The Diamond Island

Right before the hurricane comes in, K and I make a run to the grocery store before the drones arrive to beam aboard their protein requirements in a hoard.  Milk, water, booze, flour, rice, apple turnovers.  You know, the stuff you’d need in the last days of the acrockalypse.

Gum machines are still instruments of enlightenment, despite half-hearted attempts by the puerarchy to make them into mere sugar dispensaries.  The old school fighters of random stupidity still follow the musical harmony creature as it dances through our reality to balance the antisystem, lest it continue the path to one-sided aggrandizement.

While I’m opening my wallet for the mandatory vacuuming with bonus peak oil food prices penalty, K takes a few quarters and gets herself a little rubber figure and on the first try gets what she wanted.  A little red devil figure.  I take my turn, and I get a little robot dude and a purple devil figure.  She’s happy that she has a little devilkins she can put on her keyboard, it reminds her of our Frankie, who is a devilkins.

Fast forward back to now, and the jack up we just started dealing with on top of the usual realization that it’s all Sector 2.2 days for a while. While K works her brand new bread magic to make us bonus food, and I try to make sense of the psycho-nautical habitat we find ourselves in, we examine our devilkins figures.  They both have what look like cat ears for horns, except her ears are facing the back, so it really looks like horns, and the “Made in China” is on the tummy instead of the back.  Mine is the opposite.  It makes them both different even though they are the same thing essentially.  I think K’s looks cooler, but my purple dude still has character, he’s more cat-like.

Okay, it’s obviously a clue.  I had a dream two weeks ago, where I was trying to keep my mirage from waking up.  He was in a coffin, and I was with a bunch of people, trying to convince them to help me before it was too late.  I was chopping my mirage’s limbs off with an axe, afraid he would wake up and we’d all be jacked.  His eyes were open and looking at me letting me know he knew what I was doing.  Perhaps what I was doing was futile.

I had another dream three days ago, where I found an open entrance into the underworld, and I started digging dirt away to get inside.  For some reason, I called into the tunnel with a howl, and it echoed down into the darkness.  I grew very afraid, and all of a sudden a scary, vicious seeming gollum-like creature appeared at the opening and started trying to dig its way through.  I freaked, because I didn’t want him to escape, and I didn’t want to get yanked into the underworld or have my arm eaten off like what happens in the horror movies.  I woke up before I knew what happened.

Yeah, more clues.  How do me and my mirage deepen our relationship without letting the other make changes on who we are?  The last time I tried to do something for my mirage, he played a mean trick on me.  Maybe I’ve got this all wrong.  But I’m pretty mad, and I guess I’ve been letting things slide long enough.  This night in a haunted house is turning out to be a long one.

So I knock on the basement door to the laundry room and say, “Yo, mirage with all the spooky scary stuff.  What’s up?”

Hurricane Hanna brings in some much needed rain to the area I’m living in.  K and I are happy we don’t have to water the garden for the next day or so.  I always get happy and feel renewed when it’s raining.  But alas, the haunted house and my mirage won’t let us rest for even a moment.  It’s either crumcake bumout, or have your relaxation interrupted by troubles.

Frankie shows a limp, and we see she’s developed a swollen paw.  Well that’s just great, another hit from the crumbum volleys.  Our cats are taking hits for us, and it’s breaking my heart.  If that weren’t enough, the rain leaks into our newly repaired fuse box, and it’s scare of an electrical fire or short circuit explosion all over again.  Crumbs, and I can’t even get a day off to be ruined, that’s how Sector 2.2 this is.

I’ve had enough.  It’s totally time to put on the thinking hat of ultimate doom and figure out what is going on.  I put on my brightest red shirt and shorts, start stomping around like a big grouse, and get angry.  Any supernatural creature or ultra-dimensional being I run into had better hope they have a hall pass signed by me, or I’m going to give them the real world knuckle sandwich and kick them into the hot pot, where I’m going to turn them into food so I can make my bills this week.

I mean, I’m ready to pull my hair out here.  K is all stressed out, and that means I’m really not happy.  Time for time, and yeah it’s all in my mind, so get ready because I’m in the mood to dig ditches.  I gather up a bunch of books from my best-of friendly reading collection and start memorizing ideas.  I might not have many torpedoes left, but I can mine a few more mental paradigms for ammunition.  Shapeshifting 101, get some sense, fool!

Luckily Captain Rowdy was able to restore the main laptop computer circuit and restore lost data.  It’s an EDR (Emergency Damage Repair), so I don’t know how long the jury-rig will hold.  Hopefully by remembering to hit the manual backup override regularly I’ll dodge more croaking of the circuit until I can reincarnate the module.

I’m working on redlines now, in readiness for the third set of revisions, so I don’t need the computer right now.  I’m handling hard copy and jumbling notes about, making a module interface not as critical at the moment.

The launch patrols didn’t sight any phantom dogs, and I haven’t seen any other Unbelievables on the sensor records, cloaked or uncloaked.  The neighborhood cats all seem out in force, however, so increased activity must be going on.  I just hope commander Smokey can handle it, even though Frankie and him just broke up.  I saw a volunteer cat stuck in a tree, either scouting for Clingon jackup cruisers or cowering from phantom pack intruders while waiting for backup.

I’m holding on to the last few mental torpedoes for now, in case I need a special delivery system.  I mean, talk about being stuck in Sector 2.2!  For those of you not in the know, the Star Trek arcade video game had a round where all you did was chase a crazy robotic drone based on Nomad, the super powerful probe from one of the TV episodes, as it dropped mines everywhere and set you up for blowing up real good.  The first time I had to fight that thing was in Sector 2.2 (every round was fought in a “sector”, where Mr. Spock’s voice would say, “Now entering sector…”), I was stunned.  Since then, it’s a euphemism for the suk-level.

And yeah, no starbase neither.  How’s a karmanaut supposed to recharge shields or reload on torpedoes, make repairs, have shore leave, etc. when you can’t get no dock-up?  See, right now I’m stuck at work with no backup, which means no vacation until I can hire a new console operator.  I’m literally like Kirk in “The Doomsday Weapon”, piloting a half-destroyed starship on near-automatic with only a super-engineer keeping the ship running (or as we say, my psychological automatic process).  Meanwhile, some nut is taking my real ship out for a joyride to pick up some Romulon ale and Twinkies.

Or rather, I’m stuck in the not-bonus round, getting jacked, and there’s no starbase recharge for a while.

What happened was my friend and co-worker, a British citizen, was taken into custody by immigration and detained.  Apparently some new law is roping in hundreds of regular people, even with their documentation in order, and forcing deportation hearings on them.  Meanwhile, they sit and rot in tent cities with no laundry or barber facilities waiting for a due process that never arrives (via the handy dirty trick of moving suspects from place to place at taxpayer expense without even telling the court).

His car was broken into and stripped right before this two-month ordeal began, so he wasn’t having a good time to start with.  I think the most surreal moment was when his dad told me he had been shipped to Brownsville Texas, near the border, right as Hurricane Dolly was slamming into the coast.

My friend finally accepted deportation (he’s a small guy and doesn’t speak Spanish, and living with mercenary guards and hardened Latinos was wearing him out), and in a twist of fate immigration dropped all charges and basically said, “never mind, come on back to the states anytime you want”.  He’s understandably reluctant to come back, and at least he’s gone to a country with family and friends where he won’t disappear.

Me and the co-workers have talked to him, and he’s in great spirits, trying to get his life in order after twenty years in the states.  His parents are probably going to sell their businesses and move back there in the next few years.  Tax dollars at work!  Cheap labor, come on in.  Skilled workers who play by the rules, get lost!  And they ask me why I drink.

But the net effect for me is no console operator, and work has entered a period where it’s the busiest time of the year.  I’ll make it through, but having to pilot the ship and hit the phraser button rapid-fire because you’ve got no recharge ability blows.  The crumbum volleys are a flying fast and furious I tell ya!

Even though I don’t have cable, it’s hard to avoid the backwater shadow cast over society by big business.  The ultra-rich are busy bidding for the candidates they think will be best short-term monarch for their interests.  The fleer patrol (false prophet flagships) is out in force in the mediapoly, making sure nobody talks about the issues or carries any news about what the public actually wants.  I swear, I have enough problems without having to hear about the shenanigans of McCuckoo and Ophony as they try to sell us their brand of toothpaste.

Around here where I live, it’s always a tender time during ratify-candidates-already-decided-for-you days.  It’s serious business, because depending on who is coming in or going out, many people’s jobs are at stake.  People seem to drive a little more hard-nosed, shop a little more with the jitters, and hop on pop a little harder in their domiciles.  TV and stereo systems always rise in volume during this time as folks try to drown out the stress with louder programming instructions.

Unfortunately, poor Blink our cat must have taken a hit to the life support.  She’s one of the more dedicated huntresses in our household, eliminating meeses and cave crickets wherever they may roam.  We noticed her urine was coming out wine colored (that’s fancy talk for bloody whizz).  We took her to the vet for a checkup and some kitty drugs, and it appeared to clear up.

Alas, the symptoms returned, and Blink was not a happy camper.  We took her back for a steroid injection to unclog the tubes and an x-ray, which showed no stones or other obvious problems.  We got more kitty drugs, and after a long while, she looks fine.  Hopefully it was a really nasty infection and we’ve taken it out, because the next step is bloodwork and an ultrasound, and that might get serious.

Having the cat patrol makes certain things nicer and easier, but you have to pay the upkeep costs.  Not just love, but also the physical chore of waste disposal, water and food refueling, toy playtime, and of course life support via vet specialist checkup.  Blink has been using me as her personal starbase to dock at and recharge, which I’m grateful for.  Her problems are typical of the edge-of-your seat crumbum storm it is out there right now.

Bob Dylan was right, “Look out kid / You’re gonna get hit” and “Better jump down a manhole / Light yourself a candle”  If I can just dodge those crumbum mines, maybe I can get a shot at the Nomad probe and get out of this sector.  Good thing I kept the reserve warp ready.

Last year I bought one of those joysticks loaded with several arcade games you plug directly into your TV set with.  It had Pac-man, Dig Dug, Rally-X, Bosconian, and Galaxian.  All of those are classics from the video game craze of the eighties.  I played them quite a lot, and have many memories both good and bad from that time when Pac-man led the breakthrough of video games into my consciousness (and likely the mainstream as well).

I was no stranger to Pong, or Combat (a tank game), and I’ve already written about Sea Wolf.  Pinball games were part of my growing up as well.  My folks and I would frequent bars and grills all over the place, and I would inevitably end up playing something for a quarter or two just to get brief thrill of fun.  I even remember a shark attack game I played, which shows up briefly in the movie Jaws.  Good times, crazy experiences.

The joystick I bought stinks, more or less.  It’s too sensitive and too long for the games, and the games themselves are turned up to what I think are difficult levels from what I remember.  I’m annoyed because it interferes with the authentic experience of what the games were like.  Still, playing Pac-man on my TV in the comfort of my own home brings me back to that fateful day me and my dad went to the local bowling alley with seven bucks and played Pac-man like crazy.

But what got me thinking was an article in Boing Boing about the mega-high score gamers who still meet and compete.  I think those dedicated enthusiasts are on to something when they talk about the meditative exploration and systematized analysis of the games.  There’s both mysticism and science at work within the innards of the video game.

On the surface, the video games are pure survival.  But the high scorers take it beyond that and have discovered that beyond certain boundaries (of which not all have been reached in all video games) the game becomes an abyss of the unknown.  The creators of the video games themselves marvel at the doors they have opened, and the players who plunge the depths to bring back insights.

For example, there’s a limit to how far you can go on Pac-man.  After a certain score the game croaks.  The last “bonus fruit” Pac-man gets to eat is a key.  A key to what?  Playing long enough to croak the game causes you to enter a meditative state of non-being.  Is there a formula, a move you can make at a certain point where the game will do the unexpected, something even the creators could never have guessed?

In a sense, video games are just wastes of time, or an activity to be frowned upon.  Youngsters should be doing things more productive (that is, getting them ready for their future roles as workers and consumers).  But I don’t buy that aspect totally.  I find that playing a video game is a lot like reciting meditative mantras.  You are performing a ritual that causes you to enter a trance of non-being.  Might playing video games also be a form of high culture?

I can feel when I’m struggling with a game.  I’ve had a bad day, or some problem is eating my thoughts.  I feel possessed by an effect that pounced on me recently.  As I play, I get the feeling that I am “working a complex out”, untying a psychological knot as it were.  I never noticed this before, but now I think that article confirms for me something I’ve felt for a long time but never said it aloud.

Video games are civilizing influences and a sign of general improvement in humanity.

Yes, even the violent, heavily sexualized games with despicable content.  They are instruments for making you hyperaware of your own capacity for aggression.  To the degree that the game play is fun (and that means well-designed), you become more at peace with yourself.  When you play with and against others, you are relating with fellow human beings along the lines of a social object that you share.

When people get together they start to form systems that work.  Sometimes systems fall apart, but other people take those lessons and try a different approach.  At its heart, a video game is an experience inside a working class, every day establishment where people can get together and have a reason to interact.  That is where culture, and civilization are born.

There are centers of power that will try and control this.  They’ll dumb down the games, turn them into instruments of consent-manufacture, and try to emphasize the “degenerate” elements so hot button topics can be pushed (“save our children from this violent communist menace”).  I don’t think that will work.  Fun and socializing are the fronts of the new 21st century struggle for freedom.  What doesn’t feed those needs will be adapted to and cast aside for what is fun, and social.  A crummy game that causes atomization of people won’t survive, not without cost to its masters.

And the cost of business keeps going up.  Someday the price for hegemony over survival will be greater than the wallets of that quality and then natural selection pays a visit.

But meanwhile, I’m looking at Pac-man and I’m emphasizing with the ghosts.  They are working together, in their individual ways, to stop a rampaging lone intruder from eating all the resources up.  Pac-man is all about “the high score”, or how much points he can rack up before the ghosts succeed.  You can outmaneuver them long enough to get to the “limit” of reality.  But the cost is always another quarter in the end.

In Pac-man, there is a phenomenon called “the intermission”.  When you complete a certain number of screens you are treated to a brief video display of Pac-man and the ghosts in some humorous vignette.  In one, a ghost gets his (or her) ghost outfit caught on a nail and a piece “rips” off, showing what looks like a foot.

“The only winning move is not to play.”  That’s a quote from the movie Wargames.  Perhaps Pac-man isn’t a “man” at all, but an unconscious eating force that threatens the reason of the ghosts and their ordered, cooperative structure.  The ghosts wear “veils” to keep us from seeing the truth – they are the “humans”, civilizing the instincts and in some cases mental illnesses of Pac-man, who represents the person playing the game.

Is there any more apt metaphor for enlightenment?  You must play the game of selfish eating until you “die” enough times to the idea that the world revolves around you.  Only then can you take the lesson learned from the sacred programming text of unconscious unity and live your life as a human being.

Take off your shroud, and look yourself in the mirror.  You had a psychic fever, driving you wild.  You played a video game until you were all right again.  Welcome back to humanity.

I was going over my various papers and uncovered a small plastic bag containing three plastic gemstones.  A big square blue “sapphire”, a medium-sized yellow oval “topaz”, and a small red circular “ruby”.  I did a double take, because I hadn’t seen these things since I bought them at a bead store ten years ago.

It was a whim kind of thing.  Some friends and me were looking over the various cool little beads and buying some just because they looked cool.  Who doesn’t like little prizes?  I bought that combo of fake gemstones because they reminded me of some accessories I used to have even way farther back.  What the heck, I must have been stashing a message for myself down the line.

In the seventies, one of the hot toys to have was the foot-high doll known as GI Joe (with Kung Fu grip), from the Adventure Team.  Basically GI Joe was a character part of an international (as in, American-dominated) troubleshooting force.  He went around with cool vehicles and accessories to all corners of the earth doing stuff like rescuing important diplomats, blowing up evil spy headquarters, and recovering stolen treasures.

A serious candidate for the holy grail of GI Joe play sets was the Mummy’s Tomb set.  It came with a cool yellow all-terrain vehicle to put your GI Joe in, tools like pick and shovel, a pith helmet, and best of all a super cool turquoise green, highly detailed sarcophagus you could open with detachable mummy inside.  Totally cool!  It also came with three small plastic gemstones – the sapphire, topaz and ruby in the colors and shapes described above.

I don’t get how GI Joe was supposed to preserve international peace by digging up an Egyptian mummy and artifacts in the desert in a setup heavily suggestive of western looting of foreign artifacts.  But to a kid in the seventies such nitpicking details are irrelevant to finding treasure and digging it up!  If only there was a giant scorpion or something to guard the treasure.  Other packs had a giant cobra guarding a sacred idol or a giant clam guarding a treasure chest.

There was a 45 record put out by Peter Pan Records that came with a comic.  You would listen to the record while reading the comic and imagine you were part of a GI Joe adventure.  It was called “GI Joe and the Secret of the Mummy’s Tomb.”  In this story, GI Joe goes to a tomb looking to recover jewels stolen from a museum by a thief/con-man named Mummy Barka, who holes up in an old tomb with booby traps and mirrors.

Barka dresses as a mummy and tries to scare GI Joe away, but Joe isn’t having any of that!  He captures the bad guy, rescues the jewels (all the other artifacts are not important I guess), and escapes before an earthquake destroys the entire area.

As is often the case with toys, most of that stuff ended up lost, broken, or in some cases stolen by neighborhood kids when you weren’t looking.  I still have the record and book, but no player.

I’m looking at the gemstones I bought a ways back, and decide the Internets are the place to go!  I uncover a wealth of GI Joe Adventure Team nostalgia sites and get to see pictures of stuff I’d forgotten about.  I also find sound files of the original record and listen to the past come crawling back to my brain stem from the distant past.

I wouldn’t play the same kinds of scenarios now.  I identified with GI Joe then, but I wouldn’t now.  I’d be some other character opposing Joe’s colonialism and uncovering the truth behind the one-sided scenarios you’re expected to accept without question.  I’d uncover another story and make that my fun.  Looting artifacts from other countries?  No way, I’d be digging for psychological treasures with a close watch on my own shadow.

Maybe that’s why the secrets of the Mummy’s Tomb came back to me.  I’m ready now to have the real adventure, and guard the secrets against square-jawed, dull thuds looking to plunder antiquity for cocktail parties at duh-buddy headquarters.

My folks have had many nicknames for me, and because they had to listen to my records all the time, they nicknamed me “Mummy Barka”.  I got mad then because I thought they were teasing me.  But now I see they were calling me who I should have been.  Recovery and protection of sacred treasure using trickery and cunning!  It’s a new thought I never had before, and I’m going with it.

A friend of mine gave me the hookup to Twilight. That’s the title of a supernatural romance novel I’ve been hearing on the communications channels a lot lately. Basically girl meets boy, boy and girl fall in love, boy is really a vampire, complication, resolution, and kissy-kiss fade to black until next sequel.

I guess the buzz rose above the usual chatter static on the pop culture bandwidth, primarily because the last book in the quadrology just came out, and the movie version of Twilight is approaching theaters soon. I like vampires, and I’m into romances with a weird twist right now, so I figured what the hey.

I find the trailer interesting, so I’ll very likely rent it from Netflix to see how an actual random Hollywood script compares to the book. I see nowhere for the book version to go but up, so unless the movie is Return of Captain Invincible bad, a thankfully rare event, chances are good it’ll be an improvement.

Spoliers are a’ comin’ in, so ahrrooo!

The book annoys me, because I want to like it. The premise is a solid one (you either buy it or you don’t, there’s no middle ground here), the characters sound good at first, and the setting in pretty nifty – spooky and natural at the same time, with a hint of small town claustrophobia.

Unfortunately, the danger implied by the premise of the book never feels real. The threat supposedly hanging over the romance is that Edward the vampire will go nuts and drink Bella the protagonist’s blood. About three quarters of the way through the book it’s obvious that Edward is never going to lose control. So a bad guy is thrown in from nowhere to manufacture tension.

This is where another weakness in the book comes forward. The characters are portrayed throughout the book as shallow and not-too-on-the ball. Their response to the crisis caused by the appearance of random bad guy is confusing and ultimately, dumb. When it becomes obvious that there’s no way these losers are going to outsmart the bad guy, Bella gets herself beaten to a bloody pulp so her rescue by the good vampires doesn’t seem unearned. Not!

Another weakness is a failure to fully realize the setting, and the secondary small town characters that inhabit it. All the high school students, and even Bella’s parents, are shown to be boring and unimportant – even annoyances to Da One Twu Womance. The other good vampires exist only to validate Bella and Edward’s love for each other. There’s no real meaningful conflict or argument worth paying attention to.

What is it about this book that has got so many folks all interested in it? I kept thinking about Bella, with her self-centered, inconsiderate and arrogant attitude. We never get a sense for why she’s that way, and none of her interactions with the characters reveal any clues. Good luck with those theories! But I think the fact that she is such a horrible person, with no self-awareness or empathy is what makes her appealing. Anyone can read the book and feel superior to her, and thus displace Bella in favor of personal projections.

Edward is the strongest part of the book, I think, and represents a powerful Animus figure – supernatural abilities, no need to live in the real world, incredibly handsome, supremely loyal to Bella (the reader), and possessing an aura of danger (even though it’s phony). I don’t think anyone actually wants to be Bella, but they want to live like her, have her situation – a fantasy focused entirely on her with no demands or attachments.

That’s the magic formula in a nutshell – wearable Bella suit allowing interaction with virtual boyfriend. That’s too bad, because I think there were a lot of really cool possibilities for conflict and complications.  Without any zany bad guy vampire coming out of nowhere and eating up the  book. Heck, the manga I’m reading that take place in supernatural settings dance circles around this book, with intrigue and teen problems galore.

I know a lot has been made of the “sparkly vampire” sequence, but I thought that was cool. It’s certainly one of the more original vampire ideas I’ve seen in a while. I also liked the idea that the vampires never sleep – what does that do to your sense of time? Some of the vampire stuff is explored a little – the baseball game the vampires play because of their speed was fascinating. But it’s always a backdrop, never a focus in and of itself – fluff, as it were.

Probably my biggest problem with the book, and this stems from the lack of danger in the romance, is how chaste and repressed the whole relationship is. I never buy that Edward is in any way fighting to control his “nature”, so the tame way the two lovers approach one another starts to get on my nerves. Whenever the two of them are acting normally with each other the material is interesting. When they stoop to going on about how indescribably lovely the other looks, or how dangerous Edward is, the material starts to drag.

If their mutual good looks are generating temptations in each other, you need to see the risk they are taking. Because “forbidden love-not really” is a bummer, dude. Quite frankly, Edward suddenly losing it and almost making a snack out of Bella would be awesome. This comes to the core of my dislike of the love story. If you want me to believe in their love, you have to put it to the test. What does Bella sacrifice for her love of Edward? Her father’s image of her? Her standing at school? Her friendship with Jacob?

So I’m not going to read another book in the hopes it’ll get better. What I’ve read is all I’m going to get, and that was more than enough. But it gets me to thinking about the development of the vampire, from “symbol of unrepentant evil” and tragic figure, to cool anti-hero and stock demihuman.

I wonder if removing all trace of threat from the human-vampire relationship, as Twilight does, has not in some way robbed us of an important human quality. I keep going back to the vampire Lestat, who reveled in and embraced the guilt of his condition. Abnegation and denial of the world, as the vegetarian vampires of Twilight seem to do, doesn’t seem to me to be healthy or a proper solution to the problem of evil.

Or, to put it another way, you cannot avoid the fundamental fact of life by eating only plants. Life lives on life, no matter how you slice it. Everything you eat was at one time alive or part of a living thing. To say “we’re only killing animals instead of humans” is splitting hairs where vampires are concerned. It works only if you assume human beings are superior to all other forms of life, an assumption based on self-interest not morality. This is the mirror the vampire holds before us.

Speaking psychologically, Bella already is a vampire, because she thinks she’s the only person in the universe that counts. Everyone else is just there. Free from remorse, she casts no reflection, and sucks the life out of those around her. Her only companions are members of a magical family living on the fringes of reality.

Brrr.

Somewhere along the way in this labyrinth, the vampire story took a wrong turn into a dead end. Time to retrace the steps and go back to the last vital revelation of the undead monster that walks in the shadows where we dare not go. Give the vampire back their fangs, and look for an unknown, secret way still to come.

I finished reading the graphic novel/trade paperback Watchmen for the first time. I suppose it’s about time, seeing as the movie is coming out (which I won’t see until it comes out on Netflix). The comic people have only been talking about it for decades as one of the best comic series ever produced. Now that I’ve had the experience of reading it, I can finally comment and throw my two cents into the collective reaction. Spoilers follow, so beware, ahhrooo!

For those not in the know, Watchmen is a story about a group of super heroes under the premise, “what if super heroes were real?” It takes place in an authoritarian world, where America won the Vietnam war because of superheroes (well, one really), and Nixon is running for his third term. It’s America versus the Russians, with a nuclear confrontation approaching over Afghanistan. Super heroes who don’t work for the government are not allowed to practice as heroes, and the public more or less hates them.

Into this background comes the story of a number of heroes who have mostly retired or sold out (as it is often believed of the so-called “hippies”). They are getting fat, old, and nostalgic. Someone begins killing or neutralizing them one by one, and an investigation begins. At the center of this is a plot to change the world by a mysterious villain, who wishes to save the world by causing a disaster so horrible the world will have to unite in order to face it. The heroes fail to stop the plot, and become collaborators in a new world order based on fear of a manufactured enemy. Almost sounds prophetic, given this comic came out in the eighties.

I read this book, and I admit it’s done well considering it’s stance. Back then, the dark realism must have seemed really cool back then. I don’t know how well it holds up now, however. It’s too safe, ultimately, skirting the boundaries of super hero comic books but never really crossing over the safety line into where comics need to go now, to be relevant. Now that we’ve arrived at a time that evokes some of the background of the book, the book itself is no longer a warning of a nightmare world to come but a sign of how long things have been stagnant and flat.

I’ll say it again. Comic book heroes are obsolete. The premise being put forth shouldn’t be “what if super heroes were real?”, because that’s the same as “what if super villains were real?” The super villain in Watchmen is a former super hero himself, a reflection of the dark truth that super heroes are becoming power fantasies for the rich and powerful, instead of the weak and oppressed. “I have seen the face of the enemy and the enemy is us.” The premise should be “what if super heroes were real and were still super heroes?” Because super villains exist by default. Can any normal person fight a concentrated system of power by themselves? The super hero is an attempt to manifest the transcendent function in the psyche.

1. The super heroes in Watchmen are all without morals.
All of them have cracked under the strain of being super heroes and become disconnected from normal people, the people they are supposed to be serving.

Dr. Manhattan: Commits war crimes on a vast scale. Does research and development for the military. Manufactures raw materials for big business. Has no empathy with human beings. Never follows his own discoveries of the universe – showing wonder at the thermo-dynamic miracle when it suits him, never following up on his “puppet strings” observation to its logical conclusion, ignoring his one-channel omniscience so he can pursue his “work”. At the end of the story he abandons earth to pursue delusions of godhood. This guy is the biggest moral coward and one-sided nutcase in the story.

The Comedian: Wow, talk about a cynic who has totally cracked. Murders and rapes without remorse. Mocks anyone if they show a shred of moral qualms or decency. But his tough guy act is all a farce – when he finds out the big dude plot, instead of joining in he runs and waits to die.

Rorschach: Psychopath who terrorizes criminals, sometimes torturing them and sometimes killing them. Never once applying to himself the standards he applies to others, a victim of abuse who now abuses others, he dies abandoned by his only “friend”, with his journal presumably about to inspire someone to follow in his footsteps into insanity.

Night Owl: At first, he seems like the only genuine nice guy in the film. Rich dude with lots of cool gadgets, Rorschach’s only “friend”, and no vices or skeletons in his closet (that we know of). He caves in like a pack of cards when the chips are down, however, becoming Miss Jupiter’s next surrogate father, abandoning his “friend” like it was nothing, and agreeing not to reveal the doomsday plot of the villain.

Miss Jupiter: The only female character besides her mother. The military pays her to be Dr. Manhattan’s lover, so he will have a “human connection” and continue to work for the military instead of spacing out and leaving the solar system. After a while she can’t handle Dr. Manhattan’s lack of empathy and leaves him for Night Owl, who shows her at least some affection and a chance to be a co-partner. Unfortunately, she exists pretty much as a satellite character, having no impact on the story at all. Her dialogue with Dr. Manhattan to return and save the earth is wasted – he’s only acting out his watchmaker complex and having her mouth the lines he knows she will make.

Veidt: This disconnected, cuckoo guy is “the world’s smartest man”, taking as his role models Rameses the second and Aleksander the Great (ancient world monarchs, what wonderful role models). He ends up being the super villain, enacting yet another elitist plot to “destroy the world in order to save it”. His idea is that in order to stop the world from blowing itself up, it needs to be unified under a greater threat. He teleports a fake alien monster into Manhattan, causing a psychic shock wave that kills half the city and drives half the survivors insane from nightmares. Great guy. What’s even better is how everyone else but Rorschach buys into this. So Dr. Manhattan kills Rorschach and a new age of fascism begins.

Yes, these are “real” super heroes…who also happen to be “real” loonies. Where are the sane or moral “super heroes” as there would be in real life? It’s one-sided, and the audience is cheated of any chance to see what the whole big picture is. Most people don’t notice, because they are too busy fawning over how “realistic” and “cool” the messed up psychos and morally bankrupt characters placed before them are.

2. Normal people are ridiculed and demonized.
Every single normal person in the Watchmen world is a thug, punk, grimy street dweller, disinterested working stiff, cynical jerk, or clueless citizen in need of some educatin’ in the ways of the world. There’s some character development in the form of a newsstand operator and a young boy who reads comics, but the face of “the public” is an extremely negative one, as if they alone were to blame for all the horrors going on in the world.

It’s an elitist worldview, not uncommon of those who regurgitate the stock apologist support of power structures. The “great unwashed mass” cannot tell right from wrong, nor can it make decisions — look at the world, look at all the democracy the people have, and look how they squander it! Well, it’s obvious that an aristocratic super heroic elite must make the decisions for them by staging a catastrophe and shocking everyone into accepting absolute state rule.

All the popular movements of the sixties, which have grown and expanded since then are largely absent, except as scenes of riots and mentions of unrest throughout the country. Granted, it’s a “dark alternate world”, but the premise that people have become mindless rioters is one-sided. None of the heroes ever explains what people are upset about, except that “super heroes are taking over”, based around a police strike. That strikes me as an interesting statement – were super heroes becoming the new state police, and due to protest the power centers were forced to outlaw unsanctioned heroes to maintain power? Whenever the public protests a state act of violence that elites wish to propagate, they take it underground and “covert”. Iran-Contra, anyone?

That means people aren’t the mindless drones portrayed in the story. They have “realistic” self-interest and a desire for “the right thing”. It just isn’t what the “powerful” want. This reveals that the lens of the book is strongly on the side of the super heroes who are themselves privileged aristocrats. We are reading through the point of view of jerks and loonies, and expected to identify with them! How’s that for propaganda and indoctrination? The book you are reading is meant, by means of sleight of hand, to make you sympathetic to the people who own your country and make decisions for you.

3. Time for the Unforgiven of comic book heroes.
I’m not going to go into the convoluted logic of the ending, and how messed up Veidt’s infantile view of how the world works is going to make things worse for normal people. Nor am I going to comment much on Dr. Manhattan’s two-faced viewpoint on the world, collaborating with a plot he knows doesn’t mean anything and abandoning earth to go play god somewhere (or just go irrevocably crazy in the vast emptiness of space without anyone to point out his shadow).

If this is what super heroes really are, one could be tempted to lose faith in heroism or the struggle to better humanity by means of “super powers”, which really means collective powers moving to counteract damaged structures and build systems that actually work. I think the time has come for mainstream comic book writers to admit that what they are writing is meaningless escapism without fun that serves the interests of the rich and powerful, and either confess they are sons of bees whacks churning out industry, or walk away and do something more interesting with their talents. Like, you know, actually cross the line.

The story is over. Super heroes have been shown to be failed idealists like the “hippies”. They tried to change the world and failed. Just keep telling the same old story over and over again thinking you are cool and hip. Too late! The ship has sailed, and we’re all left holding the bag of an art form that has rotted into compost.

Time for a new beginning. The next generation of youngsters growing out of the compost to save us old losers from the dragon that slew us, and make comics count again. Because the truth is, the idealists of the past didn’t fail, they succeeded in softening up the belly of the beast so the next attack run could get set up. Watchmen gets one thing right, with Dr. Manhattan revealing to Veidt that “it never ends”, that Veidt’s “end of history” moment is temporary. The unwashed masses could come back at any time and finish the job, because it is they who hold the “ultimate weapon” of public opinion.

The geeky kid about to pick up the journal is wrong in an objective sense, but in a subjective moment, it’s the image of hope – that the story is not over. Now you get to write what happens next. And if what Dr. Manhattan said about thermo-dynamic miracles is true, then there is a probability that it will end, or begin anew.

Watchmen is a well crafted and enjoyable nightmare world. But if it’s on Time Magazine’s “100 best novels”, I know exactly who Watchmen is serving. Sorry dudes, but with Pluto entering Capricorn, we’re all about to find out just how crazy it can get. The “hippies” are getting their second wind, just like a WWE wrestler who’s been taking a beating for twenty minutes.

Hulkin’ up, fools!

Time for a mega-destructoid garden update from the depths of the pond.  K and I returned to the never-ending battle to provide the other honeycomb hideout with fresh nutrient supplies.  The weeds were waving their Bermuda grass tentacles, morning glory tendrils, and thistle spines at us with much mockery and daring.  Our crops withered under the assault of the weed choke cutting off their nutrients and water supply.  “Save us you idiots,” they cried.

The time had come to harvest the potatoes.  The ones still remaining looked sickly and small.  Nevertheless, we dug away, and found only a few small potatoes eaten to bits by worms, or mini potato numbs that would hardly feed a beetle.  Yes, the entire potato crop this year is now officially a miserable bust.  Famine rocking you back to the crypt!  Good thing the supermarkets haven’t closed, or we’d be cryin’ in our beer.

The Marigolds growing around the potatoes are huge, and blooming as if they were given the super plant food power pill from Pac man fever.  The onions are also now officially all finished.  The weeds killed them off, and have overgrown 70% of our plot.  K got mad, and decided it was time to cause some damage.  She grabbed a shovel and started a long term project to overturn all the soil.  Weeds not so good against being turned upside down and buried in soil.  It’s the clearest I’ve seen the garden since April!

Meanwhile, I pulled and plucked weeds at a furious rate, cutting myself on rusty wire as I removed morning glories twisting and twining their way to overwhelming firepower.  So far, the tomatoes are holding their ground, and are starting to actually grow now.  They all have fruits growing and ripening.  We could see some real action in the next few weeks if they hold on.  One plant is already producing beyond the chipmunk’s ability to eat and toss, or the birds to peck and drain.  Some mini cherry tomatoes are ripe now, and they tasted so juicy and good!

Alas, the mint patch has done the underground root attack at +125, and is moving into the tomato territory.  I had to beat it back and take a mint harvest a little earlier than I was ready for.  Not a big loss or setback, but annoying.  The leeks and peppers seem to have stabilized and are now growing rapidly.  That’s good.  If we can hold the line, they will succeed in giving us some succor from the crummy harvest so far.  Our corn is the most fragile right now, but another week and they’ll grow above the weeds and we can keep the buggers back with ease.  For now though, whew, gnat and sweat face city!

The basils have grown huge, so now we have more than we can use.  They are the big win, despite a quarter of them getting jacked by the weed triple team.  Bees and bugs are pollinating them happily, and the birds are plunging in and among them.  It’s like last season’s glory days.  Sigh.  Meanwhile, the parental unit’s garden is out of sight.  Their potato harvest was so huge, they gave us a bag of the things as a consolation prize.  Sheesh!  Their corn will be ready next week by the looks of it.

And finally, the humble horseradish is growing huge and well.  For some reason, the weeds aren’t doing so well near the plant.  No bugs are taking a bite out of the leaves either.  Weird.  So, in short, the side crops are holding on or starting to prosper, while the main crop we planted is a total and complete failure.  All those days spent smashing bugs, watering, digging, and fertilizing are officially down the tubes.  I sense a mirage in the mix somewhere, laughing as he pumps a little more of that special sauce into my folks’ garden.

Unfortunately for our wallets, and perhaps fortunately for our reading desires, K and I got our claws on some more manga. It’s tough, because the library doesn’t stock all the latest issues, and reading them online isn’t the same as having it in your hands, though it does slake the addiction overall.

K has been reading Fruits Basket and Hot Gimmick way ahead of me like gangbusters, and I’ve fallen behind. However, I’ve gained the upper hand in knowing what’s going on in Love Hina and Claymore, both of which are really keeping me entertained and happy. It is important that citizens be happy instead of discontented!

We picked up a new series, called Death Note, just to stir up the pot. As if we haven’t enough storylines to latch onto. We saw an entirely different aisle setup with countless new titles in the local Barnes and Ignoble, which put us in a slight sweat. I didn’t ever think I would say, in this day and age of crummy entertainment choices, I am for once inadequate and overwhelmed by the choices of good reading.

Things can get better.

So, in Death Note, this death god named Ryuk gets bored with hanging out with the other death gods and decides to go to earth and stir things up. He leaves his death note, which is a magical notebook, on the earth for anyone to find. The death note has magic powers that adhere to certain rules and contains instructions on how to use the death note properly. The most important power is that if the owner writes a person’s name in the death note while visualizing their face, that person dies.

An honors high school student named Light finds the book and claims it. At first, he is skeptical, but after he kills two people with the death note he is forced to believe. Most people at this point would get rid of the book or try to keep it safe without using it. But Light decides to embrace the full powers of the death note and use them to rule the world while eliminating all crime.

Ryuk becomes Light’s neutral companion. The death god is interested in seeing what a mortal does with his former death note, and is something of a compatriot in Light’s secret. So far, the series is an exploration in the limits and boundaries of the death note, and Light’s struggles to retain control of the growing chaos he is causing.

As hundreds of criminals all begin dying in the same way, the public begins to call the deaths the act of a figure of justice known as “Kira” (or “Killer” in Japanese), while the governments of the world begin an international manhunt. The leader of the investigation is a nameless, faceless operative known only as “L”. This makes “L” immune to Light’s direct power, as Light cannot kill someone unless he knows their real name and what they look like.

Thus begins a cat and mouse chase, as L sets up traps to learn about the scope of “Kira’s” powers and clues to the identity of what people are calling a “telepathic killer”.

The drama is intense, as Light dodges pursuit and kills those trying to learn his whereabouts. He’s smart for a kid, and he has the advantage of the death note with its many permutations. L does everything in his power to learn clues without revealing anything about himself. Any move could prove fatal. Neither of the two is dumb, but one of them is going down in the end.

What’s fun to read about for me is how Light uses the death note. For example, it is possible for him to set the conditions of the death within certain limits. He can set up someone to die right when he needs to intimidate an agent on his tail, or cause a witness to commit suicide several days later to avoid suspicion. He can influence people’s behavior at the moment of their death so that they utter misleading information or do things that implicate other people.

Is there a price for this power? As Ryuk explains, the main price is in the moral and mental strain it places on its owner. We watch as Light goes from considered, adolescent declaration of self-centered desire, to mass murderer who will stop at nothing to accomplish his goal. His fall is so total and self-inflicted, can even the victory of “L” be enough for the boy to pay for his crimes? I sense a dark fate for this fellow, and yet I can’t stop turning away as he invents horrific deaths for his enemies.

And all the while, Ryuk stands by watching the chaos and finding delight in the havoc he’s caused. What is his purpose? Is he learning anything? Hard to say.

But it’s awesome, good fun. At last, some inventive thinking and hard consideration for premise and story. I was getting worried there.

I’d known about O-bento sama since I studied in Japan. But I don’t think I started to really understand them until now. For those not in the know, a bento is a lunch, usually in a container of some kind. The O and sama refer to a certain amount of respect for the lunch and what it represents.

K picks up on things all the time from her communications and sensor monitoring stations. I never know what she’ll find next. In this case, she started trailing the subculture of bento preparation, and boy is there a bottomless depth to human ingenuity and presentation in this one.

At its simplest level, a bento is a container. But you can add dividers, and layers of containers. And then you start getting into shape and size. Depending on the kind of lunch need, whether it’s a single person or a family on a picnic, the containers called upon depend upon the desires of the preparer and the needs of the consumer(s).

Most bento containers are plastic, but some are wood or metal. They may come with spaces for chopsticks or other utensils, and they can be tall or wide. Many have trays within the container that act as dividers in and of themselves.

You begin to get into personalization. Some bento containers are decorated with famous bento characters and sayings. Others are just decorated with scenes of solitude or symbols representative of the preparer’s wishes. You can have a lime green garden on the bento top, with a saying such as “friendship is a treasure, let’s eat!”

There are special containers and utensils that can be added to the bento. Small plastic fish to squirt soy sauce or little molds that can be used to shape hardboiled eggs into shapes. There are small creatures that can be used to cover a small treat. There are plastic figures and accents that can be added to make a point or deliver a message.

The food items that go into the bento start to turn into decorations. You can use cutters to make messages out of cheese, or cut vegetables and fruits into handy shapes like stars or moons. Rice and meat can be colored or arranged in shapes that make a friendly face or a background for another message.

Why all this elaborate work over what should is just a lunch? Near as I can tell, the bento is an actual person or spirit that delivers well wishes from one person to another in the form of a meal. Because the bento is a “go-between”, the lunch preparer can express feelings of love, friendship, or devotion to the eater without losing face, because it is assumed that the bento is relaying the message for both parties.

I like that. You open a container as if it’s a sacred object, and you don’t just eat a meal, you are eating something that expresses someone’s feelings for you.

K and I went searching various Asian stores for bento materials. We didn’t score anything more than some basics, but it will suffice for now. We just started this thing at level 1. It’ll take us a while to get to the higher levels where our bentos to each other are like dioramas.

But even a humble bento is nice. Mister lunch has been visiting me this week, and every small touch makes the meal warm and friendly. I know someone cares enough to send me a message of caring and sharing!