Interesting Fodder

Faction: Issue #0 Promises More Awesomeness to Come

    Who would think to combine a smart but tough Special Forces doctor who looks like he could not only kick your ass with his pinkie nail but already did without you noticing with magic and science fiction?  Who would dream up a combination so strange? Erik Hendrix would, that's who.  According to the back matter, this is a project that has been rumbling around in his brain longer than I've been reading funny books.  And it shows.  Issue #0 of Erik Hendrix's Faction was released through limited distribution last Saturday.  I got my electronic review copy on Friday but haven't held a real copy so I can only guess that the color cover would look as good in person as it does on my monitor.

     

    Faction is a primarily self-published comic and as is standard with the self-published comics, its contents are black and white.  The cover has a brilliant use of warm colors and the impression of light jumping off the page which has become very popular in the last few years.  The interior pages have this same light impression but without the colors.  If only someone would print these things at a reasonable cost...but I digress.

    So, Faction.  This is only issue zero and you can feel the amount of story and character about to explode.  You only get so much room in an issue zero to hook people in and set up your story/scene.  You can't go too far with one character or you run the risk of setting your other characters up as flat and you can only go so far into the plot with so few pages.  And somehow, you still need to leave a hook.  Faction delivered.

    The book starts off with our "origin" story as it were of Acker Kinney, a 43 year old Special Forces medic.  Though I am pretty sure there is going to be some more "origin" to come.  This story is of the events that led up to Kinney leaving the military however involuntarily and finding his way to the team he is pictured with on the cover.  After being the sole survivor in his unit of a roadside bombing Acker wakes up in a hospital missing an arm and lamenting the end of his military career.  After a period of lackluster convalescence, he is attacked in the middle of the night by what he labels as a demon creature and defended by a group of people who seem to know him very familiarly.  Interestingly enough, the character doesn't shy from the fight with the demon nor does he stop to wonder if it is an odd thing to be fighting a demon in the middle of the night in a hospital ward.  Potential foreshadow? Quite possibly.

    Kinney joins up with this group who keep calling him a name he's never heard before - Asa - but not before dying first.  You would think a dead man could catch a break.  But no, after some convincing, he has to spend his time in intense physical and mental training.  The issue ends with his graduation from training but doesn't give us a "what's next", leaving the door wide open and leaving us wondering what he was training so hard and so long for.  And also wondering how these people know him.  Does he know them?

    In this zero issue we are introduced to the main members of the team and Acker.  The team isn't fleshed out much but there are enough dropped hints to a larger back story for the team as a whole and the individual characters as well.  We see just a taste of who Acker's enemies will be and are left with a question of what his function will be in his new life. As I said earlier, it shows that Erik has been thinking of this one for a while - there are a lot of details that seem to be hiding at the edges, waiting to be read in future issues.  The issue is packed with back matter and Erik told me that the review copy I received only had a smidgen compared to what will be out in print.  There are character bios that give us more information than the issue did but that I'm sure will be of great use when issue #1 is out.

    You can get issue #0 at dimestoredistro.com in either a digital format for $2.00 or a printed format for $3.50.  The website for the comic is beardedladyonline.com/faction/

Fallen Justice #1 Hits the Mark on the iPhone

Fallen Justice #1 was just released as a free app at iTunes for us Kool-Aid drinkers - I mean iPhone users.  It’s the first issue of a comic book originally produced and printed by Red Handed Studios converted to the iPhone format by Graphics Lab 2 and the original creators.

Having started a mid-life crisis recently, I am relating well to the protagonist of Fallen Justice.  The protagonist, Justice Theta is in the middle of his career as a superhero.  He has been the leader of a group of heroes that are dedicated not just to beating up bad guys but in using their super powers for good: think construction projects in third world countries where a guy with super strength and the ability to fly would make George W. Bush’s penchant for brush clearing in Texas seem like a futile attempt by an ant to change its environment.  He has a super powered girlfriend and we get the impression that he runs a very large economic empire reminiscent of Iron or Batman.  He is one of the higher level super powers, able to take on the big bads.

But it’s all changing for him.  He is sabotaged on air by an entertainment television hostess demanding he share his true identity to prove that he isn’t doing good deeds to place himself above others.  He faces bad news coverage over the loss of life and the property damage incurred when he takes on a super villain.  The team of super heroes he has led for years “suggests” that he step down as leader since he is creating a bad image for them.  He is avoiding fights with his girlfriend, burying himself in his good deeds to hold himself together, and it looks like it may be getting worse. 

I won’t spoil the ending for you since it is available as a free download on iTunes, but I’ll let you know he is in a time of reevaluation and with the way the first issue left off, I think the second issue is going to be a great amount of soul-searching and meaning-of-life story lines.  One wonders what he will do with his lot in life now that he has reached such a huge turning point.  Is he going to find a way to create a legacy for himself? 

The imagery on this comic is just great.  This comic is a printed comic put out by RedHandedStudios.com but appears as if it was originally designed for the iPhone.  The panels were re-worked with the original creators and are perfect for the screen unlike some of the other comics out there that have tried porting themselves over to the iPhone format.   Most impressive however is the light.  The back-lighting of the iPhone makes the colors amazingly vibrant.  In panels of TV screens (because every comic needs at least one), you really feel like you are looking at a television screen.

The comic has some great potential.  It’s great to look at and it leaves us on a great hook at the end.  We’re given just enough of the main character to worry about him but not so much that we’re going to burn our paper issues on YouTube if the creator does something we don’t like with him. The first issue is free on iTunes so it’s worth a look if you have an iPhone.  Fallen Justice #2 will be out soon and Graphics Lab 2 tells me they plan on releasing other comics – some as 100% original iPhone books and some more comic to iPhone conversions in the future.

 

Link to the comic: Fallen Justice #1

And if you don't have issues with vertigo (the sensation, not the publisher) like I do, Graphics Lab 2's website has a video with a bunch of images from the comic and some good music in the background: Graphics Lab 2

Happy reading!

Kooky Moms

I'm really getting into the kooky mom character right now.  Reading one in a book at Rob's has gotten me thinking about the whole mildly-but not really-crazy matriarch character. I am finding the sometimes odd enthusiasm our mothers have laughable and adorable rather than something to fear and disparage.  Perhaps it is something about the emotionality of women that gives us our quirky moms.  Or maybe it is the way we revere our moms that make us look at their actions as humorous rather than scary.  

So I've been sitting around contemplating what my level of quirkiness as Mom would be. I'd like to think I'd be the annoying health food mom who rants about the evils of gluten and won't give her kids processed sugar but who will pretend she didn't notice dad giving them chocolate ("gosh, how'd they get so hyper?"). When Rob witnessed a gluten episode in me, I was terrified - it was one of the things my ex said would make me a horrific mother.  I tried to address the possibility that he'd be thinking that as well by saying "well, at least it's late at night so it wouldn't be seen by kids."  His response was "no, they'd be awake by now - but that's what I'm for.  I'd handle them."  Beyond the sigh of relief, I've been imagining what would happen if the kids were woken up because mom accidentally got a crouton crumb in her salad.

They would obviously have to know pretty young that gluten makes their mom a nutter.  And that she'll go sit in a corner and cry for an hour and then be easy to annoy for the next two days.  But the idea that I'd wake the kids in the night gave me this hilarious picture/scene in my head:

(kids wake up and turn on lights.  one steps into the hall to hear mom crying.)
kid 1: hey, mom's up
(dad hears kids goes to their room)
dad: hey kiddos, mom accidentally ate some bread.  she's gonna be up for a while.
kid 2: can we stay up?
dad: sure, why don't you play some of your video games.
(kids go into living room to play video games (and, of course, in my mind they're playing Super Mario Bros, but I'm sure it'll be some annoying first person 3D-VR-turn-your-stomach-vertigo-machine))
kid 2: I love it when mom gets crazy.
kid 1: that's mean!
kid 2: yeah but we get to stay up and play video games.

So, kooky mom has found her way into some of my writing.  The whole super-hero romance novel stuff I've been working on is turning into comedy with the kooky mom as a central character.  I may have overdone it and flummoxed the noble genre:

It wasn't that she was crazy.  She thought of herself as an eccentric but she had no wealth to back it up.  Crystal would allow the muse to take her over.  She would go with whatever came to her.  Projects were started and abandoned.  She liked to tell people that DaVinci never finished a project.  Once he figured out how to do something, he was bored with it and moved on.  She thought of herself as a modern-day DaVinci.  Her kids just thought she was nuts.

So when the day came that she decided she would fight crime as a costumed vigilante, it didn't surprise her kids.  As she sewed her new Lycra costume, they hoped that she would tire before it was time to start walking the streets, patrolling for the bad guys as it were.  The costume came out a crazy mess.  Instead of something black that would allow her to lurk in the shadows like some rich eccentric trained in martial arts, she chose a loud hot pink and plum suit with silver embroidery.  The amount of detail was more than a normal person would have gone for.  But not Crystal.  She was an eccentric, after all.

"What're you going to call yourself, mom?" her youngest had asked.  Sasha had blonde hair like father with the pale skin of her mother.  It made her look sickly and made people give Crystal a third glance (the second was guaranteed).

Her kids were at the dining room table eating what passed for a macaroni casserole.  Being out of tuna and not wanting to feed her kids ground beef, Crystal had used bits of shredded chicken, sour cream and thrown in some peanuts for texture.  She told them it was like a dish she had when she was in the peace corps in Africa; a peanut stew, she had said.  Her daughter was young and kind enough to still believe her mom's stories about life before children.

Crystal was putting her pink cape on, hoping the silver stars on the back made her look more like a superhero than a third-rate stage magician, though deep down she knew it was nowhere near either of those possibilities and closer to a 4-year old playing dress up.

"I was just thinking of going with Star Crystal," she said.  "See how I put the silver stars on the cape and the big purple star on the front of my costume?  Stars plus my name, Crystal so Star Crystal."

"Mom," said her middle child, Bruce.  "The point of a secret name is to keep your name out of it."  He had her mousy brown hair and pale skin.  He had a french look to him.  At nine years old, he was already Crystal's 'smart little man'.

"Well, what's the point of doing good deeds if you're afraid to say it was you doing them?" she straightened her boots again though they were already straight.

"And you could use a mask, too," he said. 

The oldest, Robbie, was staring down into his mac and chicken, stirring it as if the repeated turns would make it into a palatable meal.  He had hit fifteen with as much emo force as could be mustered.  His hair slipped into his eyes so often the only way the boy could see the world was if he was looking downwards.

"I've been researching what you're doing on the web," Bruce said, going into his 'lecture mode' form of speech.  "There are other people who do it and they have groups online you can join.  They call themselves 'reals' to distinguish themselves from comic book characters." 

Bruce had been hoping that telling his mom that it had been done before would dash her interest in the whole crime-fighter thing.  He was half expecting her to toss off her cape in a huff and go find a new project.  What he said wasn't phasing her.  This was bad.  This meant that she had more in mind than patrolling the streets.  She wasn't enough steps into her crazy scheme to be done playing with it.

"It turns out it is hard to catch people in the act of committing crimes," he said.  He was determined to make this boring and normal for her.  "The 'reals' wind up doing charity work in their costumes because there is no crime to fight like there are in the funny-books."

Plus, her attempt at a Rorschach-type journal:

This city this suburb never sometimes doesn't sleep.The climb up to the roof of the book store was an arduous one.  My grappling hook didn't take.  I threw it up at least five times.  The owners must be involved in the plot, must have known I was coming.  This city this suburb is loaded with crime.  I had to shimmy up the side of the building using the drain pipe.  It is thankfully only one story but from here I can see the whole three blocks of the grimy downtown district.  Maybe just this roof is grimy.  I sit perched up here, poised and ready to go.  I write in this journal to keep my focus and to document the evils I shall see.

-- Excerpt from the diary of Star Crystal, dated 3-9-2009.

WonderCon 2009 Highlights

Highlights from WonderCon 2009: All the WonderCon fit to...erm - that I saw.

Programming  on Saturday:

Star Trek:  The convention's programming guide said "Be among the first to see exclusive sneak peek footage from this exciting adventure before its May 8 release. Plus a special guest you won't want to miss, appearing live on the WonderCon stage." I was expecting Zachary Quinto who will be playing Spock as the special guest.  He's done the Con circuit before and has bee the surprise guest before.  Imagine my joy and delight when the special guest introduced was J.J. Abrams himself.  The master.  His work is truly awesome.  My thoughts: "Wow, so much better than that Sylar guy."  Well, after we were shown the clip from the new Star Trek movie, they brought out a few more guests and yep, Zachary Quinto was among them as well as the gentleman playing Kirk, Chris Haines.  

The panel, however, left me very concerned for the new movie.  All of the actors said they weren't originally fans and that they didn't study the original series to get a feel for the show or characters - that they mostly went with what they were given by the writers (one of whom had never seen a single Trek episode, or so he said).  They had the original actors come by and give their blessing and some said some coaching.  J.J. Abrams said he hadn't originally been a fan of the show, either.  Pre-Hulk, this wouldn't have concerned me. 

The first Hulk movie sucked.  Really, really, really sucked.  Enough that when the new Hulk movie was announced two years ago at ComicCon, the Marvel rep said that 1) the previous movie doesn't exist in continuity and 2) sorry.  The second film was made by a fan.  Turns out Edward Norton was a fan and he wrote a bunch of the script.  He was awesome.  It was awesome.  I think the difference was in the reverence for the subject.  This is why I fear the lack of fandom in the new movie.  Abrams, please prove me wrong.  I want this movie to rock.

The giveaway table had some Star Trek posters but one of the things I have learned from previous giveaway tables is that you just wind up with a bunch of rolled-up posters you never use so no Star Trek poster for me.

Mondo Marvel: (Make Mine Marvel)

They just showed us a slide show of some upcoming projects and promised us a great reveal on Sunday for the X-Men.  Nothing was stunning enough to hold my attention two days out, so I have nothing to write here other than it existed. I wanted to ask what was up with Ms. Marvel and her mysterious non-usage of powers of late but the people on the panel were not the ones who would've known the answer.

Vertigo:

The Vertigo panel had its slide show, of course.  One thing that caught my attention was the upcoming "Absolute Death" hardcover.  It collects all the Death trades plus a few of the short stories that never made it into trade but that I have buried somewhere in my back issues.  It'd be nice to get all of those together.  

100 Bullets is finally ending at issue 100.  The first trade of this was great.  The concept was: Here are 100 untraceable bullets.  Life gave you the short-end, do what you want with them. And the cool bit was watching the struggle people had with that concept.  It later blossomed out into a series involving secret organizations tied to the agent who was handing out the bullets in the first few trades.  My favorite quote from this panel had to do with a 100 Bullets video game:

Brian Azzarello: How does a game named 100 Bullets sound?
Man at mic who asked about the game: Cool.
BA: How does a game based on the comic sound?
Man: Not cool.
BA: There you go.


We skipped the Masquerade this year: we were both tired and ready to get on with things.

Sunday:

X-Men!:

So, the big reveal?  At first I thought it was pretty lame.  But thinking a bit more on it, it could be a turning point for the X-men: since House of M and the whole 198 business, the X-men have been staying out of Marvel affairs.  The Skrull invasion, World War Hulk, Civil War.  All of those things pale in comparison to the forced extinction of your entire species.  They've had to deal with people who want to accelerate that and their own slew of villains still.  You would think the pending extinction would make people less prejudiced and hateful, but no, not so.  So, the big deal is that with the upcoming Dark Avengers hoo-ha, they are going to get involved.  The teaser is that something is going to happen in SF that they are going to deal with in their very X-Men way and then Norman Osborne and his Dark Avengers are going to get involved - and they're going to destroy a lot of San Francisco.

There were some great talks about the X-Men coming to San Francisco.  Someone else said they loved the scenes in the X-Men with the fictional San Francisco mayor and I concur.  I would like to believe that the fictional mayor is representative of the bay area.  I think SF is a great home for the X-Men and love that they've moved our way.  I like the way the culture is being portrayed in the comic book and am now wondering how well other regional cultures are portrayed in the funny books in general (I'm thinking New York: Spider-Man, LA: Runaways).  Matt Fraction promised not to destroy the Golden Gate bridge because that would just be too cliche.  This I approve of.

A few things mention about the future of the X-verse:

1) Allusions to Jean Grey: Matt Fraction pointing out the Messiah baby is a red-haired girl with green eyes.  Him saying "Jean Grey? She's dead isn't she?" and "What isn't clear is was Jean the Phoenix or was the Phoenix Jean?" and saying about Jean "well, it's almost like she rises from the ashes."  Damn it.  Someone has been doing too much research on Jean Grey/Phoenix.  Please, let her stay dead.  Rachel Summers is still in outer space with some Phoenix-like abilities: if you need the Phoenix, bring her back to earth (except they're trying to get the cosmic universe going so I know they won't do that).  I just want Jean to stay dead.  So do the fans.  We really want her to stay dead. She'll be coming back.

2) When asked about the recent issue of the Avengers that had a return of the Scarlet Witch and what the X-Men response to this would be, Fraction let us know that the writers/editors had some plans for that but didn't say what.  In Avengers, she seems to be coming back to smack someone down and I don't know if that is a temporary out of retirement for this one bad guy then back to hiding away in a self-created shell in which she can't reach her own psyche or if she's back for good.  If she is back for good, can she undo the "No More Mutants" spell?  And if she can, will she?  And how are the X-Men going to respond?  They should be more than just angry.  They should be talking War Crimes, Genocide. Yeah, this one has me all a-tingly.  

Matt Fraction and Ed Brubaker:

More talk of the X-Men that I may have smooshed into the above and some general discussions of what they're writing.  Brubaker said he's enjoying Bucky as the Cap and mentioned some Noir stuff he's working on.


We spent the rest of Sunday wandering around the convention hall.  I was brave enough to be wearing a Zatana costume and got a couple picture requests.  I wonder if I got any snaps that I didn't see happening.  We bought some books, said hello to some of the local retailers and meandered in circles until my feet could take no more.

I think had I done the Con on my own as I had done all my other previous Cons, I would have jumped into more panels and pushed myself a bit harder.  My honey was with me, though, and was keeping me on an even kilter despite my tendency to overdo it.

Next up: SuperCon in May and maybe dressing up with Rob as Wonder Man and Ms. Marvel (google their kiss and you'll see why).  Doesn't look like I'll be making it to San Diego ComicCon again this year.  Too bad.  The year I went it was the best birthday.  (It's always near my birthday - so is the Gilroy Garlic Festival)

Time Travelling Kindness

It isn't enough to be nice to others, you need to also be nice to yourself.

So I wrote a letter to myself for the future if I ever need a reminder to be nice or am unable to be nice to myself.

Dear Kim,

If you are reading this it is because you are feeling bad about yourself or your life.  You might have a point.  You may not be the prettiest, smartest, wisest, coolest, most accomplished.  But you have had a positive impact on your world and people in your life.

You've trained and elevated employees, providing careers along with your encouragement.  You've motivated many coworkers to learn new things.  You've been a rock for friends and family in emotional distress (this may be your biggest talent).

Now, sit down and write a list of some positive effects you've had and realize that is what you were born for.

Kim, You Have Value.

I encourage people to write a letter like this to themselves and keep it handy.

The Fort

    My brother's and I had a tree fort.  It wasn't a little wooden box in a tree, though.  We lived on a slough and next to that slough was a grove of trees with overgrown brush around it.  We used hedge trimmers to create a path into the grove.  These weren't electric hedge trimmers - we snipped branch by branch. There was a summer's worth of blood and sweat put into that fort.  After painstakingly clipping bushes that looked like poison ivy, we had more work to do. 

    We nailed pieces of wood to the trees for sitting and climbing.  One tree had a long thick branch at ground level that had been reaching out for the sunshine.  My oldest brother, our undisputed boss, created a giant desk out of it.  It was from this desk that he would coordinate our attacks on neighborhood kids and would convene meetings of his minions (siblings).

    We had put boards on one of the trees to aid in climbing up to a high upper branch.  From this branch, one could see people entering into the fort before they were visible.  It wasn't possible to walk into the fort quitely, though, so it was completely useless for anything but making one feel awesome.  Whenever we were playing in the fort, someone was stuck on watch duty.  The watch duty got cooler when we attached a shish kabob weapon to the lookout (For those who haven't read Bullies, this weapon is made with a straw and a rubberband to shoot a wooden shish kabob stick at high speeds).

    We found many natural items that could be turned into weapons. Our main goal was to find projectile weapons that wouldn't get us in trouble but that would get people out of our fort.  We tried to throw pointy sharp seed buds from weeds.  Unfortunately, we couldn't get them to go very far.  They were weapons to be used when we failed at taking down our enemies from a distance.  A handful of them thrown at someone's shirt will make them stop to pick them out.  Those suckers scratched like crazy.

    The best weapon we found was at the slough.  We found that before catails were old enough to first flower, they had small and heavy pointed roots (the adult ones had longer, thinner roots).  These made excellent throwing spears.  The point wouldn't pierce but created a satisfying thump and the light shaft made them fly pretty far when thrown well.  The drawback of this weapon was what it took to collect it.  One had to crawl through a rabbit hole to get to where they were.  Because of this difficult crawl we could usually only transport one at a time from the source.

    There weren't many kids in our neighborhood who cared to play in the slough.  Most of them wanted to play indoors or on their patches of lawn.  So we didn't have many enemies to fight despite really really wanting some.  We taunted the neighborhood kids, telling them how cool the fort was and asking if they didn't wish sooo much they could get in.  The response after a few suckers was a solid "No way, you just want to attack us."  Lacking enemies, we spent our days in the fort practicing with those spears and sparring each other using large tree limbs as fighting staffs.  I can't count how many times I had my fingers smacked by the staffs. 

    When we got bored of fighting practice, we decided it would be really cool to make traps.  The few people who did play in the slough started to know that they could expect trip wires in and near our fort.  In order to get into the fort without tripping, I tied a piece of colored yarn to a stick and held it in front of me.  The trip wires were made of clear fishing wire that hid well in the darkness of the grove.

    Not tripping one of those wires was very important as we had rigged up a trap that swung either a large rock or small boulder at one's head.  When my brother fell out of a tree and needed my step-dad to carry him back into the house, he spotted our trap.  Needless to say, he didn't like the idea of us killing a neighbor.  He made us take it down and grounded us from play in the fort for a week.  (I never managed to sneak into the fort when we were grounded without being caught!) I don't think we ever got the trap to work right but he was rather worried we would some day.

    We eventually expanded our empire to a large open field of tall grass across the slough. Hence we had to graduate up to holes in the ground instead of trip wires since we lacked the camoflauge we had in the fort.  We weren't very good at camoflauging the holes.  I came up with a trap that I thought was ingenious.  It was an obviously visible trip wire at mid-shin level with a hole trap on one side of it.  So when someone approached it, they'd shrug at how stupid this trap was and just jump over it.  They wouldn't notice the very poorly camoflauged hole behind the string because they wouldn't be expecting it. 

    We should have outgrown the fort much sooner than we did.  Eventually, a park went up in the open field with swings and basketball courts.  I'm sorry, but playgrounds just aren't as fun as home-made projectile weapons and dangerous traps.  It was the construction of that park that ended our play in the fort.

Teaser

Chapter 1

Oh no
Don't go changin'
That's what you told me from the start …

- The Veronicas

       

“I don’t think you’d make a good mother, okay?” he shouted at her. 

The last time they had the marriage talk his reason for not wanting to marry her was different.  He said he didn’t want children to grow up fearing any god.  Six months after that fight, she had professed herself a born-again atheist.

“How can you say that?” Dawn said.  Her voice betrayed her, quivering her words.

“You’re too emotional.” 

“Well, that’s rich,” thought Dawn, “coming from the man with no emotions.  How the fuck would he know what is too emotional?”  Those words didn’t come to her, though.  Her head bowed as she stared at her hands.  She was pulling on her fingers, alternating between them.  Did she look insane?

“I am not too emotional!  I’m the right amount of emotional.”  As she said the words, she stopped believing them.  Here she was crying over not getting married.  He was right.  Of course he was right.  She must be crazy.

“You’re unstable.”

Dawn stood up and walked quietly up to her room.  She locked the door behind her.  There were no more tears and no fight left in her.  She lay on her bed, hugging the body pillow that had replaced Mike in her bed after he had insisted on sleeping separately from her.  Her thoughts had stopped.  There was no noise in her head. 

She lay there silent both inside and out as the sky darkened and her room became too dark to see in.  She was afraid of the darkness but not tonight.  Tonight the darkness was just there with her.  Nothing lurked in the dark tonight.

She dreamt of a dark-haired man, breathing over her neck as she slept.  In her dream, he had woken her and placed his finger on her lips before she could speak.  Seeing her still in her clothes, he had pulled her covers back and taken off her clothing; starting with her shoes and working upwards.  He placed the covers back over her and lay next to her, on top of her covers. 

He placed his arm across her chest, around her shoulders, “I’ve always loved you,” he whispered.  “You have to understand that.  You have to know…because what comes next…well, you have to know.  You just have to know.”  He ran a long, soft finger down her face and traced her collar bone with it.

In her dream, she never spoke.  He talked for what seemed an hour or more.  He had whispered into her ear, his hot breath caressing it and dancing along her neck.  He never once stopped touching or holding her.  He smelled comforting.  He traced a symbol on her forehead with his thumb as he spoke the last words of the dream, “I love you.  I do love you. Please remember that.”

She didn’t remember her dream.  Upon waking, she found herself undressed with her clothing on the floor of her already messy room.  She must have undressed in her sleep.  She must have been too hot.  That must have been why she was so tired this morning – she couldn’t sleep well because of the heat.

Freedom? What is it good for?

Why is dance beautiful? Answer: because it is unfree motion, because the whole profound meaning of dance lies precisely in absolute, esthetic subordination, in ideal unfreedom. And if it is true that our forebears abandoned themselves to dance at the most exalted moments of their lives (religious mysteries, military parades), it means only one thing: the instinct of unfreedom is organically inherent in man from time immemorial – Yevgeny Zamyatin in We

The quote above is from the book We which is billed as the first future dystopian novel (though there are actually some other contenders).  The book explores the dichotomy between individual and group; at one end extolling the virtue of what it calls anti-freedom and at the other extreme showing the horror of losing one’s individuality.  The question that occurred to me while reading the book was: Is anti-freedom truly the answer to unhappiness as the main character R extols?

Some recent studies have shown a potentially causal relationship between death of brain cells and depression.  This goes a long way to explain not just the debilitating sadness that is the hallmark of depression but to also explain the decreased senses of smell and taste experienced by depressed persons.  When the brain experiences chronic stress, it shuts down trophic factor proteins.  These proteins are responsible for creating new brain cells.  "The mental illness occurs when these stress mechanisms in the brain spiral out of control," says Dr Duman, professor at Yale.  The brain shuts down new cell creation and begins to atrophy. [1]

There is one theory that says our huge array of choices causes our chronic stress.  (I just made myself nauseated squinting through an old list of links to find the psych study suggesting this and didn’t find it – no links for you lovely people today)  Think about this anecdotally:

• How many people do you know who bounce around careers?  One moment they’re in IT; the next year they’re working in forestry.  Are they happy?  Or is the repeated decision making bringing them down?
• How long did it take you to pick a major?  Are you sure it was the right choice?  How much anguish did you go through or are you going through now over that choice?
• What about those people you know in your life who have plans for what they’re going to be doing for the next 10 years?  Are they happier because all of their choices are easily made?

The BBC posted a webpage last week inviting visitors to relate their most expensive mistake:  What is your costliest mistake?  There is a lot of sadness expressed in these entries over wrong choices.  There are quite a few entries of “my first marriage.” If all of those people didn’t have a choice, would they have been so unhappy?  Or would they accept life as it is presented to them?

Love choices seem to exact the highest emotional toll on people.  But the concept of romantic love in Western culture is relatively new.  It wasn’t until the 12^th century in Europe that romantic love was seen as anything other than a weakness and character flaw.  Today, romantic love is the basis of relationships and marriages.  Instead of marrying for compatibility or stability, most marry because they are in love (the exception being those who still have their marriages arranged but these numbers are dwindling).  The choice involved in marriage, therefore, is emotionally trying.

There is more information available now than one person can digest.  Numerous scientific studies exist on health and diet, mental health and happiness.  Imagine, now, a world in which scientific knowledge instead of personal choice governed our lives.  Imagine never feeling regret over doing the wrong thing.  In the book quoted above, We, R sees one of the secret police closely watching him and feels relief - feels that the man is his guardian angel keeping him from doing wrong.

Ten years ago, I took one of those career tests that said I would be good at/happiest doing investigative work.  I actually pursued schooling in Criminal Justice, thinking I would become a detective.  The tech boom happened and I realized I could make more money immediately than I would after 10 years as a detective so I jumped at the chance and quit school. I am currently doing investigative type work after 10 years of bouncing around careers.  Imagine if we lived in a society that had placed me in the correct schooling and career to begin with based on good testing.  (In this instance, the test should have also made note of my love of huge amounts of data and my ability to distinguish differences based on minute details to place me where I am today)

Imagine also a world that makes our marriage choices for us based on what would actually make a good marriage.  Instead of determining when you are ready for children on your own, a system for determining this based on your physical and emotional states.  A society that tested your body and determined the best diet and exercise for you rather than having to chase down studies and books only to test through trial and error.  What about a world that knows when your body and brain are ready for retirement, whether it is sooner or later than others around you.

But who would control the control system?  We’ve already seen the failure of a single-party system.  Our technology is not yet at a level that could handle such a large system of anti-freedom. I guess we'll just have to muddle through, doing the best we can.  Alas.

[1] http://www.boston.com/bostonglobe/ideas/articles/2008/07/06/head_fake

Bullies

I didn't realize until I adulthood that my brothers and I had been the bullies of our neighborhood.  Actually, it was when I was retelling the following story that I realized we were bullies. *Some names changed to protect the guilty.

My step-dad built a go-cart for my brothers and me.  It had no motor or anything.  It was wood board with a wood box on the back to support your back and a wooden hand break but no real steering to speak of.  The nice bit was the carpet samples glued down that made it a comfy ride.  It was powered by either pushing or going down the big hill to our neighborhood.  My oldest brother being the king of us all and usually the leader in any of our mischief was the one who got pushed around in it mostly.  The rest of us got to use it sometimes but no one would want to push so we'd mostly just speed downhill.

Well, my brother Bill came up with what I thought was the coolest weapon (at least cooler than the home-made ninja stars we had tried to make).  You took a straw and taped a rubber band halfway up on it.  Insert a shish-kabob stick and use the rubber band to launch it through the straw.  Bill attached one to the hand break of the go-cart.  Yes, not only was the go-cart the coolest thing on the block, it was now armed!

Donna's little sister, Kelly, had a defiant streak in her. Not a good thing to have around the neighborhood bullies. I don't remember what prompted it, but I think she may have been trying to get David to let her on the go-cart.  He threatened her in some way with the shish-kabob launcher and she dared him to shoot her with it, thinking that he wouldn't for fear of getting in trouble.  I guess she didn't know how much our parents didn't care about us kids beating each other up (though we hadn't branched out into beating up neighborhood kids so we had no idea how they'd respond to that).  Bill really wasn't at all worried about using the weapon.

He loaded a wooden shish-kabob stick into the launcher and Kelly just sat there, sure he would stop.  He gave her one more chance; asking "Are you sure?" and raising a single eyebrow which made him look cool and adult-like.  "Yeah!" he said.  He let the stick go.

People talk about time slowing down when something stupid is about to happen but in this instance, it seemed to speed up.  One second the stick was vaulting from its drinking-straw chamber; the next second it had embedded itself into Kelly's forehead.  It stuck out at an angle like a unicorn horn.  It took a second before she realized what had happened and she started to bawl.

It was decided it would be best not to remove the stick, lest there be a serious hole it was plugging up - who knew, her brains might come out!  We sent my youngest brother, Kurt, to walk her home (who Kelly had a crush on anyhow).  Once he was around the corner, about a house away from their house, I became racked with fear that I would never see Donna, my best friend, ever again.  I feared her mom would hate us so much I'd never get to spend time with her.  So I sprinted to catch up.  When I got there, Donna was sitting on the grass with her sister and Jason standing above the both of them.  Kelly was crying into Donna's arms without the stick in her forehead.  Just a tiny red dot where the stick had been (it fell out as she walked home - it hadn't been in nearly as deep as our childish minds led us to believe).

I tried to tell Donna it hadn't been my fault but she just glared at me.  I slouched my way back home, thankful Donna's mom hadn't been home but figuring I'd lost my best friend anyhow.

Donna, Donna, Donna!

When I was a young lass growing up, I lived on the same block as a wonder of a girl, Donna.  She was my best friend in the whole world.  Like all girls we competed with each other - over grades, and skills, though not looks (she won that one hands down).  Our families couldn't have been more different.  Her biological father was always buying her things to make sure she still liked him more than her step-dad.  My bio-dad was not in my life.  She had a single sister and I had three brothers.  I was dirty from all of the rough-housing with my brothers and she always had the best hair and cutest clothes; and she smelled like soap.

In the beginning of our friendship, we spent all of our time together - at school, at home.  I spent the night at her house but she never spent the night at mine.   I learned to play Chinese jump-rope from Donna and the "Miss Susie had a steamboat" rhyme with the appropriately difficult hand clapping gestures that went along with it.

We were never in the same grade class though (there were multiple classes for each grade since we were at a bigger school).  So, when after a while, we stopped seeing each other all that much at school, I thought it was just a coincidence and she was making new friends in her classes.  We still walked home from the bus together. 

One day, I wore this horrible outfit my mother had bought me to school.  I knew it was a mistake the second I showed up to school.  Everyone else looked normal in jeans and t-shirts.  I had on, essentially, a cowgirl outfit. My mom always bought me silly clothes like that and I was socially awkward enough to not notice they weren’t what the other kids were wearing.  The kids made fun of me mercilessly.  I didn't care too much.  Most of them weren't people I even liked.  What killed me, though, was when Donna joined in.  My best friend.  I hid in the bathroom - which was a feat as the teachers would come in all recess long and try to shoo us out.

The following season was the time when little girls gave each other those stupid best friend necklaces.  They were two necklaces with pendants that represented two halves of a heart with one saying "best" and the other one saying "friends".  I saved up two weeks allowance to buy a set for Donna and myself.  I walked to the store that had them early on a Saturday and was back before noon.  I went straight to Donna’s and knocked on the door.  She came out onto the porch to talk to me.  Sitting on the porch with her, I excitedly told her I got us necklaces and reached into my little plastic bag and held them out to her.  I asked her which half she wanted.  She pulled a necklace out from under her t-shirt that was one half of a "best friends" necklace.  I didn't even know the girl she said had the other half. 

My ears filled with the whooshing sound of my own blood.  I couldn't hear much of anything else. The birds and the cars of the busy road behind her house seemed to have been replaced by a white noise - it was like I had shoved cotton in my ears.  I told her I thought we were best friends and she didn't seem to care, just said the other girl asked her first.  I ran home in tears.  I later gave the necklace to someone else who I didn't even like just so I wouldn't be the only one not wearing one. 

Donna and her family moved away to Oregon a year or two after the big quake.  We sent each other a few letters but I had no heart for it.  She finally came to visit and she apologized to me for teasing me with the other kids saying "you just looked so dumb and I didn't want anyone to know I was your friend."  I told her I was a witch and a lesbian and I never heard from her again.