It’s been a while, and well, that’s a reflection on two things going on at the moment. One is a sort of writer’s block for articles, normally I have a lot of things I want to talk about but lately I’ve been at a loss for words. Just sitting back and absorbing the noise and the world. Digesting it, slowly. Getting the good bits, trying to find the important parts, trying. The other thing is the book.
Monolithic Horizon started a long time ago, when I was around the age of twenty. Sure other stories have come along and I’ve worked on shorts and played with a few chapters here and there for the hell of it, for a break, for whatever. But the end result is that the book was never finished, I just sat on it. I’ve been delaying finishing it since I started writing it because, I’m dreadfully afraid of failure. It seems as though my preference has been been simply to not try. When you don’t try and you fail, at least it’s easier. When you work hard for something, when you… for whatever reason, actually care about something and it slips through your fingers or falls apart then it’s a lot harder to deal with. At least in my case.
My whole life has been like that. It’s something ingrained in me ever since I was a child. So I didn’t finish the book because if I did and it never went anywhere than I could tell myself it will some day, you know… have that little nugget of hope. If I try and fail however, then there’s no excuse. There’s no fallback plan. I’ll have to face a reality of being broke and probably working miserable fucking jobs I hate till I go mad. Though, I have decided to take my own advice. A person can’t live life in fear of something stupid like failure, or anything else for that matter. For all intents and purposes for the large majority of my adult life this cowardly excuse has dominated my rationale to avoid finishing something that could lead to something I desperately want. That’s why I’ve been gone for a month or so from writing here. I’ve been pounding away on the book.
There’s three acts to Monolithic Horizon, each with distinct themes. Act One is about the present. Act Two is the past. Act Three is the future. Well, this is the first time in the constant re-writes, losses, and frustrations I’ve had thinking about, working on, and conceptualizing this damned book that I’ve reached the final act. Normally around the middle of act one I give up and go into an infinite editing look. I’m actually almost done with this god-damn thing. The new method I’ve come up with to power through and resist editing anything till I was done has worked fairly well. Sure once I’m actually at the end I can go through and flesh things out and fix typos, etc, but that’s not the point. My goal was to get the rough draft done by the end of the year so I can do the final final final FINAL edit and then start sending it out.
Then I’ll re-post the first act, as the final edited version starting January next year. It’s been seven long years, a lot of things have changed in my life and in the way I look at things, this book has been sort of like the Sun … the common experience (or object) by which everything else in my life has orbited. In order to truly move on with my life I need to finish this once and for all.
Somewhat recently I became interested in reading up on the Big Bang, the creation of the universe, and where this whole cosmic train is heading. The Big Bang, well all scientists can say is that they have no way of knowing how that dot of matter came to be or why it exploded. The big minds of that field, like Hawkings, say that because they cannot possibly determine what happened before that all they can do is work on what happened since then. A lot of them are even agnostic, claiming that the Big Bang is proof of something, maybe not an intelligent ‘creator’ but creation itself doesn’t follow a logical premise so there has to be more to it than that.
What I wonder is what is beyond our little universe, and a more prominent question in my mind is why we are here at all. It doesn’t make any sort of sense for there to be a universe or for there to be anything. When you think about it in the large-scale terms why is there anything at all? Why isn’t there just a vast never ending nothingness? The idea of an intelligent creator, or even a catalyst for creation doesn’t make much sense. If the universe had any sort of logic at all there wouldn’t be a universe to begin with. Or maybe it’s some sort of rule that there mush be something, that the universe cannot just be an empty dead space.
Last night my little brother was telling me that he had to attend a seminar about how it’s important to preserve the oceans, about how it’s important to save the whales and such. I found myself laughing. I said that the sun will become too hot to support life on the surface of the planet after a billion years. After two the oceans are going to be boiled and eventually dry up. After the sun turns into a red giant in another few billion years then world will be utterly destroyed, as it sinks into the enlarged sun. Pretty much our entire solar system will be annihilated when that happens. After another few billion years Andromeda, a nearby solar system like the Milky Way, is going to crash into us and merge with our solar system, probably destroying all the cosmos we’ve charted. If we’re a space-race by this point we will probably be in great danger during this event. Assuming we live we’ll start to see a lot of the stars die out and turn into black dwarfs, after an even longer period of time we’ll witness the universe tear itself apart thanks to the law of thermodynamics. Energy will continue to burn as entropy increases. The end result will be a universe that slowly over time uses up all it’s heat energy and begins to degenerate into a frozen wasteland of atomic soup. The Universe’s continued expansion will result in space tearing itself apart as things decay further, after about a few trillion years, we’ll be in a cosmological dark age where even the supermassive black holes have died out.
Basically, in a long enough time line, we are cosmologically doomed.
When you look at the sales pitch for Capitalism and how it’s supposed to function, it feels to me as though it were crafted in order to conjure up fictitious images that reflect the undisclosed desires of an individual. They want it to sound empowering and even morally righteous. They will tell you with hard work, you’re going to be rich! I’m sure, for the most part, that everyone is familiar by now with how the sales pitch goes. It’s usually something about the free market. A little about how anyone can be rich if they come out with a really great product. Something along those lines. Typically it doesn’t pan out like this. Hell even the pointless right-leaning version of Wikipedia acknowledges that, and they have a near 50-page long article about how homosexuality is the root of all sorts of social diseases. Consider this:
“One self-regulating feature of capitalism is competition, which helps maintain fair market value for goods and services. However, unrestrained or pure capitalism may sometimes create a positive feedback loop in which a small number of individual accumulations of capital grow ever larger, eventually becoming so few as to limit effective competition, thus ceasing to strictly be free-market capitalism. In this regard, pure capitalism is unstable.”
It’s not really unstable. It’s how the system was designed to work. You start a business, it gets big, you become a corporation in order to function at higher and higher levels economically, with one real goal in mind. The only goal of a corporation is to increase profits for it’s shareholders. That’s absolutely it. That’s essentially the nature of the beast, and it shouldn’t be really surprising when corporations begin interfering in politics. When you have the money, you can influence the power, and with the money and the power you can begin to stack the deck against anyone else coming to take your piece of the market. You can begin to eliminate competition, and you can ensure that only the people who play by your rules ever get to experience what it’s like to be one of them. Wealthy. Keep in mind that when I refer to wealth, I’m not talking about a couple of million. I’m referring to the type of money that grants you political power. That’s not something that’s obtainable, except on a small scale, to anyone but a corporate entity.
When a corporation’s activities negatively or positively impact a society they actually have crafted a term for this so that when they speak of it, anyone but those familiar with the term, will be unaware as to what they are referring to. This is an important function of what I have started to dub ‘corp speak.’ The purpose of corp speak, is to obfuscate the meaning of what they are saying so that the layperson will not be able to actually comprehend whatever point they are making. The particular term, in this case, is an ‘externality.’ Wikipedia defines an externality like this.
I took a picture of myself making a stupid face, a hobby of mine when I’m extremely bored. Which, thanks to ADD is almost every waking moment of my life.
This is the picture in question…
I told my girlfriend, that this is the face when I’m behind her… doing, well, you know.
On my voter registration card is an acronym, it says ‘NPA.’ No Party Affiliation. There’s a reason I don’t support any political party, and that’s because it makes the most sense to me not to put my faith in the hands of complete idiots. Seriously, spend half a day watching house and senate meetings on CSPAN and you’ll see what I’m talking about. These are supposedly the best of the party, the winners, the people in charge of making laws to improve our collective lives. So why is it that the speaker from Tennessee or Alabama or one of those bible belt states is wasting the House’s time requesting that everyone stand up and sing ‘God Bless America’ and those that are opposed should be put on record as ‘hating America?’ Because he’s an idiot that’s why, and so is every single person that voted for him. Then some democrat from up north, I think New York gets up and starts singing it before whoever is in charge of this ship of fools stops this lame political stunt in it’s tracks.
These are the people responsible for passing bills and reforms folks, a room full of feeble old people who spend most of their time obfuscating every issue and delaying any progress to make some half-assed protests or to try and score some political points for their re-election campaign. That’s all it is really, these are career politicians. They have awesome health care (at taxpayer expense), their pockets are lined with so many backers and lobbyists, that to think that people in circumstances like that actually give a damn what happens to anyone else is almost laughable. That’s just rhetoric though.
It’s just humorous to me to see what these people do exactly. For example, just now I was watching this guy from Texas, one, John Carter, go on a speech in the House. This man, who looks like my grandfather, went on about the forefathers, and how they founded a ‘republic’ for blah blah blah morals blah blah blah. This went on for about three minutes. First, I don’t think the House needs a damn history lesson that serves as little more than an attempt to assert your party is right by simple virtue of the fact the forefathers founded a republic so republic-ans must be the chosen ones. Right, okay, whatever. Second, I’m not sure what this has to do with the purpose of the hearing, which apparently was to talk about the federal bailout money and where it went. I know why he said it, to fluff his point. To give whatever argument he’s about to present the presumption of correctness rather than actually making a point that’s significant enough to stick.
It’s a fair question, isn’t it? While it’s true that many of these “authors” are not being paid for their work, and even the ones who are become uncannily lazy in the alluring bask of fame, that’s just no excuse to publish shitty content to your audience simply because you know they have no better expectations than what you have to offer. During an enlightening conversation with Mr. Repose, I decided I could do much worse than to expose some of the reasons that the vast majority of webcomics will probably always be lamesauce.
Sadly, the first word that comes to my mind when I think of webcomics is not “funny”, but rather “failure”. In a virtual world where most people have no personality decipherable from some other blockhead sitting two seats down on one of the other library computers, some of these boring, unfulfilled sheep use the vast array of 5 or 6 genuinely “unique” characters on countless webcomics to make themselves feel that they can identify with someone… even if they’re not real. Then when someone they met online asks them what they’re like in real life, they can have a lie at the ready:
Billyskater93: I’m like Brandon, the super cool guitarist in METALCOMIC. Here’s a link to his bio.
SallyJuniperxoxo: That’s so awesome! Do you play guitar? ^_^;
Billyskater93: I’m learning. Also I’m thinner than Brandon. LOL!!
One idiot lying to another idiot. The fact is that Brandon’s clone looks nothing like the character would look as a real person, and is in fact 260 lbs. and his knowledge of guitars is that he’s seen them on MTV. Oh and Sally is probably a guy.
It’s not a problem when you compare yourself to a fictional character, lots of people do that, but when you give someone an unrealistic outlook about you and start to believe that you’re successful and awesome simply by the virtue of optimism, this can only lead to disappointment.
Another strong selling point to readers and simultaneously, the most obnoxious thing about webcomics, is the attitude. Never before have cocky expressions and raised eyebrows received so much undue popularity outside of an animated film produced by Dreamworks. In some comics, that’s the whole fucking punchline! An “edgy” look of disgust, hate, and/or confusion. You know, if these guys just didn’t bother trying to come up with filler, we could all enjoy webcomics for what they really are:
(Headnote: You’ll have to pardon the relatively dramatic kick the goodship Nonpersons has been on lately, I usually rely on my ally The Warden to counterbalance whatever I’m doing, but with a tidal wave of words from yours truly flooding the site in the last month anything he could do would just end up getting buried into a fusillade of my textual fury.)
During my time on these tubes I have encountered an unusual amount of desperate, lonely, and in some cases, eccentric people. This is because, due to my nature, I tend to avoid websites and such that are extremely large and/or popular. In the more obscure corners these kinds of people thrive. One of the deciding factors for my leaving Open Diary ten years ago stemmed from the fact that the place was outgrowing it’s users. Now, this experience in dealing with these types of people, is that you find out something which I feel is extremely important in life… that your situation is not special or unique. Odds are, someone else has been where you’re going or has just crawled out of where you’ve been. I forget where this quote is from that summarizes that sentiment, but I think it was a video game. I want to say Max Payne, but I’m not sure. Anyway it goes something like this. “There are no apocalypses, just personal ones; and nothing is a cliche when it’s happening to you.”
In the process of moving around on the internet I’ve made several friends that I no longer speak to. That’s always been the way I’ve dealt with my life, in general. I’ll team up with someone for a while but when I feel that whatever bond we shared has been resolved or the common thread is severed I move on. This is a pre-emptive action on my part, since I’ve lived under the fatal assumption that everyone will end up leaving me eventually, so I make the first move. Hit the road, so to speak. Now, it’s not like this assumption is entirely baseless. As a matter of fact, nine times out of ten once someone has gotten what they want out of me, whether it be some advice, an emotional crutch, or simply a friendly ear to listen to them, almost invariably they stop speaking to me when the trouble passes.
This has not made me bitter, believe it or not, since I understand how these things work. Once the situation passes, once the trouble is gone, well what else is there for two people to say to each other? It’s not like I have a lot in common with anyone. In general my outlook is fairly pragmatic in terms of making friends. If they stick around for a long time, if we have a lot in common great, but you know that nothing lasts forever. It’s become increasingly difficult for me to trust anyone, or even get close to people. Instead I look for all sorts of reasons not to. I know that I should not be acting this way, but as much as I seem to enjoy saying ‘good-bye’ to people, one can only take so many partings before it begins to become extremely tiresome. Being left behind can do things to your ego no amount of insults or violence could ever hope to. And you know what? It’s my fault for taking these things personally, but I guess at the time I didn’t quite grasp the situation as clearly as I did then, looking back on it.
Throughout my life I’ve been plagued with a nagging doubt, inherently distrusting most anything I hear or see till I can get a close examination of it. This is because my life has not exactly been filled with rainbows and buttercups. Some people are shown a different world through their experience than others. Some may have viewed their school days, for example, with fondness. Others may only remember the awkwardness and the petty cruelties imposed upon them by others. As an example of course, because I certainly don’t relate to the latter at all. Because of this distrust, a person becomes somewhat difficult to manipulate or be told things that they cannot confirm. Of these things, religion is definitely one of them. I was raised Southern Baptist, went to crazy churches full of yelling and carrying on, when behind the scenes things weren’t much different for me than school. I got picked on by the church kids… in the damn church. My family has always made the assumption that due to this fact, I viewed all Christians as hypocrites and distanced myself from the religion.
I’d say that they are half-right. Most Christians, it seems, tend to bypass the parts of the bible that are inconvenient for them and exaggerate others for their own benefit. That’s not my problem with Christianity, or any religion based on the teachings of the bible. My particular issue is much more complicated than that. It wouldn’t be fair of me to dislike an entire religion because the followers don’t always heed the words they profess to base their lives around. Some people have a problem with people basing their life on a book written thousands of years ago and, as a result, is not relevant to modern life; but those are the same people that just are too lazy to see how the old viewpoints are applicable to today. It’s not hard to infer generalities from old literature, people do it all the time. You’d hardly consider Homer to be a waste of paper, even though it’s not relevant to today, you can still get something out of it. Hence why they teach it in schools.
No, my problem lies with the very heart of the religion itself, God. The Creator. Science claims that one day a big wad of crap exploded and made the universe, but little is offered to explain where said wad of crap came from or why it decided to erupt. Christianity professes that god did it. Well, lets explore that. Why did God create the universe? An all-powerful, all-knowing, all-seeing being was just floating around in nothingness since… forever. We are given no explanation as to where this being came from, what created him, and how the hell he has so much power. So this supposedly all-powerful force was just sitting around one day, got bored, and decided to make the universe. From that point he decided to create life. What’s the motivation exactly? Maybe he was lonely. Maybe it was a test to see which of the very beings he created would stay loyal to him after he put a little pressure on them. So heaven goes to war, they kill each other off, and the survivors are cast down to Hell. Giving God a place to send those who he decides he must punish. Beings he created. Beings he knew would react in a certian way no matter what he did because he’s omnipotent. Yet he went ahead and did it anyway. He made man.
An incident occurred tonight, about fifteen minutes ago, of which I am somewhat attempting to wrap my head around. I was in my room, minding my own business and sorting through my stuff because I’m boxing things up in anticipation of moving in the next month or so. My little brothers are out in the living room, playing Halo. A game I despise, by the way. Anyway, they are doing what young kids do. Drinking playing their x-box, hanging out. Just another normal night at this house, and while I find the constant noise somewhat obnoxious, nothing is worse than the crazy idiots that seem to be attracted to my family like moths drawn to a forest fire. There’s a quote by Jonathan Swift, which rotates on the right side of this site every now and then, that says “When a great genius appears in the world the dunces are all in confederacy against him.” If that’s the case, then my brothers must be the next incarnation of Einstein, with the sheer amount of morons that seem to constantly be out to attack them in retardedly (I know that’s not a word, shut up) petty ways.
So I hear this screaming outside, just pure nutty-ass screaming. This is unusual for a place that’s full of dying old people. It’s this short, fat, blond woman. About 45-50. Yelling so damn loud that it’s making my ears hurt. So I go out there, and keep in mind that in most normal situations I don’t tend to walk into a swirling torrent of crazy because it’s fucking pointless most of the time, but for some stupid reason I thought perhaps I could talk some fucking sense into this lady. So this is what I managed to gather, her son is a degenerate fuckup who was drinking in combination with taking pain pills and stumbled home, told this crazy woman who apparently is his mother, and after punching him in the face, decided to wander over here and accuse, of all people, me, of giving him alcohol. Well, not really me, anyone who happened to walk out of our house, but I took personal offense when she said it to me. So I told her to get the fuck out, and also pointed out that I ‘almost never drink, you degenerate retard’ in those exact words too. She left, I assume, because she didn’t know me, whereas she felt she could fuck with my brothers all she wanted because they are younger. Apparently she pulled in the lot, nearly hit my brother, and got out the car shoving him and screaming at him. I had to ask him why he didn’t slap her across the face the moment she laid a finger on him, because I sure as hell would have.
So I go back inside, fairly annoyed by this point, and start to collect the garbage. As I’m heading out the door, this crazy fucking lady pulls back in the parking lot and starts wandering around knocking on people’s doors apparently looking for my grandfather’s house. In the middle of the god-damned night. She’s going to wake up my poor, sick, grandfather to scream at him because her son fucked up and wanted to blame someone get her off his case? I don’t think so. Before I go out there again to tell her to get the fuck out, again, my brothers friends do so for me. She threatens to cal the police on them and they basically tell her to go ahead, mock her, and generally insult her for being an idiot. She leaves.
Released in 2009 during the famous television writer’s strike, Joss Whedon’s Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog is a web-based mini series created by a small talented team and distributed in 3 acts over the course of about a week. The entire production from beginning to end consists of purely brilliant writing, acting and creativity that was apparently meant to show that the writer’s strike would not make all options for entertainment impossible. It worked.
As I watched, and watched again, I realized that there is something very familiar and comforting about this one-shot sensation. Sure, the humor is some of the best I’ve seen, the music is incredible, and it’s going to be topping charts as one of the greatest random displays of genius that we’ve had the pleasure to see outside of the typical scripted work on TV. But it wasn’t that. It was Dr. Horrible himself.
Dubbed a “tragicomedy”, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog presents trials that could relate to so many people if the rules were different. A decent person down deep, Dr. Horrible (alias Billy) merely wants to be inducted into the Evil League of Evil for his scheming and inventing talents; a typical mad scientist, he is not brutal or murderous in the least, until someone hurts him and puts him in a position in which even non-geniuses find themselves driven to unspeakable feats, and that is where some viewers can identify. It no longer becomes the exact same sort of humor the bubbly idiot sitting next to you is watching, and you find it funny but you find it sad too.
The rich alone use imported articles, and on these alone the whole taxes of the General Government are levied… Our revenues liberated by the discharge of the public debt, and its surplus applied to canals, roads, schools, etc., the farmer will see his government supported, his children educated, and the face of his country made a paradise by the contributions of the rich alone, without his being called on to spend a cent from his earnings. — Thomas Jefferson, Written to Thaddeus Kosciusko, 1811
