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ebogjonson's May 2007 archive
May 30, 2007
hall of mirrors
Wherein I write about being written about. From Strange Horizons Reviews: Mistakes and All: Defending Battlestar Galactica, written by Jeremy Adam Smith:
And if Battlestar Galactica is, as many insist, an extended commentary on the war on terror--a war that might never end, fought in a moral and political negative zone--then who are "we" supposed to be? Battlestar Galactica, culture critic Gary Dauphin writes, flirts "with a whole bunch of heretical notions . . . most of them related to the possibility that some or another 'we' (it's just a tv [sic] show, right? nothing to do with 'us') might be on the wrong side of history." In the third season, when the human resistance puts on ski masks and sends suicide bombers into crowds, Dauphin writes, Battlestar Galactica "quit[s] with the coy stuff," andthe up-tempo scoring charts a rising arc of anxieties: Are we the cylons or the humans? Am I [Gaius] Baltar or [Laura] Roslyn [sic]? Was the show always about the war? Is it against the law to root for terrorists on TV?
When ex-President Roslyn [sic] says, "Our children need to know that some people fought back while others collaborated," half the audience will hear some kind of founding fathers bullshit, and half will hear a Hamas or Hizzbollah leader rallying the proverbial irregular troops.
Jeremy is a friend of a friend. The all-powerful network does not just live, it works!
Posted by ebogjonson in battlestar galacticame me me at 11:02 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
May 29, 2007
one way to do it
There are times when I'd like to live like this:
Meet the "users": We don't talk, we don't like you, we just want to playI'd like to introduce you to one of the more unknown tribes in the online community. We rarely talk about them because they're not as annoying as the griefers or as rampant as the "I have to take a bong hit now" people on Xbox Live, but they're out there. I'm ashamed to say I'm one of them. We're users. We don't hook up our headsets, we mute your voice, and we just play the damn game. We're not here to make friends, and if you extend an invite, it will just get rejected. We rarely leave feedback. For us online gaming isn't social; most people on Xbox Live aren't worth being social with. You may be on the other end of the line chattering away about the game, but we're not listening.
See, for the users, online play is just a way to supplant a game's AI. I don't want to hear how good/bad I did after a race. The only reason I'm playing you at all is because it's more fun to play against a human brain than the computer. I've been yelled at, told to hook up my headset, or belittled during a game of Poker before I started to just mute everyone as a matter of course. People want to buddy up when they play online, but I just want a more human-acting opponent. Please don't talk to me, just provide me with competition. I know I'm using you, but I'm getting increasingly comfortable with it.
Sure, I talk when I'm playing with friends or people I already know, but honestly online opponents are an infinitely renewable resource. If you're annoyed by my behavior, just don't play. I'll find someone else. I'm not proud of using people this way, but it makes games more fun to play. Humans make human mistakes, and even mediocre players use more realistic tactics than the computer.
This behavior is moving outside of the world of Xbox Live and onto the PlayStation 3. When I play Calling All Cars online, I don't even plug in my headset. I just like playing against other cars that act like humans are driving them. I know it's selfish, but I don't plan on stopping.
Posted by ebogjonson in videogames and other cracks at 7:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
May 26, 2007
i'm just loving the world into a crisis of change
Sorry for the non-posting, but your droog and humble narrator has been a bit distracted the last month or so. The list of stuff that's gotten in the way of the bloggery is long, but the main culprit has been a fairly mundane and workaday time-crunch, some pals having employed me since the start of April to think about the Internet for them. As a result, '07 has been crap when it comes to the posting, and those of you who are still around to read this update-cum-apologia really do walk super-saintly in the light of the god/patron saints/loa/whatever of personal publishing. I mean, I have literally stopped telling people I have a blog, such is the wasterlandery of EBOG'07: January I was recovering from Kenya, February I was tending to a sick nana, March I was recovering from tending to a sick nana, and April and May I was out earning the Yankee dollar, bringing us up to the present, five months with a grand total of 10 posts tops. Crap, I tell you!
More cryptically, I will also confess that since about New Years I've been in the throes of one of those periodic, every 7-years or so psychic spasms, a kind of transformative life-seizure that threatens to reset about everything before it wanes, leaving me with little in the way of spare cycles to devote to, say, Alberto Gonzales or Imus or the new LCD Soundsystem record. It's a shame, because so much is happening about which I think I have a cent or two to throw in, but thems be the proverbial blogger-breaks. Fortunately, the world is so chock-full of smart, entirely google-able people who are constantly saying things I would have said, just as well and better. Everyday I read the blogs and feel outraged and depressed, sure, but also old-fashioned inspired at how many fine people there are out in the world putting words and ideas and pictures and things together. My only regret is that all of you don't live in Downtown LA, thereby allowing us to have a pint together, develop crushes on one another, run around and plot world domination, or, barring that, utopia. My template for the way I feel about my blog-roll and daily blog reading habits is Fort Greene, Brooklyn in the 1990s, a time and place when everyone I ever wanted to know lived a few blocks away from me and did the same work I did, when we all belonged to the same dial-up BBS (!), i.e., Omar Wasow and Peta Hoyes' New York Online. Aging "golden age" cranks are a bore, I know, but I really do have to say that I have seen the rise-and-fall of our era's last/best promised land, and its lingering hold on my thoughts and inclinations is precisely why each and every one of you seems so familiar to me. It really and truly is like we all got high together once in someone's park-facing apartment; it's completely amazing.
Since we're all buds here, I feel like I have to warn you, though, that posting will likely continue to be similarly thin heading through August, this because on top of everything else I've been accepted to, er, an intensive six-week workshop for writers preparing for professional careers in science fiction and fantasy, held annually in Seattle, Washington, USA. So I might be out of the loop a bit. I head to Seattle in couple of weeks and won't be "back" (whatever that means. I'm barely here now) until 8/3 or so, and I've been warned that the pace of writing (a story a week for six weeks) has made it difficult for bloggers and journalers to get their entry-a-day in. We'll see.
I went to a graduation (not mine) a few weeks ago that was complicated and bitter for a bunch of reasons best explicated elsewhere, but in the midst of what was a classic downward spiral I was literally shocked out of myself by a speaker on stage exhorting the exiting class to "love the world into a crisis of change." (Does anyone know where that line is from?) What a strange and random and dangerous thing to hear while brooding your way into a comfortable and easy funk! Because, first off, there are underlying ways in which loving the world runs counter to the grain of my temperament, brain-chemistry, outlook and so on. I mean, the world sucks most days, it seems fucked and populated by vast numbers of annoyances and mediocrities, so the thought bubble over my head at any given moment tends to be something along the lines of "what a moron you are!" or "jesus fucking christ can you stop making bullshit sounds with you mouth!" or "my only (other) regret is that there is no actual hell for you to go to!" To love such a world calls for a fundamental re-orientation, and to love it into a crisis of change requires (as I understand the idea, at least) not just a passive encounter with the world's notional lovable-ness, but the active, constant introduction of newsness and goodness into said word, a commitment to making true and useful and decent things for other people in hopes that your honorable work of addition might engender something similarly new, who the fuck knows what but it better be better than this shit.
So, if you ever find yourself wondering exactly what I'm up to at any given moment and the blog is no help just tell yourself: oh, right! Gary is supposed to be out loving the world into a crisis of change! I have no idea what that actually means but lack of info seems to me to be the valuable part. It's like that scene in The Matrix when Trinity tells Neo he's been down that street before, he knows exactly where it leads. That movie is bullshit on a bunch levels, but it's right that you might as well be dead the day you get sure nothing will ever change.
Posted by ebogjonson in brain maintenanceebog housekeeping at 10:57 AM | Permalink | Comments (5)
May 14, 2007
when someone great is gone
I wish that we could talk about it,
But there, that's the problem.
With someone new I could have started,
Too late, for beginnings.
The little things that made me harassed,
Are gone, in a moment.
I miss the way we used to argue,
Locked, in your basement.
I wake up and the phone is ringing,
Surprised, as it's early.
And that should be the perfect warning,
That something's, a problem.
To tell the truth I saw it coming,
The way, you were breathing.
But nothing can prepare you for it,
The voice, on the other, end.
The worst is all the lovely weather,
I'm sad, it's not raining.
The coffee isn't even bitter,
Because, what's the difference?
There's all the work that needs to be done,
It's late, for revision.
There's all the time and all the planning,
And songs, to be finished.
And it keeps coming,
And it keeps coming,
And it keeps coming,
Till the day it stops
(Repeat x3)
And it keeps coming,
(Repeat x7)
Till the day it stops.
I wish that we could talk about it,
But there, that's the problem.
With someone new I could have started,
Too late, for beginnings.
You're smaller than my wife imagined,
Surprised, you were human.
There shouldn't be this ring of silence,
But what, are the options?
When someone great is gone.
(Repeat x8)
We're safe, for the moment.
Saved,
For the moment
Posted by ebogjonson in the love at 4:53 PM | Permalink
May 12, 2007
sign of the times
Posted by ebogjonson in city of angelsplaces at 3:32 PM | Permalink
May 1, 2007
@ yale in general, and other updates
Howdy peeps. A hearty welcome to everyone who was directed here as a result Chris Muir-related links at Jon Swift, Bitch Ph.D, and other places on the tubes. Have a seat; stay a while!
Actually, maybe you shouldn't. As some of the ebog regulars have no doubt noticed, blogging has been pretty slow here the last month, this in the main because I've been working a contract gig helping some radio pals think through their online stra-teeg-ery.
Usually I'm able to blog through deadlines and projects, but it turns out that west coast radio people get up at the crack of dawn (EST vs. PST), so starting around April 1 or so I found myself getting up earlier in the morning than I have gotten up ever. I mean, I am getting up earlier than I got up in high school to take a bus to an 8:43 (or was it :23?) first period, and this is coming from someone who is not what you'd call a morning person. It's been a bit of a strain, and among the many things that have had to give are, well, all of you. I'd say I was sorry (sorry!) except that what I really am is sleepy. (Sleepy!)
I will say, though, that it's nice being in an office again for a bit. Offices have funny, little internal lives of their own and there are people here to interact with who aren't baristas. (Also, at the risk of a broad range of improprieties, I will add that enclosed spaces full of smart single/not-single-but-bored people always have their upsides.)
Despite this burden on my system, though, I did find time to fly off to New Haven this weekend to participate in a conference at Yale Law School on open access. Much of the crew from Kenya was reassembled in CT for a panel - Open Access Literature - so I don't need to tell you that great fun and learning was had by all.
It was also fun to be back in New Haven for a safe, empowered spell. I've been back to Yale twice since I graduated in, er, 1990, the first time to watch a GF I was breaking up with graduate, and, the second time to attend a somewhat fraught reunion where not enough of my friends showed, or, worse, showed in the form of people quite unlike those I remembered. This weekend, in contrast, was conference-time, that special, oasis-like zone where everything is upside and everyone at least acts like you're full of useful and interesting things to say. I think could go to conferences every single week, but that may just be because I'm not an academic.
Posted by ebogjonson in the collective at 9:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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