The Diamond Island

Ahhh. The smell of comic book newsprint in the morning. My earliest comic book memories are of Kamandi (The Last Boy On Earth), Defenders, The Witching Hour, The Haunted Tank and my all-time favorite, Richie Rich. There was a bus station in Athens, Ohio that had a comic book stand and there was a newsstand in Hanover, New Hampshire where I would get a hold of these titles. Those places of magic exist now only in my mental archives. They shall remain a lost wonder of the world to inspire my thoughts in this adult age of my existence.

Then came the Tintin books, starting with Red Rackham’s Treasure. That wrapped Christmas present started a revolution in my psyche that has remained with me to this day. The ripples are still being felt and absorbed by my brain. Back then, I started drawing them to learn how to make my own comics. That’s really where I found out what the power of comic books to tell a story could be. I wanted to be Tintin, and in my crude comic books I was, or he was my sidekick and his adventures were really my adventures.

It would be many years still before words like “trade paperback” and “sequential art” would enter my personal space. Even as I struggled to copy Tintin’s distinctive tuft of hair, amazing work was being done in the field that I wouldn’t find out about until much later on down the line. People like Crumb doing underground comics, people like Eisner doing mainstream comics. It boggles my mind to think of the titanic work on culture and civilization that was being done at the time.

My dedicated comic collection phase came after a trip to Austin, Texas. I picked up issue #182 of The Uncanny X-Men. The one where Rogue switches personalities to Carol Danvers and goes after S.H.I.E.L.D. to rescue an old lover of Carol’s. The art and the story were top-notch. My cousin had collected X-Men and I’d read a few, but this is where it connected and I was hooked. From then on, I’d begin my collection phase, which is a whole story in and of itself. The Uncanny X-Men lead the way, and it’s still a huge influence on me as to what superhero groups should be about.

I outgrew my comic book collection phase. Too expensive to maintain a subscription box. Too many titles to keep track of. A decline in quality by mainstream titles from Marvel and DC. I’ve entered a state of mind where I expect a certain level of maturity and deeply moving story that I just don’t get these days. I refuse to put up with never-ending storylines and lack of continuity any more. I’ve also grown tired of the mindless sexism and racism of mainstream comics. You could say I’ve entered the treasure hunt era for comics, with an emphasis on graphic novels, or “trade paperbacks” that resolve what they put forward.

K gave me the hook-up. The three Courtney Crumrin books by Ted Naifeh, published by Oni Press. The artwork turned me off at first. Just because I’m looking for new and different, doesn’t mean I can handle it off the bat! But it’s grown on me, and the story of young Courtney learning the ways of magic in her warlock uncle’s mansion, while dealing with everyday growing up issues, has moved me. I’m blown away, and never get tired of reading it. This is what gets me up in the morning, the Richie Rich at the dawn of time to the Courtney Crumrin of today. I’m looking at the monolith.

For as long as I can remember, listening to music has been a core aspect of my upbringing.  The folks raised me on a steady background soundtrack of Rolling Stones, Bob Marley, and Devo.  My first personal exploration of music goes way back to the Sesame Street records, particularly such chart toppers as Oscar the Grouch’s “I Love Trash”, Grover’s “What Do I Do When I’m Alone”, and Cookie Monster’s “Up and Down”.  The Beatles came along later as my first “group” fascination.  I still get a lot of mileage out of that White Album.

It’s many years later, and my music collection has become an integral part of my meditation exercises and psychological well-being.  For a long time, U2 was my favorite band and a group I strongly identified with.  Their last two albums have shown a significant decline in quality, and I find the group’s behavior increasingly repulsive, so I get a lot less enjoyment out of them than I used to.  I’ve written them off, along with a lot of other bands I used to like.  The state of popular music has stagnated to the point where mainstream equals lifeless and phony.

On the other hand, the treasure hunt for fantastic sounds has never been better.  The process resembles combing the halls of a mammoth ancient library with a tiny lantern.  Or searching the labyrinth of market alleyways for traders, with that one artifact or tidbit of gossip you need to hear.  The internet allows you to make connections on a scale that used to take years of wasted money and time.  And my friends have the same superpower!  There are ways now for artists to communicate their statement and their art without the guild-monopoly distribution systems that have stifled culture for decades.

It adds up to getting in touch with music I never thought I’d like, old music I didn’t know existed, and new music that is exciting and alive with experiment.  If I come across something I don’t like, it still has value because I can tell someone else I meet on the treasure hunt about it, and speed their own journey.  That’s what I think is the “now” experience: A diverse ecosystem of life support that generates ideas and raises consciousness, or just plain helps you survive.  Your own musical habits are heroic in a way they never were before.

So, an example: I’m on a Peak Oil website, of all places, and they have an entry on “Celtic Battle Music” at the bottom.  Well, being of Irish descent, I’m going to at least give it a look. Wow, rousing, exciting stuff.  I’m down with that!  So I click on the link to the YouTube search, below the video, and pow, I’m sold.  There’s this group called Albannach, and they have a website.  I check it out, and find they’ll be coming to a Ren Faire near me.  I pass this all along to K, and we agree; we’re going to be there to see them.  The life support system has just gotten a replacement filter.  Now I’m telling you by way of this post, and passing it along.  Maybe it’ll give you the power-up, maybe it won’t.  But just the choice makes us all more powerful.

The madness of August has officially started. I’m talking about tomato canning season. Water must be boiled constantly. Tomatoes must be washed, blanched and sliced. Jars must be filled, sealed and steamed. And that’s assuming the quest for tomatoes has been successful.

In the past, the family made trips to the farms near the coast. We would fill up six bushels or so with tomatoes, rain or shine. You end up sweaty, dirty, and smelling of pesticide. Our reward would be a pit stop on the way home at a local restaurant that sells some awfully fine fried chicken.

You get home, and the time clock starts ticking. The tomatoes begin to press down on one another and lose their firmness. Then they start to rot. So you have to do a certain amount of jars every day to stay ahead of the curve, and by the end it’s a brutal, haggard rush to get those final tomatoes in.

The folks refuse to use air conditioning, so the kitchen gets really hot. You burn yourself handling the tomatoes to remove their skins. Your clothes acquire a red paste spatter. The entire kitchen is devoted to the process of canning, so food has to be drawn from leftovers, kept really basic, or brought in.

Why is this madness endured every year? At the end, you have about 120 jars of tomatoes that can be used for just about anything – salsa, spaghetti sauce, and chili. It’s a ray of sunshine you can call upon during the winter to get you by on that tough day. Plus, they make fantastic gifts!

It’s taken the family about 15 years to get the formula down right. The process has been honed down to every tool and the time it takes at each station. The last two years, the trip to the farm has been abandoned for a new development.

I don’t quite remember farmer’s markets being this prevalent in the past, maybe we were just too busy to notice. But we’ve been getting our bushels in installments from the markets, and that makes all the difference. The time clock of rotting tomatoes is removed, allowing us to rest between bouts.

The madness has lessened, but the benefits remain. An accident of nature, or a slight expansion in brain power? I know not.

Random encounter time! K and I drive into the shuttlecraft parking module and grab our civilization training gear, when lo and behold, we have a critter call! Slightly bony, gray haired kitty announces his/her low fuel gage and projects that psionic command line letting you know if its not happening now, you’re dead meat! Such encounters get added to your lifetime RSS feed when you come under the province of a cat’s karmic lessons. Yup, there’s our very own cat responsibility in the window silently meowing. Yeah, thanks for letting the rogue traders know where the soft touches are.

At first, I think its smokey, our nickname for the local cat constable for the neighborhood up the hill. Might well be, in which case, way to hook up with the protection racket, purr puff! Kitty is friendly, vocal, and affectionate. Yup, pulling out all the bonuses for the Beg Roll on us. Ha! The first meow knocked out the shields and put me on auxiliary power. No worries there, nagging hungry stomach that is the cat uber-psychic “now” of feline study on earth. I pass the retina scan and open the supply lines for a hit of the expensive vet stuff. K distracts the pit stop kitty with pets and praise (humans have a few desperate measures that can sometimes be relied upon to work, or at least reassure us that something is happening).

This paw-puff knows what time it is. The meow-bombing ceases, food is calmly assimilated into main reactor, and mandatory licking of mouth commences. Without any further ado, kitty powers up disruptors and goes back to whatever appointed quest or neighborhood duties may be pressing. See ya next time! Hey, this racket has been getting these creatures by for thousands of years. I don’t see natural selection weeding this behavior out with a ten-foot pole any time soon. Next, feed the cats that, you know, actually live with us. Just another night in the maintenance of inter-species alliances, I suppose.

Next morning, as I’m setting up the recycle pod for the local truck feeding, I see a white and gray cat in our neighbor’s yard, munching contentedly on catnip I swear wasn’t growing there before, but of course its reality change 22-732 and its been there all along. Whether it’s a change in the Matrix or the local cloaking device is down for repairs today, how would I know? I don’t make monkeys; I just play one on earth. The cat looks at me and chooses at that moment to munch dramatically to emphasize how lucky I am that there’s more than one fueling station. Hrm. I guess this is what in cat free trade practices is known as “opening new markets for exploitation”.

So, what’s on the slab for tonight’s dinner, you ask? Well, lately the dinner manufacturing process has been receiving a variety of randomly created vegetables from the garden. Today’s beam-aboard material is lots of jalapeno peppers, and boy do I love the heat produced by these puppies! I dialed into my brain stem and that old reliable chili manifestation visualized itself for my tantalization. Hey, is that the buck-buck of helpless chicken patties? Yes! Victory is mine. Still have the pesto-goodness from the previous night to rely upon, and there’s that vegetable soup experiment K made as a secondary backup. I’m tellin’ ya, when you make your Cook Roll (and making your Garden Roll adds that bonus), everything comes up videos.

Of course, when I whiff that Roll, then its time to order up the community-pool wheel of taste. Mrm. Grease and processed material made by human misery or robot slavery. Yeah, the beat-down is part of the equation. Sometimes the land of android invasion requires you to rely on that rat-in-a-box, because you’re too tired from blasting away at the pincer-bots and gorgonoids to think about how you’ll plot coordinates for the refueling stop to restore your body’s health bar. Eesh! Thank goodness I put some experience points into getting Cook and Garden on my character sheet. It’s a sharing, cooperative work for K and I.

The battles against the potato beetles, the gnats dive-bombing my ocular mechanisms, the shaking of my fist at the cousin of the Caddyshack gopher as I find another tomato skin left right where I can find it at the dramatically appropriate time. The confrontation with the earth and her feral friends teaches wisdom, gets my head in the right place, and surprises me with the tasty manifestations of plant reproductive rackets. We take it back to the honeycomb hideout and it makes for a few more bonus points when the meal gets made. Making it yourself is one degree of better. Making it yourself with your own produce, well that rocks it to the crypt!

Hello, and welcome to the very first installment. I’m busy prying open containers and seeing what came with the order. In some places, the assembly instructions have been written with lemon juice, and I’m not entirely sure if my ape’s brain has invented fire yet. Stay tuned! With luck, something entertaining ought to appear soon.