its Unix core, I finally realized the truth. It took a few months, but I decided to jettison my fear once and for all.

Eventually, bored at work, I configured a loaded titanium PowerBook G4 and placed the order.

I used the months of down time at home without a computer to purge my experiences with my PC and Windows. I boxed up Windows books. I piled all the PC games I thought were so great (they weren't) into the closet. And I waited, secretly wondering what I had gotten myself into (though I did play a lot of console games). I then received an email, which indicated that my recent order was being cancelled, because Apple had just upgraded the entire Powerbook line. Cancelled, of course, was the wrong word. It was actually a surprise upgrade. I was being given the same price on my computer, but it had a faster CPU (667 MHz G4 replaced with an 800 MHz G4), more RAM, a larger hard drive, and a better video chip. This was my first encounter (as a consumer) with Apple as a corporation. Shortly after I received this amazing new computer, I was invited to participate in a "switcher" survey that Apple had sent me. They wanted to know my story. They wanted to know why I left the PC world and chose a Macintosh computer. And I basically told them everything you just read. In some weird way, when I completed that survey, I felt like I was communicating directly with Steve Jobs. The bottom line was that it was incredibly cathartic to abandon the PC and Microsoft's poorly designed horror-spawn-of-an-OS.

My co-workers were shocked when I explained I'd just spent $2800 on a laptop. During a time when high-end PCs could be cobbled together at Fry's Electronics for $900. But here's the thing: I could afford it. I wasn't afraid any more. And fuck it if Raimi and his people didn't pre-steal the line that I can't avoid using here: "...with great power comes great responsibility." I was finally ready to accept that responsibility, since that's what a hideous corporate job enables: it allows you to buy stuff which other people are convinced you don't need.

Except in my case, I needed this thing more than food, water or even sex. I needed a computer in my life, one that wasn't going to require an endless education on how to get it to work right. I would waste no more money on tech bibles. I would no longer study for a certifications. I would no longer avoid my responsibility to the creative urge. I would equip myself with the best tools. From then on, I would only create.

This was a path I was placed on in 1983 when my dad bought me that Atari 800. I knew back then that a computer would always be sewn into the fabric of my life. The tyranny of the Windows PC was akin to an alien abduction, and that's the best I can say about it. The Windows PC represents missing time, lost years, and nothing more.

Though I can only claim the years 2002 to present as my Apple Years, I have never had one regret. The titanium PowerBook G4 I purchased in 2002 is still going strong. True, it's trapped in OSX Tiger (10.4), but it's the primary general purpose computer in my home. It holds a permanent spot on the kitchen counter. Email, web browsing, word processing, iTunes, and more. It's still doing it all. I know this fact would make Steve Jobs proud.

I just wish he was still around. We need people like him to protect our sanity, especially when technology is often at odds with the people who use it. Steve Jobs humanized computers, and in the process he kept a lot of creative people from losing their minds.

Rest in peace, Mr. Jobs. I will be forever grateful to you.

Literary Vacuum: 9/11 and Art

2011-09-11T18:10:00.010-07:00

This article is part of an on-going series intended to clarify and expand upon elements of the novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism.

The novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism was published on March 24th, 2001. Here's a small excerpt (from page 370):

Another cloud of fire erupted and seconds later the explosive sound reached them, thundering past. The ground trembled slightly and a secondary blast shook the city. Jakren’s mouth was hanging wide and Horim, crossing his arms, smiled thinly. Lorick became frantic, urging the Children to pray—to kneel and pray, kneel and pray.
The tallest spire, at the center of the City, collapsed spectacularly.
Wern, wiping his face, had moved next to Horim.
“What’s happening?” he asked.
“Fucking great,” said Horim, disgusted, his head shaking. “Just fucking great.”
Jakren heard Horim’s words but he couldn’t react. His eyes were drawn to another fiery blast. The City’s center was in flames and smaller explosions were erupting outwards. He tried to rationalize why his faith would be tested in such a way; why the City of a Thousand Faiths—his goal, his mission, his object of faith—would be taken away the moment it was won. His thoughts brought him little and he recalled his vision—an angry Didrio, a disgusted Chearkin. He thought of consulting the Analecta, to dig his failure out of it, but his eyes now watched the destruction with a morbid fascination; he found he could not move.
The City was splintered by another blast, rife with finality; Jakren’s hopes—the few that remained—dissipated in unison with its cloud of fire.

I remember thinking that the Too Soon rule would apply to 9/11 for a long time. We wouldn't be able to crack jokes about it for years, if not decades. Not that anyone would want to. But jokes are inherently creative, aren't they? They're filters. Jokes generate new perspectives on ideas or events that otherwise wouldn't naturally arise in the populace, so they do have value.

Speaking of jokes, on 9/11/01, I was out of work. In April of that year, I'd been laid off during the dot.com crash, which had hit Austin, TX pretty hard. I had only just arrived there when less than a year later I was heading back to Phoenix. That was fine, however. A stroke of luck, in a way. Before my unceremonious removal, I had discovered that the CEO of the company I worked for was a truly delusional religious fanatic, who often diverted company funds to smuggle Bibles into China. He was very concerned when news of my novel's publication came to his attention. I was brought to his office for a one-on-one, which was odd to say the least, considering I was just the graphics/Web design guy. It became pretty obvious to me that he was nuts, so I let him have it (and by that I mean I was honest and pulled no punches when it came to my views on religion). The dot.com crash was likely the perfect cover for him to press the eject button on my cube (disclosure: no 9/11 post would be complete without a conspiracy theory).

So I parachuted back to Phoenix. I found a decent apartment and got on with my life. Each morning, throughout the summer, I'd wake up, listen to some NPR, and then scour the internet for a job. On 9/11, however, NPR had changed. The tone was new, chilling—quite unlike anything I'd ever heard on the radio in my lifetime.

I couldn't afford television. Not even basic cable. So all I had was the radio. I sat in my dim apartment and listened. And I noticed something strange going on in the corner, by the door. My novel had been published in March, 2001. The initial batch was over there, stacked against the wall, but in two piles of equal height. Two small towers of books, focused on religious fanaticism in the year 2167.

The passage at the top of this post—and so many others throughout the novel—haunted me. They made it difficult to market the work, since at its heart, the novel was a satire. It was just one big long joke. A monumental reductio ad absurdum. I had broken the Too Soon rule by way of a literary causality violation.

I've always been personally opposed to religion in all its forms, but I wondered where the idea of attacking the financial center of a city had come from in my novel. Had it been the WTC bombing in 1993 that had planted the seed? That was my first interpretation. Had an unconscious thought process deconstructed that event? Secretly wondered why it had failed, thus generating the aerial attack scenario? Or was such a scenario simply a natural outgrowth of an imagined future where military hardware was freely available to protagonists and antagonists alike?

The narrative in the novel had been impacted by real-world events before. In 1993, ironically, the original ending of the novel had to be thrown out—not because of the WTC attack—but because of what happened in Waco, TX with David Koresh and his followers. Reality had run away with that ending, more or less, and I had to jettison the last third of the book (Simon Shadow and his few remaining followers had barricaded themselves within the Shimmerite Temple, surrounded by UGMC forces; a sudden attack by the Unholy Mass complicated and confused the situation, resulting in a massive firestorm). So perhaps it was fitting that I beat 9/11's religious fanatics to the punch. More or less, again. And though it may seem like less, the build-up to that moment on page 370 had been in play since the first page of the novel.

The end result, however, was that the book just wasn't good enough to find its way in a post-9/11 world. It generated no new insights. Or if it did, they remained mostly invisible. The satire was diluted and destroyed by the true reality of our world, yet I'm not sure this kind of victimization has any right to be displayed. It's Too Soon, after all. But 9/11 affected Art, and I'm not sure we even know how deeply. Regardless, the only way to truly process 9/11 is through art, and it is happening all around us. The 9/11 Memorial is such an expression. But the processing has been happening all along, since the morning of 9/12/01, in fact.

Religious fanatics attacked the twin towers of the World Trade Center, but they hit us in so many other smaller ways, too. Those two stacks of books against my wall, for instance. That evening I slowly dismantled that scene and created a small wide square of books in the corner. My little cat Inchworm jumped within the space immediately, and she played in and around the structure for months to come, chasing toy mice, as I slowly gave away copies of the work; it had become an impossible sell: "A novel about religious fanatics? Already? As if I'm in the mood for that!"

Is there a point to all of this? Probably not. The trials and tribulations of a novel lost in a literary vacuum aren't very interesting. But 9/11 was an attack on human expression on multiple levels, so rather than let these memories fade and die, I figured I'd leave them here, probably Too Soon.

One decade down.

Many more to go.

The Centers of Old Empires

2011-08-14T00:05:00.045-07:00

"The Centers of Old Empires" is story #2 in a short fiction series called Hemegohm's Tendril which expands the narrative begun in the science fiction novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism (story #1 located here). A fractured tale of the multiverse, the story begins in the year 2167. Simon Shadow has been abandoned in an escape pod, cruelly dumped in a distant, unknown solar system by the United Galactic Marine Corps. As the hours pass, Simon slowly realizes his survival is tied to an ominous set of choices...

"We don’t have to be believers to have religious experiences. But to understand such experiences, we must understand those who believe. Yet sadly, we will never understand such people, let alone ourselves." These words were excised from the Golden Shimmer. In 2167, Simon Shadow found himself confronted by a fundamentalist system gone rabid. His response? Hide within the disease itself—become just another symptom of the World Order's will to control. While much has been written about the man’s alleged misdeeds, his time on Reetar must now be reexamined, for many of his insights into the colonial experience were mysteriously hidden from the public, and I don’t think he was ever aware of this fact. These passages, while not destroyed, had simply been relegated to an invisible chapter of the document, never to reach the printed page. When I purchased the master digital file from Snappy Pamphlet (a small media shop in Reetar Colony), I had no idea that it would contain unreleased content. Mixed within a maze of swearing and irrational statements, I managed to find the words quoted above. I see no reason for their omission, since they seem to be the key to everything the man stood for during his time in Reetar Colony, fighting a losing battle not only against the Unholy Mass, but also against his addiction to Tigris, and the strange manipulations of the United Galactic Marine Corps. I've traced the removal of this written material to an artificial intelligence system embedded in the printing press itself. As I probed deeper into the origins of this AI, I realized it was part of a standard suite of tools used on hundreds of League of Human Expansion member worlds. With the current level of outcry against the World Order and its Machines, this is telling in the extreme. As of this writing, Simon Shadow is still missing.

From the preface of The Dark Death and Life of Simon Shadow: How the Common Man Will Defeat the World Order.
By Horim Fildsbel, Aerolithic Press, first edition, 2180.

No habitable worlds—but one. The words hovered in the cramped space of the escape pod. It was a small planet—designated Emcast—and it was mostly covered with saltwater; only one percent of its surface was marred by solid ground, and its atmosphere was violent and primordial. The thought of splashing down there was alluring, but the journey would take months, and as I discovered a few hours after finding myself here, the escape pod wasn't intended for long-term habitation, nor was it a viable water craft in any case. It was maddening.

Positionally, I was two hundred thousand light years from the nearest human colony. I was actually beyond the Wildervoid, further out than most humans had ever been, even via wormhole transposition. But why? What kind of statement was this? Why had the United Galactic Marine Corps dumped me here? They had, at times, indicated an appreciation for what happened on the planet Reetar, but they had a weird way of showing it. Pre-trial they loved me, yet during the trial itself, they'd simply handed me over to the prosecution. Post-trial their love returned, in the seductive form of Ren Pello. She'd done her best to bisect my past from my future, to cloud my recollections of Mia Derlen, and to some degree it had worked. Visions of Ren's naked body were still vivid in my mind. I never could have anticipated our intimacy would end the way it did—her soldiers dragging me into an escape pod. Then as I drifted away, Commander Brinkson called me, saluted me, thanked me. For what? The transmission ceased, and I watched as the U.G.M.C. Hardheart vanished into the black. My eyes were locked on that region of space for hours, waiting for them to reverse course, to break the pattern. Love, hate, love, hate, love—but the pattern held. Hate. They weren't coming back. I was alone, and that was that.

The fear became stronger with every passing minute. I felt hungry. The storage lockers were empty except for a few remnants of my past—artifacts tied to a distant, dead life. A rucksack, a worn photo of Mia, and surprisingly, my old tin of Tigris, purchased on Reetar so long ago.

Throughout the first few hours, my thoughts drifted—forwards and backwards, all the way back to Earth, to Anthony Rodengo and a woman I'd once known called Miro. My hands and mind crawled the interior surfaces of the pod, seeking an escape that didn't involve a prolonged combination of starvation, dehydration, and asphyxiation. I found one, but it involved the set of explosive hatch bolts and the endless void beyond. I'd once participated in escape pod training when I was enlisted, but I'd been abusing a time-accelerating hallucinogen through the whole of it. An ironic blunder, perhaps; but every recruit had handled the nauseating tedium—two days spinning in Sol's asteroid belt—in the very same way. None of us ever thought we'd be in a situation like this.

I fell in and out of sleep, still convinced the Hardheart would return. Surprisingly, I dreamed—fitful fantasies riddled with hopeful plots and unlikely outcomes. The most promising revealed that Ren Pello had used the escape pod to hide me while the U.G.M.C. prepared a cover story about my death during an escape attempt. Ren then picked me up, granting me a new identity, a new life. The variations were subtle, but they all shared the same ending: I woke up. As day two began, I found myself frenetically exploring the pod's computer system. I paged through menu after menu, as if something would change, as if some new form of hope would manifest, but I found nothing. I decided I needed a new perspective. I needed to get outside the pod without killing myself, so I grabbed my tin of Tigris. It felt light, and inside, there was only a single packet. I could feel the crystalline nugget inside. This was the work of Ren Pello; leaving a single dose was either kind or cruel, but it was hard to tell which. As the tablet rolled into my palm, the sight of it brought back a flood of memories from Reetar Colony. It was so familiar, so comforting, and so terrifying. Ren had claimed the spiders were parasites; that Tigris generated a tether to their habitat in some higher dimension. These creatures—real or imaginary—had been running across the surfaces of my life since I first tried the drug, and now I wondered if they might offer a path to a third escape route.

The tablet dissolved instantly, flavorless. My resistance was still high, so nothing notable happened, but within minutes the light from Empurios, the star at the center of the system, changed briefly above me. Something was passing across the portal in the hatch. I saw a spider's leg, mottled, reflective, graceful and terrifying—the largest I'd ever experienced.

I continued to explore the pod's systems, trying to stay calm, worried that the Tigris was a mistake. Menu after menu. Function after function. Diagnostics. Checks. Summaries. I fixated on the Space-time Systems logo, tapped it. A customary marketing blurb. A smaller spider emerged from the wording, and it scurried quickly, stopped, vanished as usual, leaving a single red dot behind. An assemblage of pixels, stuck between two sentences. I enlarged the display. It was a paragraph related to the escape pod's design. It read:

...thus, how the apparently miraculous design of your escape pod appeared can be traced directly to the intervention of an advanced machine intelligence developed exclusively by Space-time Systems.

The red dot hovered above the 'h' in how. Convinced it was merely an illusion, I left the section and continued on, jumping around the menus, but the dot was still there when I returned. I magnified the section until all I could see was that circular expanse. I touched it, and the display shifted to a new menu at normal magnification, one previously hidden. It contained only a single control surface, tied to something called a quantumgenic suspension system—or QS. There was nothing to configure. The system was either engaged or dormant. The overview was vague, but it conveyed just enough to terrify: an exotic energy source, a negation of quantum uncertainty, and a method of tracking my every particle—both position and velocity—without disturbing either. The patent was still pending, but the system allowed a level of determinism that had proved highly successful in dropping people out of time. It was intended solely for use in the most dire of battle sphere situations. When I pressed that button, I would transform myself into an ageless quantum artifact. Upon rescue, my life would pick up where it had been suspended. Disturbingly, the mechanics of such rescue were not explained.

No habitable worlds—but one—and it was beyond my reach. That was my reality, and time was passing. I thought of the U.G.M.C.'s alternating pattern of love and hate. Was the QS system a manifestation of their love for me? A thousand trillion trillion particles—me—were going to cease their association unless I trusted this device to keep track of every last one of them.

I stared into Mia's photograph—into her eyes. Why had Ren returned this photograph? Why not a picture of herself, instead? I thought of moments with Mia, intermixed with visions of a sand storm on Reetar, a dark hallucinatory night in Gloomdred's tower, Hrainey Wendiff drunk, passed out on his garage couch, and Qaggaq, the mysterious friend who'd once saved my life. I knew there would be no rescue this time.

I waved my hand across the QS control surface. The red button pulsed, asking for confirmation. I decided the pattern had been broken, after all. There would be no love. What I was about to do was hatred heaped upon hatred, and I was tired of my situation. The system indicated I should lay back. I took one last look at Mia. Above me, I saw only a shining black eye—that Tigris spider of immense size, staring through the hatch portal.

The padding around my body expanded, rooting me in place.

A sudden droning, chaotic and random, filled my ears.

I felt the thinness of Mia's photograph in my hand.

I closed my eyes.

The ocean world Emcast is widely known as the "aquamarine gem" of the Empyrean solar system. On the cliffs of a small island, surrounded by an endless sea, the Temple of Shimmerism sends its lighted spires rising into dark skies.

I watch the sea from the central tower—called the Great Spire. The surface below remains eerily tranquil, even as great pods of segmented creatures slip past, their black eyes staring forward into the dark clarity of the water.

I don't know long I've been here. Time itself is tangled. I have many memories of the sea—different epochs, characterized by endless storms, the water churning, boiling, lashing at the island's rocky perimeter.

The Temple is fed by water power, in combination with nonnative energies I don't understand. Scientists and theoreticians live here with me. Some are circumstantial time-travelers—late-22nd century thinkers and physicists who'd faced death at the hands of incurable diseases, but who'd been preserved via quantumgenic suspension, and eventually cured. The others are clear products of the 23rd century, former workers in the business of space-time.

I don't know what year it is.

My dead religion's sacred book, The Golden Shimmer, is here. The people in this place have recovered it, researched it. The Temple contains the largest collection of copies still in existence. I am filled with dread. My book represents misfortune. The monks of the Shimmerite Order tell me not to worry. They wear strange hooded jumpsuits which can shift form, as if the fabric itself were sentient, or somehow intricately tuned to the individual wearer. One of the monks—she calls herself Juplin Ordel, daughter of Jakren—has changed the structure and transparency of her clothing before my eyes. She is strangely beautiful and interested in me, but I don't respond the way I should. I am confused. I don't understand how I arrived here.

I stand at the top of the Great Spire.

I stare at the dark sea, a photograph in my right hand.

Mia stares at me. Dual suns shine brightly upon her face. Worried I might lose her, I slide the photograph into my wet suit and spur my wavetrain forward, waiting for another massive surge of water from below. Hrainey Wendiff is here. My dead friend, killed by Unholy Mass thugs, riding his own wavetrain, a can of beer rising and falling gracefully in his hand. A column of water surges in the distance.

"Drive in or ride?" Hrainey calls out.

I find myself driving forward in answer.

Our wavetrains gain speed as we whip up the rising wall of water, a dizzying feeling wracking our guts as we plunge over the top and ride down the far side, plunging into the depths, rising gracefully. Hrainey and I cross paths, bobbing, and I catch the man's huge grin. It had always defined him, in some easy way, but I don't think I ever saw it when we lived together in Reetar Colony.

We ride the froth, rotating our wavetrains to give ourselves a better view of the depths. Below us is the great aperture in the seafloor, nearly a kilometer down, where the surface ocean transitions into Reetar's famed underground sea; the Gorla live there, hidden in their submerged cities of incredible complexity. Part of me wonders if Qaggaq is watching me, as he so often did in the past.

I shake my head, shedding water, pulling up next to Hrainey. Our spheres bump, rebound, stabilize.

"You're a dead man," I state.

Hrainey lets the words sink between us. He gazes around and then kicks his wavetrain forward, back to where we'd been before. I follow him.

"Next wave in two," he calls, opening another beer. "You want one?"

"You're dead."

Hrainey takes a deep drink, irritated. He pulls his wavetrain closer to mine.

"Let's link," he says.

I rotate, the bright Reetar suns blazing in the sky. My glasses darken. Hrainey and I link our wavetrains.

"Now for the come down," he says. "The come down."

"What do you mean?"

"I mean this: I tell it to you like it really is and you accept it. And then we ride this next wave together."

I feel a chill. The man's dead. The Reetar police found his body, but a thought crosses my mind.

"You didn't—you didn't fake dying, did you?" I ask. "Just to get away from me? From Shimmerism?"

Hrainey smiles. "Simon, imagine for a minute that you and I aren't sitting here in a couple of wavetrains. Imagine instead that we're sitting in some old piece of shit row boat. Something made of wood, maybe."

"Sure," I say.

"Good, so think about this. There's a chance you might fall through the bottom of that boat."

"What do you mean?"

"Basic quantum mechanics. The chance is small, but you could drop right through solid matter. Through the wood—into the ocean."

I laugh. "Hrainey Wendiff doesn't talk like this."

"Hey, I wasn't as dumb as you thought."

"So you are dead?"

"This is the come down, Simon," and here he lets out a mighty belch, the kind that once echoed through his garage in Reetar Colony. "And like I said, it could happen. You could pass right through the bottom of the boat. The key is waiting long enough for it to happen."

"What are you talking about?"

Hrainey detaches his wavetrain. "Maybe we ride this one apart," he says, skimming ahead.

I watch him go, content to let him ride it alone, but then he pulls around, speeding back, gliding close.

"Simon, I may be dead," he says, "but where does that leave you?"

"That question makes no sense. I'm lost."

"I know. But how long have you been lost? You see my meaning? How long have you been waiting? And is there enough time left?"

The next tsunami arrives, and Hrainey turns into it. I feel myself rise and fall as the great mound of water passes me by.

Hrainey's words seem too heavy. I hold them in my mind, but their weight is unbearable. I worry they will sink me, pulling me head first to the bottom.

I look around.

I see sunlight and the endless Reetar sea, and Hrainey Wendiff, my dead friend, is gone.

I gaze upon an ocean which seems made of gold.

An immense reflective lattice ripples along its surface. A distant sun is setting. I can see lights far above the horizon—the broadcast towers and the great elevator of Endemon, the capital city on Tigris IV, in the Tigris solar system.

My shuttle skims over the waves.

A massive hurricane rages beyond my window. The leading edge of the storm is breaking up against the man-made barriers that surround Endemon.

I fly closer.

The vast crag of rock at the city's center–called Last Exit–shows itself, emerges from the gloom. It is dotted with points of light.

The shuttle begins to slow, hammered by wind and rain.

I peer ahead.

I'm on approach and the docking sequence begins.

Life begins to move. My life.

The planet Tigris is alive.

I step from the shuttle into the terminal, and my first impulse is to blend into the crowd–to walk once more in a tight maze of infinitely navigable flesh, like back on Earth, before the explosion in the Cafeterium at Space-time Systems. I feel at ease.

But I feel responsible. For all of this.

Tigris IV is a confluence, a merger of what's left of the Great Experiment and of what came after, the Tigris drug culture.

I catch a cab and point it toward the heart of Endemon, to the great cradle of stone in the shadow of Last Exit, where Meinolf Gloomdred has set up his new church.

Why did I follow him here? What will I do when I find him?

My eyes are overwhelmed. Virtual light pervades the roadways, filling the cab's interior with bewildering imagery. I know it's just advertising, but I open all the ports on my skin-plant anyway, recording as much of it as I can. A message from Mia might come in any form–even hidden in the swarming virtual light of Tigris IV. My filters lock onto Gloomdred, mid-sermon:

Young flies, heed the bells. Come to your fate. I am the Unholy Mass, and you are my children...

I feel responsible for his presence here. He came because of me. I realize I'm not ready to confront him. I need to hear from Mia first. I need to know what she thinks of it all.

I return home.

I'm convinced that Mia is in Endemon–that she's still alive.

From my apartment's balcony, the view of Last Exit is hazy. I like it that way. Long ago, they'd discovered the Tihoc plant–the source of Tigris–in a chamber at the heart of the mountain. Now the galaxy's lost and damned march into that same cavern, only to be drowned in advertising.

I feel cold.

My jumpsuit and cloak are both too thin for a rain-soaked night in Endemon. The fabric shifts form, heating slightly.

I sit down, summoning my terminus. A subtle panel of light floats before me.

“Search all of Endemon for references to Mia Derlen. Compile a master list.”

The terminus hangs. The display glitches and then clears.

How long would you like to wait? it asks.

"Just use the data from the cab ride."

My skin-plant vibrates. Again, the glitch.

How long would you wait?

I feel as if I remember something, but it slips away. In the kitchen, a soft tone. My tea is ready. I don't remember making it. It's a local blend, spiked with an inert form of Tigris. The scent is so familiar, as if it were a color, or something physical.

I feel a sudden awareness of the other side–of the Hemegohm.

Back on the balcony, the monolithic expanse of Endemon's lights and homes and lives seems to grow larger.

The terminus asks Would you wait for me?

The display fades. At its center, a glowing letter 'M' flutters from existence.

I am surrounded by self-illuminating information. A vast plane stretches out before me, grid-like, pulsing with memories. A bloated, red-hued galaxy hangs alone in the dark emptiness of the sky, but it's structure is more akin to wreckage–the remnants of two galaxies post-collision; strands of orphaned suns trail outward, flung from the gravitational haven they once called home, lost and destined to die alone.

I ask "Where am I?"

She answers "I don't know."

I don't see her, but I know she's here. But who is she? There is something familiar about her. "Can I see you?"

There is no answer, but I feel a hand on my shoulder. It startles me, and I turn.

Her fingers are fading away. She begins to elongate, moving backwards, stretching away into the distance, like a series of photographs. Instances in time, each unique.

"Mia?"

The forms are refracting now, splitting, generating a branching structure. I follow, focusing on the regressive phantom at the base of it all. At times it changes gender, each female instance generating new branches that seem to reverse course, into the future as I move into the past.

Finally, the base form stops, allowing me to come closer. Her features are suffused with light, but I recognize her. Behind me is a vast tree of descent, a familial expanse I will never know.

"Ren?"

She's dressed in a way I never had the chance to see. Regular clothes, different–no longer military in any sense. She smiles at me, holding an infant. The countless specters trace back through time to her–to this one tiny girl. I realize she's my daughter. I can't move, and mother and child wane simultaneously.

A voice says "I'm waiting for you."

Mia's voice.

I sense the Hemegohm once more, but I am alone. The expanse vanishes, leaving only the distant galaxy, fading in a sea of darkness.

The universe is aging, accelerating into oblivion.

I stare into my food, unable to avert my eyes.

I am cold.

The Space-time Systems Cafeterium is crowded.

Two executives pass me, silent. I know them. Can't place their names, but I know them. I used to work on their floor. They shouldn't be here.

I am no longer hungry. I feel nothing but contempt for the food in my tray. Balanced nutrition. Food translated into color. Color without taste.

The next Lunch Wave piles up beyond the great main doors.

My palms are cold. My gut feels nerved up. Under my right thumb I see a photograph. The edge is partially submerged in my food. Mia stares at me.

Mia.

Mia Derlen.

I witnessed her death.

I'm confused, so I access the Space-time Systems directory, searching for her. Information overwhelms my senses but I quickly find a reference. She's not full-time, but she's done contract work in the colonization program. She's assigned to a planet called Reetar, out past Vega.

I open a message: "I'll be there soon," I say. "I miss you."

I hear trays of food crash to the floor.

Someone is yelling, but I miss what is said. More trays crash, splashing. I can't think of anything else to say to Mia, so I send the message and clear the display.

I hear a strange chorus: guards, crying out for someone to stop.

I adjust my grip on the tray, moving the edge of Mia's photo from the food. My thumb and forefinger are sluggish, as if they aren't my own. I sense a presence. A bare forearm crushes into my chest and my tray spins away. Movement slows. I know this man. I once worked for this man. Bill? Bill Wexler? Tigris spiders cling to his brow. His face bleeds; my food splashes across it and he becomes a monster.

I am on my back, sliding down the surface of an empty table as it collapses, tilts, dumps me to the floor. I am grasping, trying to regain control. The photograph of Mia slips, as if it had never really been there.

I try to find it, to keep my eyes on it.

People run.

I reach out–but my hand is crushed under foot.

The ground moves.

A shock wave. Searing heat. Fire.

I am lost in a swell of debris–tables, chairs, other people–but the photograph of Mia is miraculously close.

Again, I reach out. I stare at her–at my own hand as it catches fire. The flame leaps from my fingers and I cry out.

Time slows.

Mia Derlen glows brightly, smolders, and vanishes.

I think, I'll be there soon.

I close my eyes.

The origin of "Distance to Jupiter"

2011-07-18T15:34:00.023-07:00

On October 23rd, 1999, the planet Jupiter was very close to Earth. Jupiter was at opposition (opposite the sun as seen from Earth). This opposition occurs every 12 years or so—it's happening again this October—but the distance to Jupiter from Earth varies. On this particular day, the distance was about 3.96AU (592,407,567.93 kilometers, or 368,104,996.78 miles). I was at my parent's home, in their backyard, with a telescope (a 9" reflector), gazing up at Jupiter and its sparkling moons. I'm not sure exactly when, but at some point during this simple run of observations, I had come to the decision to start releasing experimental electronic music. I know that makes little causal sense, but I had always been drawn to music which tied itself thematically to the wonders of the Solar System, perhaps the result of growing up to the tune of Carl Sagan's Cosmos. I owned the soundtrack to that series and I'd usually fall asleep each night listening to Vangelis' "Alpha" and "Heaven and Hell, Part 1" on perpetual loop, my mind voyaging out there, watching safely from my spaceship of the imagination as inscrutable space empires waged war on the other side of the Milky Way.

So on this cool, October night in 1999, I found the phrase "distance to Jupiter" stuck in my head. The media had hyped this moment (Jupiter's proximity to Earth), and perhaps that's why these words were lodged there. But my mind was oscillating between two powerful forms of awe: 368 million miles was an immense distance, but it was also minuscule, especially when compared to more distant planets, objects, or other stars. I remember thinking that someday, a journey of 368 million miles would seem trivial to the human species; that at some moment in the future, a sight-seeing day-trip to Europa would be common for the citizens of Earth.

The distance to Jupiter is important in other, less-fanciful ways, too. The planet is close to the inner Solar System, and it possesses a vast gravity well. Many astronomers believe this casts Jupiter in the role of protector, partially shielding the planets closer to the Sun from comets and asteroids; some astronomers believe that Jupiter has the opposite effect—drawing comets from the Kuiper belt dangerously toward Earth. Either way, the distance to Jupiter from Earth might affect our survival or destruction. Beyond Mars, Jupiter and its moons could harbor extraterrestrial life. There is evidence that the moons Europa, Ganymede, and Callisto possess underground oceans of liquid water, capable of possibly supporting simple plants or micro-organisms. All these ideas are tied, in some way, to distance.

Yet after returning home that evening, those three words—"distance to Jupiter"—did not immediately coalesce into a designation for my music project. Even though I'd been recording tracks since 1996, it had simply never occurred to me to "name" the project, since my rig was so crude and simple. It consisted of a solitary Roland MC-303 Groovebox (music sequencer/synthesizer) and a consumer-grade Sony Minidisc deck. I had tied these two devices together to record live performances. As awful as that might seem, the performances themselves were constructed with loops—sequences of notes and rhythms—not just single tones or random keyboard wanderings. The loop-based approach led to surprising complexity, and the maximum approach to minimalism on the hardware side led to focused creativity. Thus, inspired by visions of Jupiter, I cracked open a fresh MiniDisc and inserted it into my deck to try to capture some of what I had been feeling a few hours before. The unit asked me to name the disc, and I pulled my keyboard close. Those three words emerged—perhaps solely as an honorific—and I've never once reconsidered the project's name.

Later, I extracted the music from the MiniDisc and brought it to my friend Chris Bailey, who put a final mix together. I called the album "To Sleep To Music" (a nod, perhaps, to that habit of childhood) but the title's palindromic quality then caught my eye, and "Music To Sleep To" was released via MP3.com on October 31st, 1999.

Monstrous Fire - Now Available

2011-05-05T23:03:00.012-07:00

The 14th Distance to Jupiter album Monstrous Fire is now on sale for $3USD! Available for immediate download in your choice of 320k mp3, FLAC, or just about any other downloadable format you could possibly desire (seriously). Enter the code lambent_tricklings at checkout (good through 08/21/2011) to receive a 25% discount on the full album purchase! Find it here!

Monstrous Fire by Distance to Jupiter

Also available: remastered and updated edition of Distance to Jupiter's 13th album Lines in the Sky (2009). Contains two previously unreleased bonus tracks ("Destiny" and "Distant") from the original recording session. $2USD. Find it here!

Lines in the Sky by Distance to Jupiter

Monstrous Fire by Distance to Jupiter

2011-04-17T17:17:00.076-07:00

Monstrous Fire by Distance to JupiterThis is the 14th Distance to Jupiter album. Put on your headphones, turn down the lights, and close your eyes for 44 minutes. Listen to the whole thing using the widget above, or crawl through—track-by-track with accompanying notes—below.

Track Notes

Sleep by Distance to Jupiter
1) The origin of "Sleep" (known as "Hypnos" during prototyping, but originally titled "What The Fuck Is This?") can be traced back as far as January 8th, 2009, though work was not resumed on this track until almost a year later (December 31st, 2009). This track was the first track recorded for the prior album Lines in the Sky (2009), but it was quickly abandoned, despite its imagery and potential (it did not seem to fit that album's "electro-medieval" undercurrent); thus, it became the perfect starting point for Monstrous Fire, and there was never any doubt that it would be the first track on the new album. It offers a solid departure point for a distinct new direction.

Hidden Reality by Distance to Jupiter
2) This was the sixth track recorded. It emerged swiftly, almost fully-formed, during a rainy, windswept winter day in Phoenix, Arizona (2/20/2011). The track's title relates to its inspiration: the book "The Hidden Reality" by Brian Greene, which I had just finished reading; and that, coupled with attendance at the most recent Origins debate, had really pushed my mind into the deep end of the cosmos. When I awoke the next day, I really had no idea that by dusk this track would exist. Though it experienced some subtle iterations in the weeks that followed, these were primarily related to the final mix. The initial sequence of notes—sadness—manifested at random, as my hands fell on the keyboard. I'd been thinking about Hugh Everett and the effect his "Theory of the Universal Wavefunction" (later called "many-worlds") had had on his life and career. I find it fascinating that Everett stopped his research in theoretical physics after obtaining his Ph.D.

Quantum Man by Distance to Jupiter
3) Work on this track commenced the day after finishing Lawrence Krauss's new book on Richard Feynman called "Quantum Man". The track, the 5th recorded, has a distinct structure, with a sort of analytical tone slowly being overtaken by a far more alive sound—that of a buzz-laden guitar. It mirrors a pattern that Krauss points out in the book about the way Feynman lived his life. He was a man who embraced simultaneous life paths (like particles in quantum physics itself). The imagery in this track attempts to embody that simultaneity. A Nobel laureate's life and the life of a rock star inextricably commingled—bound by the distant echo of applause from a Nobel Prize ceremony now lost in time.

Forgotten by Distance to Jupiter
4) This track (the 10th recorded) emerged from the up-tempo wreckage of the second track recorded in the Monstrous Fire project (a track which never made it beyond prototyping). Dropping the tempo considerably and jettisoning most of the performance, I discovered there were some truly mind-expanding note progressions hidden in the murk. The vibrating bass drone was of particular interest, and it seems to hit all the right regions of the brain in just the right ways. The place this track describes is a forgotten one. It speaks of the ruins of a vanished civilization, carved into the black stone of a frozen continent.

Monstrous Fire by Distance to Jupiter
5) The title track, recorded late in the project (12th). The imagery here is subtle, backed by a driving electronic tempo, evoking trance-like feelings; this is a meditation session aboard a faster-than-light star ship. This is a journey into a distant planet's unexplored countryside beneath a darkening sky. The title emerged from a curious bit of synchronicity. Back in 2008, the bookseller Barnes & Noble released a gigantic tome of H. P. Lovecraft's work, called "H. P. Lovecraft: The Fiction." It's a feast for any Lovecraft fan (1,100+ pages). Despite already owning a set of the definitive Arkham House editions of Lovecraft's work, I grabbed a copy without hesitation and promptly forgot about it once I lugged it home. So years later, as I listened to what would become track 5 ("Monstrous Fire") through headphones, I stood before my bookcases. I had the track on repeat, listening to the final mix, and I randomly took down the Lovecraft tome. However, I had just glanced at my computer screen, noting the track was 6:14 in length. I am not sure why, but I turned to page 614 in the book, and the first two words on the page were "monstrous fire" - but more than this, as it turns out, this passage is from my favorite H. P. L. story of all time: "The Colour Out of Space" - and in fact, it's from the very paragraph I often cite as to why. Here's a clip: "...the farm was shining with the hideous unknown blend of colour; trees, buildings, and even such grass and herbage as had not been wholly changed to lethal grey brittleness. The boughs were all straining skyward, tipped with tongues of foul flame, and lambent tricklings of the same monstrous fire were creeping about the ridgepoles of the house, barn and sheds. It was a scene from a vision of Fuseli, and over all the rest reigned that riot of luminous amorphousness, that alien and undimensioned rainbow of cryptic poison from the well—seething, feeling, lapping, reaching, scintillating, straining, and malignly bubbling in its cosmic and unrecognizable chromaticism." Monstrous fire, indeed.

We Have Always Been At War by Distance to Jupiter
6) Another dark scene, documented, presented, and processed: war. The last track recorded, the initial three notes were found in an abandoned project file from some earlier point, akin to some blasted out warehouse in the middle of a battlefield. When transformed from guitar into a brooding synth, the track took off. The images presented are of war approaching, at first on a horizon, but coming ever closer, until finally it's right outside your door: machine gun fire, explosions, roaring jet fighters, and the shouted orders of soldiers on the run. The title did not occur to me until I was listening to the final mix. Those who've read George Orwell will understand the reference. In keeping with the theme of synchronicity at work in the Monstrous Fire project, I had started to feel vaguely creeped-out by this track, having listened to it so many times. I'd been upstairs for four hours and decided to head back down into a darkened house. The room below was bathed in a subtle gray-blue tone by the television. When I realized what was on screen, all I could do was smile: Michael Radford's amazing 1984 version of Orwell's "Ninteen Eighty-Four." We have always been at war.

Silver Key by Distance to Jupiter
7) The 9th track recorded. A sequence of agonized, searching notes, growing, repeating, augmented by a blooming, infectious beat; winds of swirling synths, and the guitars which attend to them; distant bells like a beacon, conquering the buzzing digital swarm, before giving way to a seething bank of corrupted violins. A track not so much about imagery as raw feeling. It's about a revisited dream place, overflowing with mysteries locked within the unconscious. The album almost took its title from this track, but something kept that from happening. Something... monstrous.

Unexplored World by Distance to Jupiter
8) Recorded 11th, this track is all about exploration. It is a theme I couldn't escape during 2010 and into 2011, attending several Origins events at Arizona State University. At the kickoff seminar for the 2011 event, Werner Herzog was speaking about his new film Cave of Forgotten Dreams, and as I listened to him speak, I realized there were likely more places on our planet still waiting to be discovered. For as much as humanity has spread bacteria-like across the planet's surface, places of mystery remain, and this is culturally very important. This track is an ode to the unknown people of the Cave of Forgotten Dreams. This track is my internal theme to the Origins initiative. There is a rhythm here, and a depth. This is mystery and discovery. The bass notes seem to dive, to burrow, to uncover new things, like sonar pulses in the ocean of Mind. A fitting end to Monstrous Fire.

Miscellaneous

The album has had two working titles. Throughout 2010, the project was known simply as "Ready" (which was a nod to the text prompt you see on the bright blue screen of an Atari 800 computer). In early February, 2011, thematic elements related to the unconscious started to manifest and it was dubbed "The Gods of Sleep." In late April, 2011, the album's final title was determined (see above).

Inspiration for the Monstrous Fire album flowed from several Origins events at Arizona State University in 2010 and 2011, as well as from the pages of "The Hidden Reality" by Brian Greene, and "Quantum Man" by Lawrence Krauss. It was a fascinating project to bring to completion. So many strange little details fell into place during composition and recording.

The Monstrous Fire project originally contained 12 tracks. 4 were cut. The following list contains the sequence of track creation along with the number of prototyping iterations each track experienced:

#1 ["Sleep"] - 21 iterations.

#5 ["Quantum Man"] - 19 iterations.

#6 ["Hidden Reality"] - 14 iterations.

#9 ["Silver Key"] - 17 iterations.

#10 ["Forgotten"] - 6 iterations.

#11 ["Unexplored World"] - 5 iterations.

#12 ["Monstrous Fire"] - 13 iterations.

#13 ["We Have Always Been At War"] - 8 iterations.

Tracks #2, #3, #4 and #7 remained unnamed, and never really emerged from the prototyping phase. Weirdly, an empty project file exists for track #8 though nothing was ever recorded.

MP3s, planet-killing asteroids, and the RIAA...

2011-03-25T10:24:00.024-07:00

Initiated in 1999, Distance to Jupiter is an experimental music project.

The following article was taken from the Distance to Jupiter information page at shimmerism.org, and it focuses on MP3.com and how it was ultimately destroyed by the RIAA (an "industry group" that clearly views the digital distribution of music as an Earth-bound planet-killing asteroid). It was last updated in 2009, but the kernel was written long before, in a time when the iTunes Music Store was still a fantasy. I am posting this here because rumors continue to circulate that Apple will soon unveil a cloud-based music "locker" and it sounds a lot like MP3.com's disastrous "Jukebox" initiative that ultimately destroyed them. I make this point not as a warning, but as a simple observation of irony. Clearly the situation has changed. Clearly, the RIAA has figured out how to survive in the 21st Century—they must become the asteroid.

It's 2009, and the RIAA continues its struggle to adapt to the digital music distribution model. This is telling. In case it isn't already obvious, the RIAA is the Recording Industry Association of America, a group which supposedly represents the recording industry in the United States. I think it is important to take a look back at one of the true casualties of the RIAA's greed: MP3.com. No matter what you may think (or rather, thought) of MP3.com, it is undeniable that they unleashed—and gave power to—a legion of creative individuals. By removing the need for the RIAA entirely (the recording industry itself was bypassed), and giving musicians a means of production, artists were allowed to produce what they wanted to hear, regardless of "market need" or genre concerns. A small percentage of MP3.com users were already well-established in the music business, but they participated because they recognized the power of the paradigm. Scorn's Mick Harris comes to mind (he's been creating rhythmic, hypnotic drum and bass since '91 or so). Harris offered rare tracks and new productions on MP3.com, giving him direct access to his fans. But the true foundation of MP3.com was the world of the "unknown" artist; the bedroom-based knob-twiddlers reigned supreme. Every genre of music found its way onto MP3.com's servers. This was technology that offered us an outlet for a creative impetus we didn't understand, nor cared to analyze; all we knew was that we loved making music, and the ability to get it heard—for free—was intoxicating. Those of us who really embraced MP3.com did so because we had no choice. We were tired of consuming the mediocrity that littered record store shelves. But we all had our inspirations—we all had artists to emulate—and we all began to grow in creative ways. MP3.com became a thriving boutique of music never heard, in styles beyond comprehension. MP3.com was a cheap, efficient means of production for people who would otherwise toil in obscurity for the rest of their lives because the RIAA—and especially the record labels—had no interest in pushing envelopes or cultivating innovation.

MP3.com's mistake, however, was their "Jukebox" idea (later branded as "My.MP3.com"). It made sense: If you owned a CD, you inserted it into your CD-ROM drive, MP3.com's software identified the disc via its serial number, and magically, a copy of that CD (from MP3.com's server) was placed in your online "library"—a digital warehouse of music that you could access from anywhere, using your Web browser. The music never left MP3.com's servers. But to the collective hive-mind of a greedy industry, the potential for abuse was monumental.

The RIAA balked, to say the least. The RIAA showed—in the legal crush that followed—what they truly thought of their consumers. We were all assumed to be criminals. No critical thought was ever applied to that assumption. What followed can only be interpreted as panic. The irrational scenarios that must have played themselves out in the vapid minds of those in power at the RIAA will never truly be known. We can guess, of course, about the supposed wrongfulness of people borrowing CDs from their friends, or the looming threat of someone nefariously using MP3.com's Jukebox functionality to amass a collection of music they didn't actually "own"—but the reality was simple: the RIAA and its legal juggernaut became a modern re-enactment of a species trying to avoid extinction. MP3.com was an asteroid—and it was heading straight for the RIAA.

The end result was that MP3.com was forced to change. Their legal costs grew. And that growth was passed on to us - the artists who had sought only to be heard. We were told "If you're serious about your music, you'll upgrade to our Premium Artist service for $19.95 per month." Like the RIAA, MP3.com had sunk into irrationality and greed instead of just being honest about the battle they were losing. At what point had I—as an artist—become less serious about my music? How did MP3.com's legal woes change my attitude towards my music? How would paying MP3.com a monthly fee make me any more serious? The assumption made by MP3.com in the guise of a marketing slant to cover their legal costs was nothing short of a slap in the face. MP3.com rapidly declined. There were still plenty of users—addicted to the crumbling paradigm—who paid the fee. But these so-called artists were also aggressive marketers, obsessed with being famous. For most of us, artfulness was the key. We weren't making the music to make money. We were making the music because we had no choice, and because we wanted it to be heard.

MP3.com is now gone. It vanished, and in my case, it vanished silently, and without a word. I was surprised to learn—upon attempting to order a batch of Distance to Jupiter CDs—that MP3.com had disappeared. What was left of it—and all the music of all the artists who ever used the service—was sold to CNET. What they do with our music remains to be seen (or heard, as the case may be).

UPDATE (3/30/2011): Amazon decides to place itself in the path of the RIAA asteroid...

Distance to Jupiter on Soundcloud

2011-02-21T12:17:00.042-07:00

Initiated in 1999, Distance to Jupiter is an experimental music project.

I've been using Soundcloud for about a month or so now, primarily as a way of prototyping new tracks. What does it mean to prototype a track? It's about perspective shifting, and Soundcloud bestows a form of objectivity when you're immersed in a project. Working on music can become a perplexing endeavor; it's similar to that effect which occurs when you stare at a single word (on a page, on a screen) for too long - it ceases to be that word, and starts to lose context and meaning and just becomes, well, weird. The same thing can happen to a track if you listen to it repeatedly. You lose critical perspective. Knowing that the work is "out there," however, almost instantly forces you to listen with different ears - the ears of an anonymous audience, either real or imagined. It resets the context. It restores meaning. Though my music doesn't get a lot of listens on Soundcloud, knowing that someone might be listening forces me into a more objective place and lets the music breathe again in my mind. Real imperfections are more readily perceived. Imagined imperfections dissipate. Though seemingly intangible, this is one of Soundcloud's great benefits, especially since my workflow is about immediacy and capturing instinctual, improvised "moments" (getting caught up in post-processing can ultimately become damaging to the music).

Update (April 17th, 2011): The album "Monstrous Fire" is complete:

Monstrous Fire by Distance to Jupiter

A note about track 2's evolution: it emerged swiftly, almost fully-formed, during a rainy, windswept winter day in Phoenix, Arizona (2/20/2011). The track's title relates to its inspiration - namely, The Hidden Reality by Brian Greene; I had just finished reading this book the night before, and that, coupled with attendance at the most recent Origins debate, had really pushed my mind into the deep end of the cosmos.

Synesthetic Response 5

2010-12-31T07:27:00.023-07:00

This is not review. This is response. 2010 is coming to an end, so here's three that have bent my time, altered my path, and changed my approach.

Agalloch :: Marrow of the Spirit
(2010, Profound Lore) [Genre: Metal]
Score: 11

I am almost speechless. After eleven long months, I have found my Album of the Year for 2010. Sometimes, a record comes along that makes you realize how lucky you are to still have your hearing. For me, Agalloch's Marrow of the Spirit is just such a record. It has, quite literally, blown my mind. I have been trapped in Agalloch's world of winter for a full week, six tracks on endless repeat; they are bleak, haunting and incredibly epic. And while many will comment at length about this bleakness, it is the performances here that are the key for me; they wrap you in a sustaining, protective warmth, generating a transcendental sphere which keeps you hovering in awed safety above the landscape. Hallucinatory guitar layers and mind-expanding structural flourishes dot this snow-covered expanse like meteorite fragments: cold, magnetic, blackened remnants from when the solar system was young. But then there are moments, like at 14:35 of track 4 ("Black Lake Nidstang") when that iceberg you were staring at suddenly explodes and Agalloch transports your mind to a place you never thought it could go. That track, "Black Lake Nidstang," is the most hypnotic piece of aural art I've heard in a long time. 17:34 blows by in an instant. It is filled with moments which seamlessly transition. It's the kind of song that widens your eyes as you listen to it; people might think you've lost your mind, sitting there on the train or bus, earbuds pulsing, your unblinking eyes lamely attempting to process the visual overflow of your mind. The whole album, however, is like that. Analog synths circulate in the foundation of these tracks; cellos haunt, Nature whispers, and the solar winds press further into space.

Wire :: Red Barked Tree
(2010, pinkflag) [Genre: Alt/Punk]
Score: 9

Wire are so clearly... Wire. I don't know how they keep doing this. And though I freely admit to being a hopeless Wire fanatic, that won't stop me from recommending this album to everyone. It is difficult to comment on Wire's new album without feeling a need to compare it to their prior work, but I don't think that's a particularly meaningful approach, since they have so many albums. I believe, however, that each subsequent Wire album amounts to a further distillation of what it is that makes Wire the band they are. There are familiar things here - shapes, sounds, textures, structures. Track to track, Colin Newman and Graham Lewis trade lead vocal duty, just like they always have. Newman's twisted style of "language delivery" is in full force, as is Lewis's knack for smoothly eviscerating whatever it is he's targeting (the first track "Please Take" is a wonderful example of this). Red Barked Tree contains DNA fragments from every Wire album. Because of this, the physical CD itself takes on the semblance of a tool for time travel; a shiny artifact from the future. I found myself reliving random moments from my Wire-infused past as I listened; but as these images coalesced in my mind, they were instantly intermingled with new possibilities, different outcomes. The last track "Red Barked Trees" left me reeling. I once had a dream of red trees, long ago (an aerial view of a forest; and near the center, a patch of red trees, inaccessible). There was something important about these trees, but it wasn't until I heard this track that I remembered the dream with further clarity. I don't know what the dream meant, and I am not sure it really matters. I have always suspected there is something more than just music going on with Wire (tapping into a collective unconscious?) and Red Barked Tree is extraordinary proof of that.

Rosetta :: A Determinism of Morality
(2010, Translation Loss) [Genre: Metal]
Score: 9

Something about Rosetta makes me think of deep space; of future points of demarcation from known societal constructs as the human species evolves and seeps outward to colonize distant planets. These 7 new tracks are monumental slabs, floating in an infinite, echoing cosmos; they grab you by the throat, shaking you into awareness with every searching bass note, every cascade of kick and snare and cymbal. The vocals are immersed in Rosetta's trademark hazy grandeur. And the guitars... things of aching beauty, haunting, piercing. These tracks lumber. These tracks gallop. And through it all, there is a seething intensity that I find irresistible. Unlike the tracks on Rosetta's Wake/Lift (2007) album, the tracks on A Determinism of Morality rarely feature cliff dive-like plunges into a crunching abyss. But the free-falling weight of these tracks, taking on much different structures than those on Wake/Lift, are more immediate. You can see their shapes a bit more clearly. But the title track - the album's closer - is 10:51 of abject power, beauty and unrelenting weight. It's like a spoonful of matter from a neutron star. And that's likely an understatement.

Additional recommendations for 2010...

Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross :: The Social Network
[Genre: Soundtrack]
Score: 10

Brian Eno :: Small Craft on a Milk Sea
[Genre: Electronic]
Score: 10

Daft Punk :: TRON: Legacy
[Genre: Soundtrack]
Score: 10

Zoroaster :: Matador
[Genre: Metal]
Score: 9

Hans Zimmer :: Inception
[Genre: Soundtrack]
Score: 9

Enslaved :: Axioma Ethica Odini
[Genre: Metal]
Score: 10

Just remember when you were small...

2010-12-08T11:08:00.002-07:00

re: John Lennon...

I was in front of the television. My dad and I were watching a Monday Night Football game. History indicates it was between the Miami Dolphins and the New England Patriots, but such details are not part of my memory. I remember only a game, bisected not by a normal half-time show, but by an ABC News bulletin: John Lennon had been shot and killed. I was only 13. I spent the later part of that evening listening to a few Beatles albums in my darkened room, with headphones, trying to imagine things would be the same.

Quitting the World of Warcraft

2010-12-07T17:15:00.011-07:00

Since November of 2006 I was a World of Warcraft player. Shortly after being admitted to the Beta for the Cataclysm expansion I simply quit playing.

I've had a lot of time to think about the reason(s) why, if any. It wasn't conscious. It was not something I had planned to do. I recall logging out one night. Then I never logged back in. A few weeks later, I removed my credit card information from my account.

World of Warcraft is an extraordinary experience, in general. Specifically, over time, it became a Groundhog Day-like nightmare. So in that spirit (e.g., the specific), here are some of the things I've discovered about why I quit playing World of Warcraft:

1. I was tired of feeling obligated. More so than in real life, WOW had ultimately become a series of endless obligations. For the uninitiated, that could include leveling up your character. Bound within that task are the quests. The professions. The battlegrounds. The auction house. The holiday events. Once you reach level cap (85), you'll be doing daily quests for gold or honor. You'll be raiding on a regular schedule. You'll be doing daily dungeon runs. If you don't do one or more of these things on any given day, its akin to traditional video gaming's "losing a life" event. You have a feeling of falling behind everyone else in the game world.

2. I was tired of feeling overwhelmed by needing to be somewhere that wasn't real, while in my home.

3. I was tired of the People (note the case). It wasn't a person or group that was the problem; I really did like all the people in my guild. I found myself internally grumbling about the fact that this video game required legions of other People to function properly. I've been playing video games since the Atari 2600 days. In fact, I'm old enough to recall when there were no video games. I'm part of the First Generation of Video Gamers - the ones who can recall going into some local pizza shop or convenience store and seeing a monolith-like black object called Pong had replaced an aging pinball machine. I guess what I'm saying is that I grew up with AI-based friends and enemies, and they are far more interesting to me than... People.

4. I was tired of raiding, and specifically, the absolute insanity that Blizzard decided constituted "fun" in this regard. It seems so insidious, on the surface, that to be the best you can be in WOW requires such insane levels of hand-eye coordination, coupled with the idea that to succeed, the 10 individuals in the raid had to become a single organism. One mistake by any one of the individuals usually resulted in disaster against a raid boss. The learning grind and chaos of reaching the Lich King in Icecrown Citadel was not rewarded, in the end. I was part of my guild's first 10-man group kill of the Lich King, and it was a profound anti-climax. The loot that Arthas dropped was instantly disenchanted. It was unusable. All we gained was the "Kingslayer" title to parade around with, yet the three months of work it took to complete the task was monumental in comparison. This left a very sour taste in my mouth. It was the single greatest disappointment I'd experienced in WOW.

Some part of me misses the daily fix of it all. But that's the craving one feels when one plays a decidedly good game. Forgive me the use of terms usually dropped in relation to addiction. I do not believe video games are addictive. Good games are replayable. Great games are compelling. World of Warcraft is a great game. For a while, anyway.

In the end, I have only a generalization to throw out there (one which no currently-immersed WOW player will agree with): happy people don't play WOW every day. I say that primarily because I discovered, a few weeks after quitting, that I was happier not playing WOW than when I was. In other words, I was unhappy while playing WOW, so I quit. Why did it take me so long to realize I was a gamer who was not enjoying the game?

So today is the day. The Cataclysm expansion for World of Warcraft is released. Is anyone really happy about that? That's a pretty big question, when you think about it. But unlike most World of Warcraft players, I know what I'll be missing by not playing: four more years of the same old crap.

The Profits of Apocalypse

2009-09-03T21:20:00.167-07:00

"The Profits of Apocalypse" is story #1 in a short fiction series called Hemegohm's Tendril which expands the narrative begun in the science fiction novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism (story #2 located here). It takes place approximately 33 years after the events of the novel. The tale unfolds during a lecture given at the League of Faiths Pavilion, where one of the novel's pervasively-present-yet-never-before-encountered characters, Pad Q. Glibbert, is addressing his constituents: the chief executive officers of all the galaxy's fractious, bizarre religious sects, shrewdly united under his leadership. In the crowd sits an aging Meinolf Gloomdred, prurient as always, and still quite enraged about Simon Shadow having slipped from his grasp so many years prior...

The origin of the phrase Hemegohm's Tendril is uncertain. It is believed to be of military origin, possibly coined in response to drug abuse among soldiers in off-world locales. Though its true meaning is still under debate, it is often applied to one of the known chronic side effects of the illicit drug Tigrizine (or Tigris), characterized by repeated sightings of spider-like creatures, generally thought to be hallucinatory in nature. Despite their tendency to worsen over time, such hallucinations or "invasions" usually acquire divine stature among those afflicted. The United Galactic Military has studied these psychic infestations, but their results are still highly classified. Though the World Order has banned the drug on Earth and quarantined the Tigris solar system, the substance's popularity has only increased since the trial of Simon Shadow in 2167.

From the entry Hemegohm's Tendril
Bendil Universal Encyclopedia

“There was at some point a first miracle. Some first occurrence of profitable circumstance. That is why we are in this business—this religion thing we do so well. That is why it is our right to make a profit—and to spread our ways across the frontiers, unifying and pacifying as we go.”

Pad Q. Glibbert’s eyes shone like tiny, piercing fires. The audience before him applauded; there were no other sounds, no swelling of voices—only a white noise of approval, wide, even and powerful. Around the perimeter of the hall, arms outstretched, cyclopean statues of gods and men supported the central dome of the League of Faiths Pavilion. Their hollow eyes gazed upward, and outward, through the dome's central oculus.

“Six thousand years ago,” Glibbert continued, “there was a man—a great man—a shaman, for lack of a better term. This man once faced his terrifed tribe in the midst of a drought. Besieged by a ceaseless swarm of questions, he took up his staff and spear and ascended a sacred mountain, determined to find the water his people needed to survive. But he was not just searching for water—he was searching for understanding. He wanted answers that would not come to humanity for many thousands of years—and in some strange way, I believe he sensed his place in the sequence of human ascension. He sought only to glimpse truth—not possess it, for he knew his life span was inadequate to deliver true understanding.”

“Today, as many of you now know, we have obtained that truth. We are the extension of that distant shaman—every one of us—but not wholly, for there is another side to this ancient story. I firmly believe that we are descended from this man’s rival—another shaman—who happened upon his own answer to the riddle of the drought. His weed-addled mind had been shown the most valuable thing of all—the power of endings—the power of apocalypse.”

The applause came again. Glibbert had stood before his constituents many times—had received dozens of such ovations—yet he knew it was merely decorum, interfering with his rhythm and the ultimate repetition of his message. He held up his hands to quiet them all, to dispense with this habitual response. The crowd, however, would not have it, and continued. Glibbert smiled and glanced to his right, where his assistant Vissoon stood off stage; the man grinned knowingly, shrugged, held up his hands in defeat and answerless pride. How could one silence a mob with a mere gesture? As the noise began to wane, Glibbert gave Vissoon an appreciative nod, and spoke:

“Think of it, my friends—an ancient shaman climbs a mountain, and is met only by the mystery of an arrow in his back. We know this man existed. His remains have been in a museum on Earth for many years now. The cause of his death is quite clear. Did this shaman have time to run? Did he even have the chance to face his attacker? I think not. His quest to save his people came to an abrupt end, as he tumbled headlong into a crevice, propelled by that crude arrow. Did he die for his people? Simpler folk would say as much, for in time, the rains came; but as the land came to life once more, that rival shaman, the one who fired the arrow, found his power had grown; he'd woven a mountainous tale of death into a sacred story, thereby altering the consciousness of his own tribe. From the mountains he discovered the power—and the logic—of human sacrifice.”

“And so the rains came,” declared Glibbert, his fist slamming into the podium’s edge. “Coincidence, of course—the most powerful force in human civilization; it is the true gift—the true mystery. It still drives us—ever onward. But look at us—we are all good citizens, are we not? We have built our churches with quality in mind, with comfort as our goal. Having escaped the womb of Earth, we now grow—and live to further ourselves. We are all pious—we put our faith in fickle coincidence so the masses don't have to, and the result is they bow down to us. So why shouldn’t we profit from that? Why do some characterize our great spiritual achievement as wrong? I assert that we are the saviors of our civilization. I believe that it is our right—now, and in the future—to reap the profits of the Great Experiment.”

Glibbert scanned the throng—now a roiling mass of approval. His eyes wandered along the front row; he recognized many faces, and smiled at a few, but most were new League of Faiths inductees—the latest yield of the Great Experiment, from colonies far and wide: Arch Fellows from the Western Edge sat harmoniously with Grand Magisters from the East; the seats adjoining theirs were taken by the Lord Rival Penchants of the Northern Frontier, and flanking them were the ever-patient Plaid Adventists from the Galactic South. Glibbert’s sense of timing dictated he continue, but a sudden succession of green flashes refracted across the podium’s surface, and then along the right side of his face, leaving irritating streaks within the confines of his eye; at that same moment, other similar flickers came from below, reflecting off the glittering vestments of the crowd.

Glibbert looked off stage for Vissoon but the man had vanished. This fact generated a moment of unease, but he rationalized that perhaps Vissoon had already taken action; his assistant had often done so in the past, when an unruly room had imperiled one of his speeches; of course, this was his crowd, these were his people. Why would they deliberately cause a disturbance? Breathing deeply, he considered the spectators in the vast upper balcony—the stoic, ever-watchful forms of the United Galactic Military. Had the flashes come from them? Some form of security sweep? Whereas in previous decades the presence of soldiers might have alarmed him, he now felt calm; things were different now between the League of Faiths and the UGM; they had reached stasis, and he was glad of it. He waited for the wave of applause to crash and dissipate before continuing.

“Our presence here, on the eve of the year 2200, is a symbolic gesture, more powerful than any of you can imagine. We represent a union of colonized worlds, held together by a profitable and expansive web. We are pushing the chaos of the faithless further away from the centers of old empires. When I first spoke before you, now over forty years ago, I was merely a guest speaker—one among many—promoting my book Religion for Fun and Profit. Some of you may have read it.”

Pockets of laughter—some of it savoring the statement as if it were the most sacred of in-jokes—could just be heard in the vast room.

“The people of the Galactic Societal Organism want answers, my friends. They don’t want to think. Answers are what we give to them. We know the truth—as do many others; but knowing the truth is a far cry from understanding it and applying it to one’s own existence. We are the caretakers of this vast body. We are indispensable. We are demigods among the backward—”

The green flash came again, stinging his right eye. Fear surged; he felt—pain? And there was now a dancing black spot within his eye—no matter where he looked, a dreadful circle of nothingness evaded his focus.

“I’m sorry, but—I’m having—I can’t—”

His agitation was showing, his hands shielding his eyes from the glare of the stage lighting; the crowd before him reacted. Heads were turning. Glances were uneasy.

Glibbert needed Vissoon, and he sighed, relieved, when he perceived movement on the stage; someone had stepped from the darkness. Peripherally, he could see the familiar patterns of Vissoon’s robe.

Imploring his assistant to join him, Glibbert felt awkward in the moment that followed. Vissoon remained still, as if turned to stone, his robe discolored—spattered with something dark. His face was lost within the shadow of his cowl.

Glibbert knew only confusion. “Gentlemen, forgive me,” he said to the crowd, “I seem to have a problem—”

The shimmering flare that came next surprised everyone in the room. Glibbert’s headless body slumped forward, colliding heavily with the podium.

Those who had, by coincidence, made eye contact with Glibbert just prior saw only an implosion—a noiseless, sterile, and savagely brief sinkhole in the fabric of reality. It had been directed, this negation; it had come from the other man standing on stage, and it had taken anything it touched with it—Pad Q. Glibbert’s head, a section of wall on the far side of the hall, and the life of an unfortunate pedestrian outside.

The assassin who wore Vissoon’s bloodied robe strode quietly forward, holding a dark weapon—and with a robotic turn, unleashed its power upon the dignitaries at the front, skipping merciless spheres of ruination across their numbers like stones on the surface of a lake. Heads imploded. Bodies collapsed. Limbs vanished. At the back of the room, great apertures were instantly punched through the walls.

Amid the resultant chaos, just behind the thirteenth row, Meinolf Gloomdred, Starless Magnate of the Unholy Mass, suddenly felt relief; his simmering resentment of the event planners who’d placed him so far back had dissipated as quickly as the bodies of those who’d been seated in the front row. Struggling to stand, his aged body failed him. Terrified people were pouring across the rows, and he was pushed to the floor, where his oversized, ceremonial phallus collided with his chin. The painful knock triggered a theatrical ejaculation sequence, and he found himself covered with a fragrant spattering of simulated semen. He sighed in irritation, gripping spastically at the spewing, metallic glans. His bony fingers could barely contain the flood. Powerless to correct the malfunction, he crouched, directing the discharge over his shoulder. He slowly made his way to the aisle.

Above the fray, a squad of soldiers were descending through the air from the upper balcony, guns ablaze. The stage, with its scene of decapitation, was ripped apart.

Somehow immune to the intersecting barrage, the assassin turned and transformed; the human shape shifted into a pattern, lenticular and sparkling—and then faded, leaving a spider-like construct of light in its wake. The podium was caught in the cross-fire, shattering, collapsing. The soldiers pounded onto the stage, their goggles affording a glimpse into every known spectrum; all that remained of their target was a tantalizing trace of gamma radiation, but it was moving, and it prompted another storm of gunfire, which shredded the expansive League of Faiths tapestry beyond. The soldiers quickly formed a barrier, their backs to the crowd. Behind them, the seating area was an undulating mass of destruction. Many lay dead, unrecognizable—their bodies neatly, bloodlessly carved into horrific new shapes. The medics, flooding the hall, quickly accepted there was little they could do; these were injuries of a nature never seen, from a weapon which no one—not even the soldiers—had ever considered. Great shafts of space now extended downward into the hall’s foundation, spewing gas and flame from ruptured power and sanitation lines.

The crowd continued its struggle to escape, pressing and pushing, trampling and snarling; and while most were trying to get out, one among them was stomping and clawing his way toward the stage.

“Out of my way,” Gloomdred demanded.

“Not now, Meinolf,” someone said, trying to get around him.

“Turn that fucking thing off,” said another, wiping the still-flying simulated semen from his face.

Gloomdred launched a foul gaze in as many directions as his neck would allow, but it was met with indifference, if met at all. He continued to fight against the flow, his malfunctioning phallus bestowing an unintended crowd-parting utility as it sprayed uncontrolled into the air. Eventually, he climbed the stairs to the stage, where the marines formed a porous barrier; most of them were still fixating on the area where the assassin had vanished, but one took notice of Gloomdred's arrival, leveling his weapon. Gloomdred's phallus was clacking now, its reservoir of fluid finally running dry. The soldier, bewildered, turned his attention back to the stage—to something that made a bit more sense, if only marginally. Encouraged, Gloomdred edged closer to the body of his headless mentor, Pad Q. Glibbert. The decapitation was clean, surgically precise, and the implications were vast. There would now be promotions—true advancements—within the League of Faiths. He had been overlooked in his later years for such positions, stigmatized, perhaps, for misdeeds that would now seem trivial. The League had been attacked, and it would, no doubt, need the kind of leadership he could provide. He’d been around—on the colonial forefront, on the rotting edge of open warfare—for years. He was supremely qualified.

To Gloomdred’s right, a team of technicians was examining an array of items left behind by the assassin, including the weapon itself; it was a pistol of obviously unknown origin and power. Gloomdred decided to get closer, within ear shot, perhaps to get his hands on the thing, but as he moved, something crunched under his heel. At his feet was a pouch—more evidence of the assassin's handiwork—shiny black, embroidered, spilling an array of tiny, crystalline tablets or pills. The technicians had seen his approach.

“Don’t move,” barked the lead, motioning to the rest of his team to intercept.

They swarmed around Gloomdred, pushing him carefully aside, their instruments probing, scanning. Within seconds the analysis was complete. "These are Tigris tablets. Exceptional purity."

When they flipped the pouch, Gloomdred gasped. The design on its face unleashed a flood of memories.

“Shadow!” he hissed, quite involuntarily. It precipitated a bombardment of questions from the technicians, but for Gloomdred, a familiar cast emerged: feelings of threat, of conflict, of defeat. He remained silent.

From stage right, another group of technicians had pulled the stripped body of Glibbert's assistant Vissoon from the shadows. The man's lifeless face was pale, drained of color. Gloomdred looked to those around him, and then back at the pouch. It was the Sacred Symbol of Delb—the sign of Simon Shadow's long-dead god—a farce. His fresh memory of the assassin, a hooded figure in a borrowed, bloodied robe, replayed itself in his mind. The gait of the figure, the height and build: had it been Shadow? The man had disappeared en route to prison, long ago, never to be recaptured. If it had been him, what had he become? Gloomdred took comfort from the fact that the assassin's first target had been Pad Q. Glibbert, suggesting, perhaps, that it wasn't Simon Shadow after all. Still, the theatricality of the kill—which he couldn't help admiring—sent a chill of paranoia down Gloomdred's spine. An old psychological scar suddenly tore itself open. Would the assassin come for him next?

“No, it's impossible,” he whispered.

“You know this?” asked the technician.

Gloomdred’s eyes traced it—concentric circles, stitched in silver, filled by a maze of interior parallel and perpendicular lines. How long had it been since he last saw it? Twenty years? Thirty? Perhaps more. Of all his memories, of all his failures, those of the colony called Reetar burned the brightest, lit in perpetuity by the planet's twin suns. His mind drifted to the past, to a time when he'd been a fugitive, hiding in a remote cave north of Reetar Colony. He realized that some part of him was still trapped there, surrounded by the artifices of the religion trade, hounded by visions of his failed vendetta against Simon Shadow.

“This symbol—please,” begged the technician. “What does it mean?”

Gloomdred looked away, trying to regain his calm. His thoughts of promotion—of renewed power within the League of Faiths—abandoned him. He needed to be alone. He needed to understand what he'd just witnessed and the meaning of the Shimmerite pouch. The weight of his wet robe seemed unbearable, and he quickly pulled the release cord on the phallus; it thumped to the floor, splashing, sending the technicians into a simultaneous back-step.

“Nothing,” said Gloomdred, his throat constricting around the word. “It means—nothing.”

Before anyone could ask for clarification he turned and hobbled away, desperate to escape. He didn't get far. With a quick nod from the lead technician, the marines descended and took Meinolf Gloomdred into custody.

Literary Vacuum: A Tremulous Light

2008-12-30T14:37:00.020-07:00

This article is part of an on-going series intended to clarify and expand upon elements of the novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism

The history of our species is littered with instances of colonialism. One of the earliest inspirations for The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism was the computer game M.U.L.E. by Ozark Softscape, published in 1983 for the Atari 800 personal computer. While nearly perfect in execution and tone, it was M.U.L.E.'s archetypal background theme that bestowed the game's true power. Primarily an echo of "colonization sci-fi" such as Robert A. Heinlein's Time Enough for Love, and Ray Bradbury's The Martian Chronicles, the game casts you in the role of a lone colonist trying to survive the economic uncertainties of colonial existence. In a typical game of M.U.L.E., bad things happened to good colonists; good things happened to those who didn't deserve it; you might go hungry in the wake of a pest attack on your food supply, while rival colonists hoarded food and let it rot, rather than sell it to you, lest you get ahead. By the end of the game, however, players often pulled themselves together for the greater good of the colony. A strong colony became a destination for traders, where all the colonists did well (a victory); a failed colony became a lonely place, on few, if any, trade routes (a loss).

Having played M.U.L.E. countless times, colonialism often resonated in my thoughts as I grew older; it created a lens through which I looked at the world. It became a catalyst for thought and a microcosmic mirror.

On our planet, the dominant form of life is microscopic. Bacteria and viruses may not truly be aware of our civilization, but they do shape it. They have colonized our species like we might colonize a planet. They dominate our bodies. They intervene in our behaviors, just as dominant human cultures exert political, economic, and cultural control over weaker human cultures. Unlike viruses or bacteria, however, our species has mastered the art of influence, both in terms of military power and economics. Where those two forces meet, you find the choking bacteria-like bloom of religion, thriving, spreading.

In The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism, the world's most powerful governmental systems have aligned themselves into a single entity, known as the World Order. The narrative's speculative premise is that our planet will be faced with an overpopulation crisis, made worse by runaway environmental degradation. In the face of this global crisis, a new ideology emerges that legitimizes an overt form of population control; the promise is societal cohesion and protection, but the World Order is steeped in religiosity. It is essentially a values-based system, and while scientific discoveries ultimately allow humanity to colonize distant planets, the World Order's will to control remains ascendant. Humanity submits to it through a form of natural selection (i.e., dissent equals death); though the World Order's corporate spirituality is riddled with incorrect causal associations and invasive dehumanizing practices, submission becomes essential for humanity's continued existence. To do otherwise risks our end.

Shimmerism, the fictional religion, is born on the fringe of the World Order, where its ability to control begins to fray. Shimmerism renounces the patternicity of bureaucracy in favor of the noise and chaos of free thought. Shimmerism sits in diametric opposition to the World Order and its tenets, and so it isn't really a religion at all. It is only cast in such a light because of the World Order's dominance. Survival of the fittest comes to the forefront; The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism is about what happens when harboring irrational beliefs becomes a survival strategy. It paints a picture of what the world would be like if modern religions actually got what they wanted: a timid, quivering civilization steeped in weird beliefs; a societal dead-end, where cause and effect are merely opinions; essentially, a world where humanity's evolved necessity to believe nonweird things is viewed more as a religion than not.

Literary Vacuum: Jettison the Onion

2008-06-30T16:00:00.038-07:00

This article is part of an on-going series intended to clarify and expand upon elements of the novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism.

Problem: When attempting to think one's way out of the wet paper bag of religion, unless you're hopelessly devout (in which case you'll stay in the bag), any given exit will be seen as an attack on the bag itself, and thus, against anyone who is religious.

Thus, we glimpse the terrible beauty of religion. Unbelievers, surrounded by the thoughtless undead (the intellectually complacent, e.g., believers), come to realize that the very act of thinking critically about a particular religion is interpreted as a form of discrimination. Of course, this has everything to do with the weakness of religious thought, which appears to be devoid of logic and reason; its rhetorical power, however, lies in its delivery of a comforting disconnection from the true mystery of the universe. Believers subscribe to a convenient origin story that absolves them from learning; it shields them from the fear associated with an uncaring, disinterested universe. Religion nullifies the sublime fact that no one currently alive will ever have all the answers, and it tells them "You know enough. There is no need to learn anything more." And that is all religious folk really want: an answer to everything, gift-wrapped, with ribbons held aloft by soothing cherubim. And so the believer is caught in an unwavering dance, maintaining a position of diametric opposition from the unbeliever. It's an easy maneuver. Where religion is moral, critical thought is not. Where religion is divine, and thus, infallible, reason and logic are unimportant and ignored (in that order). No debate. No discussion. Religion simply doesn't handle criticism very well. It's a black and white system, with no tolerance for shades of gray.

So given this abrasive societal fabric (and minus the problematic debate on how to tell if someone can actually think critically or not, wherein unbelievers leverage something called evidence to make a point, and believers reject evidence altogether), how could anyone hope to write a science fiction novel that views religion with an adverse eye? At least not without instantly being dismissed as either pointless by those gifted with an ability to think critically (unbelievers), or condemned by those who lack such an ability (believers)?

That was the question that drove the construction of The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism. There are so many layers:

Onion Peelings

The Universe is the Practical Joke of the General at the Expense of the Particular, quoth FRATER PERDURABO, and laughed.
But those disciples nearest to him wept, seeing the Universal Sorrow.
Those next to them laughed, seeing the Universal Joke.
Below these certain disciples wept.
Then certain laughed.
Others next wept.
Others next laughed.
Next others wept.
Next others laughed.
Last came those that wept because they could not see the Joke, and those that laughed lest they should be thought not to see the Joke, and thought it safe to act like FRATER PERDURABO.
But though FRATER PERDURABO laughed openly, He also at the same time wept secretly; and in Himself He neither laughed nor wept. Nor did He mean what He said.

- The Book of Lies, Aleister Crowley

On, off. One, zero. Odd, even. Binary. And in the end, the idea that mystery trumps any expression of itself. Words are inadequate. So the problem of writing a science fiction novel that deals with the evolution of religion became even greater. Ultimately, the safety net of structure became my refuge; structure is one of the great conceits of religious thought: that all of this has happened before, and will happen again, like a vast machine, chained to repetition. We are born in one state of spiritual alignment, and must spend our lives attempting to alter it, to save or better ourselves in the hereafter.

On the largest scale, The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism has many machines - cranes, if you will - and on those cranes are hung gods, like lights in a tree. Modern readers, or perhaps literary critics who can't get enough Aristotle, view the use of a deus ex machina ("god from a machine") with suspicion, even derision. I can see why. Such a device - the sudden appearance of an unlikely character or event that resolves a bad situation - can instantly dissipate the nebulous contract between reader and author, rendering the author as unreliable or untrustworthy. I have to admit, however, that a deus ex machina is great fun. And at least when writing about the foibles of religious thought, perfectly necessary and indispensable. The most important aspect of it all, however, is the machine itself. The crane. Simon Shadow, the main protagonist, moves through his tale as if fated to do so, despite his freedom. The United Galactic Marines Corps, orbiting the planet Reetar, exerts power over those below it, including Simon, literally and indirectly, accidentally and with hidden purpose. On the far side of the planet, the Children of Chearkin (a group of pious refugees suffering from an anachronistic hangover caused by their long transit to Reetar in hibernation), wander the desert, desperately seeking a fabled city of scripture. That they triumphantly reach the colony the moment it's destroyed has everything to do with the tension between fate (theological determinism) and free will.

Ultimately, The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism is about three distinct story threads unknowingly colliding; miraculous resolutions come to pass, but even greater problems manifest with gods and machines. In the end, nothing changes; lives are nothing more than programmed outcomes, and that's just how a majority of religions want it to be. Believers know what's to come; disbelievers do not. Why can't the former accept the latter? That's the question at the very heart of The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism. As far as I can tell, there's no answer, at least as long as religion plays such a monumental role in the lives of organisms on this planet. There was hope that people could laugh openly at these characters and situations, but at the same time perceive the innate sadness of it all. But like Crowley's onion, each successive layer (e.g., viewpoint) counteracts the next. Belief. Disbelief. Belief. So what do we find when we reach the core? I'm still not sure there is one. In fact, finding the center isn't important at all. The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism suggests our best option is to simply jettison the onion. Dump it in the airlock and move on as a species. As George Carlin would say: "I can dream, can't I?" And if I have to use a couple dozen deus ex machina moments to do so, that's no more (and a lot less) than religion has done for the past two thousand years.

Forecast: 212F, continued incompetence.

2008-06-25T11:00:00.014-07:00

Note: people and organizations have been rendered as anagrams.

PHOENIX - For-profit education provider Allpour Goop Inc. said Wednesday that President Bairn Mullere resigned and stepped down from the company's board, effective immediately.
...
Mullere, who has been with the company since 1987, was president of Allpour Goop, Inc. since early 2006. He was previously chief executive of the Phono Fixe University online campus. Allpour Goop did not disclose the reason for his departure.

I know the reason. Complete incompetence. Hopefully, a ripple effect will now wash away the rest of the greedy, talentless, overpaid egomaniacs who rose to power in Mullere's wake.

But where is Mullere going? Turns out it's Gonad Cranny University, with an aim to take them public. Perfect fit, too. Gonad Cranny University is one of the more notorious cesspits of nepotism and religious favoritism in Arizona. He'll fit right in.

Synesthetic Response 4

2008-04-11T10:25:00.029-07:00

This is not review. This is response. Three on the list today.

Genghis Tron :: Board Up the House
(2008, Relapse)
Score: 9

Picture this, if you can. The frenetic drill-and-bass (keyboards, glitches and all) of Aphex Twin colliding head-on with Meshuggah's mathematics; sprinkle the wreckage with a (possibly) unconscious nod to Faith No More's textures (I hear it, at least), let the boys in Boards of Canada add some analog color to it all, and then market it to people who dig Dillinger Escape Plan. The result? Board Up the House. Remember, I said "picture this." Don't let the above comparisons linger in your head for long. Genghis Tron have delivered a sublime treatise, manufactured in filth on the surface of a neutron star, using a million pounds of noxious compounds, and several billion gallons of water to polish its aural surfaces to a toxic shine. Everyone should make music like this, but not all of us have access to a clean room. The chaos, the horror, the beauty, the relentless assault, and the wickedly soothing ambient lulls... truly original, and absolutely vital.

Opeth :: Watershed
(2008, Roadrunner Records)
Score: 10

Opeth's latest is a vast slab of conceptual density. So great is its weight that it's quite remarkable how high this material soars. This album is your destiny if dark rooms, trippy visuals, and quality headphones are the staples of your music consumption habits. There is so much going on here, it is difficult to know where to begin. Or end. It is sufficient to say that these aching and powerful compositions are supremely listenable. These songs are the darkness, and the light, caught in opposition. The songwriting is breathtaking. There is brutality in the mix, but it is all part of the plan. Watershed is perfect, from start to finish.

Meshuggah :: Obzen
(2008, Nuclear Blast)
Score: 11

Recall: the rating system goes from 1-10, with 11 reserved. Nothing ever gets lower than an 8, since material rated as such is not the focus of these digital droppings (remember: the system is arguably meaningless). Still, an 11 is important. Thus we have Obzen, the latest from Meshuggah. Perhaps it is an unhealthy bias (or an obsessive veneration), but the relentlessly addictive complexity of this music forces my hand: Obzen is Album of the Year, 2008. Nothing can touch it. After dozens of listens, one may finally grok its structures and intentions, but thereafter, this staggering work of genius takes on a life of its own. How can anything so heavy, so obfuscating, be so soothing? There are no answers. All we have is mystery. Luckily, Meshuggah made a stop in Tempe a few months back. Though their set was far too brief, it was a bit like popping by your buddy Erich Zann's place, finding the door ajar, and peeking your head in at just the right moment, when a stained glass window turns into a rift between disparate dimensions and something comes through. Unforgettable. The album's last track "Dancers To A Discordant System" is the skeleton key. It recalls "Straws Pulled at Random" (from their earlier album Nothing) but passes even closer to the center of a distant galaxy. To restate: Album of the Year, 2008.

The Infested Hive

2008-02-21T09:56:00.024-07:00

Note: people and organizations have been rendered as anagrams.

In my corporate experiences over the last decade, I've discerned two basic types of "work environment." While some might accuse me of taking metaphors a bit too far, the imagery I'm about to employ has come to me via the medium of my dreams and, of course, my nightmares. I have processed my experiences through symbols, and I know them to be true (or at least valid in their metaphorical intent). I am not disgruntled, but I am horrified. I am filled with remorse that this is what our society has created, and that once great places of work have been turned into wage slavery camps.

I will state that I have been working in the graphic- and Web design realm for the last decade, and this is important in only one regard: I have never held a position of rank or power in these environments (e.g., I never managed other people). My role has largely been that of the expert, perpetually honing a skill; for me, work has always been about doing work, about being creative, as opposed to getting paid well to do nothing (e.g., managing other people).

That said, I'll begin with a description of the more positive of the two work environments. First up...

The Hive

While for some people this might conjure images out of the Alien films, or killer bees, I'm thinking more along the lines of honey bees. You know, our little friends who are responsible for a majority of the fruits and vegetables we eat. In the Hive work environment, individuals exhibit largely autonomous behavior, which is informed by notions of success or failure for the larger business. In this work environment, experts are allowed to be experts. Control over individuals is not essential, since control destroys productivity and the creative impulse. A tolerance for a lack of cohesion is what is important in a Hive. A Hive's shape can stretch and skew, bend and warp, yet the whole remains intact, functional.

I've worked in the Hive model before, and it is generally rewarding; stress levels rise and fall. Pressures increase and dissipate. People laugh. People complain. People form loose meta-hives to focus their collective skills to solve problems. None of it is rooted in cut-throat strategies or the themes of survival and competition. Is the Hive perfect? Perhaps not. Whole areas of the Hive can often be so out of touch with the central authority that they risk being cut off from the main, their worth forgotten in the wake of efficiency; however, individuality is often rewarded. A good Hive lets the workers themselves elevate its members. It is less about some abstract layer of management deciding someone has done a good job, and more about one's peers honoring the fact that you make their jobs easier. Admittedly, this is an idealized view of the Hive, but for the most part, it can and does exist. It's out there. Yet, similar to the plight of the honey bees, the Hive work environment seems to be in danger. Which brings me to the Hive's antithesis...

The Infestation

In this work environment, workers are parasites, attached to a money-dispensing host. Daily routine is based solely on the necessities of the environment: dishonesty and greed are the order of the day. Loyalties are bought via unwarranted promotions or secret wage increases. Relationships between people do not actually exist.

Am I exaggerating?

I watched in horror, a few years ago, as an Infestation consumed the Hive I worked in. I have written about this elsewhere, so I won't go into details, but the reality is this: the Infestation does not care about the individuals that make up the whole. The Infestation does not care about the host that it infests. The host, in fact, does not even know it is infested. Perhaps it is something the Infestation injects into the bloodstream of the company? A foul toxin of anesthetizing promises? The Infestation values contractors over full-time employees. The Infestation rewards incompetence because it is, itself, founded on incompetence. The individuals that comprise it are overpaid and lack talent. The Infestation gets things done by brute force. Throw a pile of twitching greedy organisms at a problem, and it either goes away or it gets solved.

A Scene from an Infestation

Every few weeks, the "Master Recruiter" from an IT staffing agency would show up, two dozen bagels in hand. He'd place the bagels on a shelf in one of the hallways. He'd give the sign, and an administrative assistant would send out an alert email: "Tom has brought bagels and cream cheese. They're in the usual spot."

I often made sure I was there before the announcement was made, if only to ensure a good vantage point. It was like watching wildlife from behind a blind.

A flood of people would soon appear. The Mass, I called it. My co-workers, silent; fifty people, shuffling into view. The only sounds were those of bagel packages and cream cheese being opened; plastic forks and knives clacking. No one spoke. No one laughed. Bagel obtained, they'd return to their cubes to put their sucking mouths back onto the Money Teat. Most of the Mass left empty-handed. The symbolism was powerful: play the game. Compete and you eat. There were only twenty-four bagels, recall. Twenty-six if the baker was happy. Twenty-six bagels for a floor of at least two hundred workers?

I witnessed this event many times over the last year, and I was always astonished by the dire faces and total lack of social interaction within the Mass. It was like watching exotic foreign fish being fed, trapped behind glass. Joyless and starved. Owned and observed. The only thing of value to the people who willingly participate in the Infestation is the blood of the corporation - the money. And the upsetting part is that the people that perpetuate this kind of work environment can't see it for what it truly is.

The Origin?

It saddens me that a company like Allpour Goop, Inc. would be unaware that the IT shop affixed to its underbelly is nothing more than a seething mass of greedy parasites, contradicting the very mission the company was founded upon. Do the Phono Fixe University students currently enrolled in the Information Technology program know what lies ahead of them? Or, chillingly, is the Phono Fixe University itself the problem? Has the for-profit education system spawned the monstrous mass that destroyed its once great IT shop? Is the Phono Fixe University partly responsible for the Infestation?

Las Plagas and Allpour Goop, Inc.

2008-01-23T11:11:00.006-07:00

Note: people and organizations have been rendered as anagrams.

Las Plagas ("The Plagues" in Spanish) are a breed of parasitic organisms from the Resident Evil 4 survival horror video game. They are currently masquerading as CEO, CIO, directors, managers, usability experts and web designers at Allpour Goop, Inc.

But I'm getting ahead of myself.

As a shareholder (and as a former employee of more than six years), I find myself incapable of not commenting on the ripple effect of novice CEO Bairn Mullere's black/white “coaching style” of thought, and what it brought to those of us working down in the trenches (or, down on the hardwood, to use a metaphor he might understand).

I should clarify that there were once two distinct IT shops, each serving a different company. One served Allpour Goop, Inc. (the parent company of Phono Fixe University) and the other served the Phono Fixe University's spin-off Phono Fixe University Online (a separate company). It should also be noted that eventually PFU and PFU Online recombined and became the same company once more, which meant that the two IT shops were merged as well; the fact remained, however, that the division between these two IT shops was palpable. Their methods differed dramatically. In early 2006, the original Allpour IT shop was destroyed in a hostile takeover by the Online IT department, with the support of Bairn Mullere. Everyone in Allpour IT, from the CIO on down to the management layer, was removed and replaced; just prior to this reorganization, a barrage of promotions took place in Online IT. After the takeover, those of us who remained in the wreckage of Allpour IT were forced to align ourselves with new masters, many of whom had been our distant subordinates or peers only hours before.

The unethical specifics beyond this point are not truly important. What I would like to consider, therefore, is how the differences between these two IT groups first defined, and then redefined (for me, at least), the notion of "career" at Allpour Goop, Inc..

As a Web designer for Allpour Goop, Inc., I have two very distinct experiences of the management methods used in the two IT groups. I can summarize these experiences by using a single question, but rephrasing it to match the dominant outlook of each organization.

So imagine you're a dedicated employee; you've completed all manner of projects, received awards from various business units, and you're confident that there is room to grow within the company. Imagine that you actually care about your projects.

In the former Allpour IT (where I spent four years), the question asked of me during a performance evaluation was simple: "What have you done for us this past year?" And while it didn't always sound this way, or use these particular words, the question itself flows from the emphasis that Allpour IT placed on professional development for its employees. It placed the positive before the negative, and was aimed squarely at retention.

Post-takeover, in the new Allpour IT, the question became “What have you done for me lately?” This revised question flows from an emphasis on the negative, and is rooted in the concept of the performance-based work environment (e.g., a single negative trumps any and all positives). It's right off the sports page, and has nothing to do with careers or retention.

Notice how the language has changed, rooted in the carefree arrogance and self-obsession of the Incompetent ("what have you done for me"); this approach to the individual employee flows, to some degree, from Bairn Mullere's sports-centric view of the company as some sort of gigantic basketball game.

In my own experience, the “me” in the question was the inept manager or director (or in sporting terms, the team captain). In turn, managers and directors were asked the very same question by their superior, the puppet CIO (the assistant coach), who was then similarly queried by the CEO (the head coach).

Since I hate basketball, I'll use hockey (a far more interesting sport) to summarize what this means: as a player, I may have scored 2 goals and had three assists the game before last, but since I’m judged to only be as good as my last game, wherein I happened to have been held off the score sheet, the prior five point night counts for nothing; next game, I find myself at the end of the bench and given limited ice-time. When contract talks come around, I'm told I won't be getting a salary increase because of "gaps" in my on-ice performance.

Thus, in the new Allpour IT, full-time employees essentially became anathema to the system, since they can't be forced to work 70 hour weeks, and they are almost impossible to get rid of. They take vacations, they call in sick, and they have benefits! Each one of these is a negative. And all it takes, apparently, is a single negative, and your career is over.

The idea of having a “career” in the new Allpour IT is an impossibility. Which is why 98% of Allpour IT is now made up of contract employees. Contractors are easy to dump back to the minors (the staffing firms) when they don’t put in 16 hour days. Allpour IT, while coached by Bairn Mullere and his All-Star Team of Incompetents, has been transformed into a white-collar sweat-shop. For a company that often takes pride in affecting its customer's lives positively, the reality behind the key-carded doors of the company is in diametric opposition.

It's time to view the Incompetent at Allpour IT as what they truly are: parasites, destroying their host. The Las Plagas are among us. Bairn Mullere's coaching-oriented approach to management was dead on arrival in my view, and if you aspire to management, I hope you never resort to such a system. It shouldn't happen. Anywhere. Not even in Resident Evil.

Literary Vacuum: Religion in Science Fiction

2007-10-23T11:01:00.015-07:00

This article is part of an on-going series intended to clarify and expand upon elements of the novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism.

The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism is a complex speculation on what will constitute the religious experience in the year 2167. It extrapolates on current trends, some of which have actually come to pass ("megachurch") and posits others that hopefully will never manifest. Religion as a topic, especially in science fiction, represents a massive philosophical challenge. In my view, religion can and will take on any form over time (primarily because of its wholly human origins). Before someone takes issue with this statement, let me clarify the foundation of that stance: I accept that true divinity (whatever that may be) is beyond words. It is beyond expression. The most astute religious thinkers in our time accept that organized religion is, by definition, incomplete; the modern experience of "the divine" merely gestures toward an overarching mystery, while cementing the adherent in place with familiar concepts and visualizations (both metaphorical and physical, e.g., god-of-your-choice dashboard figurines, lenticular saints with eyes that follow the follower, the retardation of "Christian metal" as a music genre, etc).

My view is that true religious experience is something completely inward, and has nothing to do with groups, churches, or society (spirituality in group form is neither spiritual nor truly religious within the pages of The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism). In my own experience, the only thing I can liken "true divinity" to is the experience of love. And I don't mean puppy love or love at first sight or something Lennon sang about. I mean the kind of transcendent place that two people can find themselves in that generates an output that is more than the sum of its inputs. Admittedly, this is rooted in my own understanding of pair-bonding, but if you've experienced this (a marriage that really works, for instance), you'll understand. If not, don't take issue. My point here is not to debate true divinity. I felt I needed to clarify certain positions in an effort to support what comes next.

Though a satire, The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism deals with the following ideas: the clash of evolved (or derived) philosophies; the future potentialities - both positive and negative - of highly synthesized drugs; and ultimately, the transcendence of the limitations of human sense perception (the five senses) and the impact of what may lie “beyond.”

You can see how these topics dovetail with age-old religious concepts, both in the traditional sense, and the shamanic. The conflicts in the narrative flow from religion's use as an engine of commerce and galactic expansion in the year 2167. Religion is so infinitely splintered in the future, that it has become much like the way people in our current society get their news: from a source that solely supports their world view. Of course, being a satire, the protagonist (Simon Shadow) is clearly an anti-hero, and some horrible things happen both to him, and to those around him. No one world view can become dominant within the construct of the society in 2167. Society itself (ruled by the "World Order" in the novel) acts as the engine that allows the infinity of religious experience to begin with, and it is all rigorously controlled; it is authoritarian and very governmental. This speculation points to the evil of corporations, themselves abstract entities existing solely to maximize profits and minimize responsibility to the individual (thank you, Ambrose Bierce). In his book Why Religion Matters, religious scholar Huston Smith leveraged the idea that religion, or the religious experience, is shaped within a tunnel of "influences." Imagine one wall is occupied by the media. Imagine the other walls represent education, law, and science. As religion passes through this tunnel, it is transformed by these forces. In The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism, I speculate on the evolution of such a structure. Instead of media, law, education, and science forming the walls of the tunnel, with religion passing through, it is the individual who moves towards the light at the end, surrounded by religion, business, law, and politics (science being innate to the individual). Those four forces comprise what I have termed the "World Order" - which essentially ascends to total societal control in the face of global crisis.

Religion in science fiction is not as common as you would think. When it appears, it is often used as a broad stroke in the background, but religion as a primary theme does occur. Think of the philosophical underpinnings of Frank Herbert's Dune series, or of how religion is presented in some of Robert Heinlein's work. To really take on the topic in a singular way is rare (a good example is Walter M. Miller Jr's A Canticle for Leibowitz). This might have more to do with the fact that if not done properly, dealing with religion in a novel is tedious for the reader. Finding yourself mired in a miasma of fictional spirituality is no different that being a human alive in the 21st century, surrounded by religions of every flavor, all in direct competition with each other. Religions often lack a true connection to modern societies; and being abstractions of an ineffable experience (e.g., the experience of the divine), they exist as anachronisms. As a subject for a writer to take on, however, religion can be overwhelming. The writer inevitably asks "What do I really know about this?" (as a cosmicist, it certainly weighed heavily on me). What I came to realize was that the question itself is a very natural response to the varieties of religious experience within all societies, both modern and ancient. The awareness of a multitude of axioms, scattered like puzzle pieces on the living room floor of every society, quickly overwhelms. It can make the writer feel as if they are not truly informed - as if they do not know enough to write with authority. Writers are often told to "write what you know" - so how can anyone write with any semblance of fairness about a topic so vast, so ancient, and so wholly convoluted? In my case, though I started the novel in 1989, it was not finished until 2001. I spent a majority of that time reading books on the topic, and talking to people of different faiths (admittedly, when I encountered them naturally, in the wild).

Ultimately, my solution was to take a page from religion's play book. To deal effectively with religion in science fiction I was forced to embrace what religion does best, in the broadest sense: mystery. As you approach an experience of the divine it just seems to accelerate away from you; there are no answers. Unfortunately, by claiming, as most modern religions do, that they have all the answers, mystery itself is trumped, and thus, wholly wasted. In writing The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism, mystery had to retain its power, so I planted it within the fertile (and draconian) policies of the World Order. Religion in the year 2167 has been transformed into an incomprehensible engine of commerce. It is against this backdrop that the speculative power of science fiction can go to work; embracing mystery absolves readers from the frustration of trying to acclimate to yet another incomplete approach to the divine, and lets them focus on the story itself.

Literary Vacuum: Symbolic Anachronism

2007-10-18T12:08:00.012-07:00

This article is part of an on-going series intended to clarify and expand upon elements of the novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism.

Many of the characters in this novel are forced, out of necessity, to use a form of public communication terminal (e.g., a pay phone) to communicate, but the concept itself seems very anachronistic for the year 2167. Recently, I re-read Frederik Pohl's novel Gateway; he won some major awards for this one, and understandably so. The narrative is a juggernaut. The very premise itself is enough to push you to the next page (prospectors taking potentially one-way rides into deep space in misunderstood alien star-ships, with the promise of untold wealth should the ship manage to make it back to the Gateway artifact); but when you read this novel now, you find references to magnetic storage media; to cassette decks and "books on tape." While in 1976 this idea simply blended in, a modern reader finds it highly anachronistic. Here you have a story taking place far in Earth's future, yet you find references to decidedly "ancient" technology by 2007's standards.

The novel The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism is like a recursive parable. There are many symbols in play. When I first started writing, I found myself perpetually frustrated by prevailing science fiction concepts, foremost among them all, the idea of the "communicator" (think Star Trek). Back in 1989, pervasive cell phone usage was nonexistent. There wasn't even a market. Even so, in terms of constructing a story, the concept of instantaneous personal communication was having a limiting effect on dramatic tension. If the police, for instance, were merely a simple call way, the writerly hoops I was forced to jump through to create tension became unwieldy. To use an example from a different medium, I find myself cringing when a film's director is compelled to show me an extreme closeup of the protagonist's phone's "no bars" display.

So I took Simon Shadow's communicator away. I got rid of the communication satellites ringing this new planet. I put him in a wilderness, which was appropriate for the story itself. These characters, whether on the planet's surface or in orbiting battleships, are all living on a frontier. Furthermore, the planet they have left behind was one of such profound religious control (both of thought, action, and expression) that it seemed reasonable that there might also be a limiting of the individual's ability to communicate, even in a distant colony. On an overpopulated Earth, in the year 2167, life is controlled. On the periphery of human expansion, however, the symptoms of this control are still evident. People have moved beyond the solar system, but they are still citizens of Earth. They are living in a controlled variation of the society that they've left behind; such is the power of the World Order, the worldwide theocratic construct that has risen to dominate a besieged population. When Simon Shadow is taken to the desert to die at the hand's of his oppressors, he can't call for help. Public terminals used for communication litter the colony, but in the deep desert, he is alone, and the ability to communicate is out of reach. Even if he had a way to call for help, the colony police force is merely an extension of the World Order's will, intended solely to protect the business of religion.

The effect of this concept on the reader, however, is debatable. I am not sure if this hurts the narrative or improves it, or if it simply exists in a mutable, ever-changing "sphere of anachronism." The concept is powerful, however. Jumping back to films, recall the image of Mia Farrow hiding in a phone booth in Rosemary's Baby, paranoid, terrified, desperate to make contact with her doctor. The power of that scene is negated in modern society, where six-year-olds have calling plans. The onus is now on writers to craft equivalents of such tension. It is difficult, however, when the default is to show the closeup of "no bars." In The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism, an indirect form of tension is achieved by limiting the characters ability to communicate. The prevalence of public communication devices also suggests that the World Order may, in fact, be watching, even across the light years. Does it feel anachronistic? It does. But it is also symbolic, and within The Rise and Fall of Shimmerism, anachronism itself is a symbol. The suggestion is that religion, in all of its forms, when placed within the context of a modern society, is wholly anachronistic.

Synesthetic Response 3

2007-06-26T07:31:00.008-07:00

This is not review. This is response. Quite a bit of extraordinary material in the last few months. Also, the debut of a completely subjective (and therefore arguably meaningless) rating system: 1-10, 10 being the highest, with 11 reserved, no decimals, and you'll never see anything below 8; the ratings 1-7 are reserved for everything that isn't written about here.

Neurosis :: Given to the Rising
(2007, Neurot Recordings)
Score: 10

Unconscious and pervasive veneration of this work will be its legacy. It will influence all who hear it, whether they know it or not. Similar to Tool's 10,000 Days, or Meshuggah's Catch Thirtythr33, I find myself listening to Given to the Rising on constant loop (iPod stats are consistent and alarming: 37 on the play count for each track; nothing else has touched my ears for the last week). Beginning to end, the scope of the album is cyclopean. I'll leave it to others to talk about the history of Neurosis (for they can do it better than I). Their use of quiet/massive is in ascension here, refined in a way that sends the mind voyaging, soaring over ancient battlefields on a distant planet. Each track, epic in length and always interesting, features some of the finest "set pieces" I have ever heard: the haunting ambient intros; the aching analog psychology of the title track's quiet passages, or the chilling throat-clenching vocal of Into The Wind which literally detonates 5:31 in. Album of the Year for 2007 - but not on this planet, sadly.

Skinny Puppy :: Mythmaker
(2007, Synthetic Symphony)
Score: 8

Following up the brilliance of their prior album (The Greater Wrong of the Right) was always going to be difficult; that said, Skinny Puppy delivers another sonic masterclass of structure and chaos with Mythmaker. The mix is superb, the complexity of the electronics is awe-inspiring, and the overall effect stays true to the new direction that Skinny Puppy are pioneering. Having returned from a very dark place, this music is vital and the lyrics are important. This is an album for the iTunes visualizer + headphone crowd; a work of endless discovery. The complexity may seem overpowering, but the result is a work that grows in stature with every listen.

Nine Inch Nails :: Year Zero
(2007, Nothing Records)
Score: 9

Dark (so dark), digital and the most electronic NIN work to date, Reznor seems to have taken cues from the pantheon of electro-gods (RDJ?) and rendered a grim message; it comes from the disturbing future that many of this country's drones are currently participating in ("drones" being those people who will never read these words, nor hear any of the music described herein). In This Twilight is simply one of the finest tracks NIN has ever recorded (positioned at #15 in the sequence of 16 tracks, it has the effect of propelling you into listening to the whole album once more, if only to get back to track 15). A call to action for those who consider themselves rational, Year Zero is the most important artistic statement of 2007, and perhaps the decade. 75% (possibly more) of Reznor's speculative tale is already with us. Though it feels like science fiction, it isn't. Just listen, and look around.

Githead :: Art Pop
(2007, Swim)
Score: 8

I'm a hardcore Wire fanatic, so Colin Newman's (the vocalist for Wire) new band Githead is filling the void left by the fact that Wire can't be Wire for 365 days a year (though I get the distinct sense that something is gestating and thus looming on the Wire horizon). Art Pop is very much a progression from Githead's last outing Profile, and it is just as good. I find myself at a loss to describe this music, other than to say it is a sort of proto-pop, the well from which all pop music might have come, the aural fountain that was once hidden but which is now revealed. But this is artful, intricate, playful and decidedly thought-provoking. Which means it isn't pop music, right? I'm convinced that most of the lyrics have been cobbled together by an algorithm that pulls phrases out of the collective hive-mind of the Internet. Or it could just be Newman's penchant for exploring language ("I'm forgetting to remember / I'm remembering to forget"). Whatever Githead is, they have now proven themselves to be completely necessary.

Crushed :: My Machine
(2007, No Relief Records)
Score: 8

Crushed's new disc My Machine is a seemingly natural hybrid of Gothic subversion and the power of metal. While that may be hard to visualize, the guys in Crushed are perfectionists. You can sense it. They are musicians of the highest order, and it shows. With a massive following here in my home town, I admit to being slightly biased (you may recall guitarist/keyboardist Harry McCaleb's name in the acknowledgments section of my science fiction novel). Bias aside, Crushed have it. They know how to write music; they know how to craft a song. There is an infectious thread that runs from start to finish, warping, twisting and snaring you with hooks of rare power. What Kind of Love is the perfect track to begin the journey of My Machine; you'll spend a few listens getting to know this band, but then the album takes off; it possesses almost limitless replay value. If you've seen Crushed live, you'll appreciate the fact that Mike Clink's production captures Mark Lauer's stunning voice with absolute ease (Clink has worked with Guns N' Roses, Megadeth ,UFO... to name but .001% of his work).

Jesu :: Conqueror
(2007, Hydra Head)
Score: 8

Like the incomprehensible nano-matter of the Kalabi-Yau spaces of string theory, Justin Broadrick's latest Jesu album seems to inhabit one of the "higher dimensions" of the very fabric of the metal universe. While I have used the term meta-metal to describe this work, I only do so because of my fondness for Broadrick's past (namely, his band Godflesh). Think about this: there are people buying this album who may know nothing of Godflesh. For me, Broadrick's latest work is informed by his past; knowing where he's come from is what makes listening to Conqueror such a deep experience. Despite the lack of soaring emotional content that seemed to be a staple of the first two discs, this is still a work of resolute power and ethereal wandering.

Synesthetic Response 2

2006-10-31T20:26:00.007-07:00

This is not review. This is response. The best night of the year has been made better by two things.

ISIS: In the Absence of Truth
(2006, Ipecac Recordings)
Score: 9

"Nothing is true, everything is permitted" is the subtitle to the new document from ISIS. After watching them battle Tool to a draw at Cricket back in September, we knew Great Sonic Things were looming, and now In the Absence of Truth is here... and it is deep. In fact, I'd wager it's one of the deepest albums ever recorded. It is the Great Wall of Sound. It is the Seventh Layer of Complexity. It is one million miles from Earth, neuro-modded and floating at L2. Be ready. This preternatural album will consume you. You will see in infrared.

Meshuggah: Nothing
(2006, Nuclear Blast)
Score: 9

What better album to listen to on Halloween? This is a "reissue" or perhaps a "remaster" or... possibly an artifact from some parallel time stream. With entirely new guitar tracks and adjusted tempos, Meshuggah has gone back in time to correct an error only a perfectionist could perceive. Nothing is the album they wanted to release, back in 2002. Causality violations aside, this is a staggering snapshot of the future of Mind. This is mathematics melding with the boiling metallic core of Jupiter. I'm at a loss, in fact, to truly describe the mechanized grandeur and power of this work. If you need a familiar reference, think of this as the prequel to 2005's Catch Thirtythr33. Singular and astonishing, Meshuggah is like no other band on the planet.

You see... this means everything to me.

2006-08-22T23:51:00.001-07:00

Just got back from seeing Gary Numan at Martini Ranch in Scottsdale, AZ... an astonishing performance! The material from Jagged was rendered with supreme ease, and the power of the music was on display in ways I've not previously experienced. Analog veils of piercing sound washed over the crowd - controlled and powerful. Are 'Friends' Electric? was the most extraordinary version I've yet seen Numan perform. It seemed to be a summary, of sorts. As he spoke during the interlude, the sweeping gesture he made, to his band and to us, was a summation of 25 years of mind-blowing sonic vistas. "You see," he said, "this means everything to me."

The set:

1. Intro
2. Pressure
3. RIP
4. Metal
5. Halo
6. Films
7. Slave
8. Down in the Park
9. Jagged
10. Are 'Friends' Electric?
11. In a Dark Place
12. Pure
13. Haunted
14. Prayer for the Unborn
15. Cars
16. Dark
17. Blind

DS = Dual Sexy

2006-06-13T14:00:00.001-07:00

On Sunday, June 11th, I picked up my Nintendo DS Lite. I think the 'S' in 'DS' might now stand for sexy. I don't often apply that term to hardware, but it certainly applies here. The default brightness level of the DS Lite is actually twice the brightness of the original unit's highest setting, and thus, warrants immediate purchase. It is curious to note that I now regret trading in various DS titles over the last few years, because no matter what you slot into the DS Lite, it seems like an entirely new gaming experience. Even venerable favorites like Advance Wars: Dual Strike seem tantalizingly refreshed. Then there are titles like Electroplankton. If you haven't already special-ordered this directly from Nintendo yet, please do so. The DS Lite's new brightness levels transform the title into a stunningly psychedelic experience. If you've ever sat in a dark room with Electroplankton fed into a hi-fi, you'll understand what I'm getting at. Those you're performing for will thank you too. Trust me.

Synesthetic Response 1

2006-04-29T14:38:00.007-07:00

This is not review. This is response. Some of the bits below (impressions for albums from 2004) were rescued from an online forum where they were originally posted.

Tool :: 10,000 Days
(2006, Volcano)
Score: 10

We have all waited - and at last, the long emptiness is over. Tool's 10,000 Days is beyond comprehension. Having listened now over 20 times, I am still coming to grips with what Tool have bestowed upon us. The listener could get lost in the packaging itself (stereoscopic goggles are built-in) before the disc even starts. But once those first notes manifest... the story that Tool tells us is powerful, complete, unending and inscrutable. 10,000 Days is an album of unspeakable aural complexity. Astonishing vocals, hypnotic drumming, and guitar and bass work of the rarest quality. You will perceive things via headphones that can't be perceived in any other way. The album overflows with recursive details. The last third is a miracle of mood, a spiraling maelstrom of ideas and places. Right in Two is (possibly) the finest track Tool has ever recorded. Evidence of evolution. Onion peelings. The Great Beast returns. Recommendation: invest in some real headphones. This album is worth it.

Killing Joke :: Hosannas from the Basements of Hell
(2006, Cooking Vinyl)
Score: 8

Killing Joke has always had the injustices of the world in its cross-hairs, setting fire to society's greed-infused surfaces through Jaz Coleman's flame-thrower-like lyrics and vocals. On Hosannas from the Basements of Hell, Coleman is as powerful as at any moment in the band's history, but the difference this time is one of elevation. Killing Joke have gone underground - and they are tunneling at a frenetic pace. Much has been made of the ancient labyrinth of cellars in Prague where the band recorded, and the music seems to emerge from below; it echoes of the pit and instead of fire, Killing Joke is eroding the very foundations of its targets with a sonic assault. These tracks are laced with power and repetition, akin to some of Killing Joke's finest musical moments. Geordie's guitars are vital, alive, and Paul Raven's bass lines stab from the darkness. Coleman's masterful contributions on keyboard give some of the tracks a truly cinematic feel (the orchestral aspects of Invocation are mind-blowing).

Jesu :: Silver
(2006, Hydra Head)
Score: 9

It's been a while - too long, in fact, since Jesu released Jesu (or S/T, for self-titled?) in 2004 (for more on this album, scroll down a bit). Now Justin K. Broadrick has returned with Silver, and this four track EP is one of the finest pieces of modern meta-metal that I've ever heard. While Broadrick has described it as "perfect for drifting off and smoking too much dope" (he's got that right), Silver finds the overt menace and distortion of Jesu's last release toned down a bit; if the first album kept one rooted to the ground, wrapped in an ethereal battle between light and dark, Silver lets us fly into the neuro-sphere that lies between. There is a new brightness here, but the epic structure that Jesu is so fond of persists. Broadrick's vocals are filled with a distant yearning, yet they never take precedence over the music itself, which is consistent, driven, mysterious and satisfying.

Gary Numan :: Jagged
(2006, Metropolis Records)
Score: 10

Numan's new disc Jagged is an astonishing return, steeped in a well of electronic sounds that we haven't meaningfully heard since 1981's The Pleasure Principle. Numan has always had a knack for the epic - generating great analog veils of synth that send the mind into deep space. Numan is not repeating himself, however. His new tracks are given power by the past, fueled by the journey that Numan fans have been on for over 20+ years. Numan's lyrics are as thought-provoking as ever. Jagged is easily his best album of the new millennium.

ISIS :: Panopticon
(2004, Ipecac Recordings)
Score: 9

This is mesmerizing, down-tempo metal with a real wall-of-sound approach. Songs typically start slow, with some great melodic structure, and suddenly you find yourself overwhelmed with heavy, powerful guitars... like the sudden crash of a wave on the shore. I'm not surprised that ISIS toured with Jesu (Justin K. Broadrick's post-Godflesh experiment), but while Jesu is clearly the more distorted of the two bands (and the far deeper experience), ISIS are doing something wholly original. The vocals take a back seat here, but the power of the guitars, and the supremely listenable wall-of-sound methodology has kept this album in weekly rotation on my iPod.

And speaking of Jesu...

Jesu :: Jesu
(or S/T)
(2004, Hydra Head)
Score: 10

This is what happens when metal meets the metaphysical. Meta-metal, perhaps. If I had to choose one word to describe Justin K. Broadrick's new project, that word would be... beautiful. The music is heavy, driving, and yet pleasingly listenable - soaring, at times, into a dark, down-tempo stratosphere of melodic, flickering intrigue. This is music for standing on a dark cliff, with a cool wind on your face. The vocals are haunting, and filled with a sense of anticipation, though Broadrick does sound a bit like Nyarlathotep (the Creeping Chaos from Lovecraft's canon, and thus, Godflesh of old) on track 7 - men/women - rendering a savagely heavy portrait, in a mere 9:29, of what Godflesh might have sounded like had they progressed further into the 21st century (at the 5:53 mark, it sounds as if Godflesh itself suddenly manifests, with their classic, loping, bass-grinding gait). With no track less than 9 minutes, Jesu is a triumph for Godflesh fans, and perhaps a scintillating new experience for those willing to listen. What it does differently than Godflesh is embrace an exploration of space, both real and imagined. Perhaps the influence of Loop can still be heard here (for Robert Hampson was once a member of Godflesh). Repetition leads to breakthrough.

Skinny Puppy :: The Greater Wrong of the Right
(2004, Hunter)
Score: 10

Deep, thought-provoking electronic/industrial soundscapes, rich in texture, overflowing with complex imagery. Listen with headphones. Admission: I have no "favorite" Skinny Puppy album. I really love them all. They are each unique documents, and comparing them, especially to one another, somehow seems disrespectful. These guys have always been on another plane of existence. We're just lucky they've returned; and fortunate that they've brought something back with them... something darkly terrible, wonderful, and purely evolutionary.

Night of the Hunters

2006-03-21T22:04:00.001-07:00

I've just been playing Metroid Prime: Hunters on the Nintendo DS. Some of you may be in possession of the (collectible?) MP:H demo game-card (First Hunt) that was included with all Nintendo DS launch systems. If so, you'll appreciate just how far MP:H has come. If not, you're in for an extraordinary experience.

What can you expect? On a presentational level, this game sets a standard. The sound is futuristic, highly evolved. The music flows directly from the Gamecube editions of this series; it's dark, brooding and mysterious. The visuals are extraordinary. You won't quite believe what you're seeing on the DS screens. The framerate is glorious. The environments are breathtaking.

As I often do with Wi-Fi DS games, the first thing I did after booting was log in for some multi-player action. Within a minute or so I found myself in combat. Flawless. I got my ass handed to me 7 to 2, but that had more to do with the fact that I hadn't configured the controls to my liking (should have set it up prior to logging in - let that be a lesson to you all).

The menu systems are excellent, and though wholly focussed on the stylus user or thumb navigator, you can still get around with the control pad and buttons - quickly and without error.

I've only just dug into the single-player experience (and having glanced at the guide, there were 60+ pages of walkthrough). It seems deep, with hundreds of Logbook Entries (creatures, events, places, objects). In multi-player, there are 26 arenas. This game has some longevity built-in.

There is a welcome feature in multi-player that has been missing from prior Wi-Fi DS games - the ability to instantly log an opposing player as a "rival" so you can search for them online at a later time. The system still uses Friend Codes, and features a Hunter's License to track your rank and progress. It logs wins in all game variations, connection history, win ratio, win streak, "lucky" arena, favorite weapon, headshot kills, favorite mode, biped kills, alt-form kills, kill streak, Wi-Fi and wireless play time and total game time. I suspect there may be more. The game features a large list of unlockables. There is also an interesting mode called Rival Radar - which puts your DS into a sort of waking-dream mode. As you make your way in the real world, your DS is scanning your surroundings for other DS owners who happen to have their own DS in Rival Radar mode; if two or more DS units locate each other, "rival" data and Hunter Licenses are exchanged. Next time you look at your rivals roster, it will have grown.

For now that's all I can relate. I need to dig deeper. It is time for battle.

Age of Microsoft

2006-02-23T20:12:00.001-07:00

I don't normally partake of anything Microsoft in my personal life, but Age of Empires DS: Age of Kings seemed like a winner. The maddening nature of RTS games had been jettisoned in favor of the elegance of turn-based combat. Being a huge fan of Advance Wars: Dual Strike (still the superior title), I used some trade at EB Games to pick up AOE:DS.

During the Battle of the River Crossings in Japan (1159-1160), I faced a fearsome opponent: Yoshinaka, a distant cousin who'd led a surprising revolt against the ruling Taira. Little did I know, he was in league with the dark forces of Microsoft. As I took the main bridges, cornering him, he used his special power: CRASH THE NINTENDO DS SYSTEM.

Now, admittedly, all the commanding officers in the game have special powers - but this is just ridiculous, wouldn't you say? I suppose the Mark of the Beast (Microsoft logo) on the packaging should have been a warning.

To be honest, I don't even want to play the game anymore. I have never had a hand-held game crash on me. Ever. In my whole life. From the thumb-battering Mattel blip-fests of the 70s to the Lynx and a whole slew of Gameboys, not once have I seen a game freeze. Reports on the web have revealed that this crash can cause a fatal error in the gamecard. It can never be used again. My own gamecard seems to function after a hard reset. Others haven't been so lucky.

So where do I want to go today? How about to a planet that isn't infested by Microsoft? Or perhaps back to EB Games, before my copy of Age of Empires DS is... history.

New Word: copstipation

2006-02-23T19:54:00.000-07:00

Main Entry: cop-sti-pa-tion
Function: noun
Date: 21st century (2/23/2006)

1: abnormally delayed or infrequent lane changes usually caused by the presence of a police car on the freeway.

This has got to be the single most irritating phenomenon on the freeways. In my experience, it seems that highway patrol cars tend to exceed the speed limit (obviously in pursuit of evil). Yet, a large number of police cruisers (attempting to avoid their crime-fighting duties on surface streets) drive approximately 1 or more miles under the posted speed limit on the freeway. The clog of moronic drivers (terrified to "pass") that collect behind this police cruiser is completely maddening. One is forced to contemplate this passive-agressive stance on the part of the city police. What message, exactly, are they trying to send us through this behavior?

Intelligent Warming?

2006-02-09T11:25:00.000-07:00

Is anyone else amused when evangelical Christians suddenly embrace science? Why this sudden fear of global temperature increase? It was in the news this week - a consortium of evangelicals have united against this human-generated apocalypse. But why now? I'm tempted to say its because of all the SUVs they've purchased to haul around their personal Armies for Jesus (e.g., their brainwashed children). Are they feeling the pang of personal responsibility instead of hiding behind their faith?

This reminds me of the bumper-based war of pursuasion that rages on our roads and highways. First came the Christian fish symbol - an identity badge. I am not sure why it became important to announce one's faith to other motorists, but I suspect it may act as a warning for the rest of us. The response of the rationals was to give the Christian fish legs and place the word Darwin inside the body. The Christians, without much thought, responded by forcing their fish to consume the legged fish of Darwin, while also placing the word Truth inside the body of their icon. Clearly, the debate, if it could be called that at all, died at this moment, since the Christians stole a concept from biology ("the big fish eat the little fish") and thus, seem to have inadvertantly defended Darwin's ideas about natrual selection. It seems logical that if you reject the life sciences, you can't in turn leverage the life sciences to make some sort of point about an irrational worldview. As the evangelicals continue their bid to repurpose our language (e.g., turning theory into a naughty word), they also seem quite willing to repurpose science to do their own, inscrutable bidding.

No religion, too.

2005-12-08T22:59:00.000-07:00

Imagine...

First

2005-10-23T12:28:00.000-07:00