Bleeding Fiction

I applied for a Foreign Language Area Scholarship for next year. It's pretty keen. It covers tuition and give me 14k on top of that for the year. It would make things a whole lot easier next year.

I didn't get the scholarship. The letter came in the mail today.

I'm not disappointed. I mean, it's a hard scholarship to get, high requirements, only a few of them to go around and so on. I wasn't really expecting to get it, so it's not much of a surprise that I didn't.

I'm actually a lot more concerned that my iPod has decided to get stuck in the "on and frozen in the middle of a song without actually playing it or being paused or responding to any outside stimulus" position. I've tried plugging it in to charge, pushing the buttons and plugging it into my computer (which doesn't recognize it). I've now moved on to "wait for the battery to run out, recharge it and see what happens then."

Well, at least it's under warranty...

Well, this is interesting, isn't it? I got it from the PPG Doujinshi. The best I can do on a translation is "It came out! Powerpuff Girls Z" I assume there's some other translation for "demashitaa," though, 'cause that just doesn't make a whole lot of sense to me.

Thar Intarweb doesn't want to show me anything else about this, though, so I can't give it any sort of context. Anyone know anything more than I do?

I was a little preoccupied to mention it yesterday, but Friday saw me going out and seeing Sin City with Lukas. It was stylin'.

Now, I've never read the comic, so I can't speak for the movie's faithfulness or lack thereof, but I can say that there were shots in that movie that looked like comic panels, so I'll assume the rumor I heard - which is that they jused used the comic as the storyboard for the movie - is true. It was beautiful. Absolutely beautiful.

Violent, too. The worst of the violence is stylized; painted red in a grey world, thrown over-the-top with cinematography to turn it unrealistic. It's not visceral; we, the audience, have no sense that it might really be happening. But it's not slapstick, either. It doesn't make you want to laugh. It's violence painted as art.

Lukas had told me, before going into this, that in reading the comic he found most of the characters irredeemable; potentially likeable, but all ultimately villains. I don't think that's true for the movie. The protagonists in Sin City kill, and they kill a lot. But there's never a sense, for me at any rate, that they're not doing what's right. These are harsh and brutal men, who don't feel bad about the death they cause. But they're killing to avenge the innocent, to protect the thelpless, to save their friends. These are brutal men, but they're not anti-heroes. They're definitely the good guys.

Sin City is film noir, not just because of it's in black and white, but because it aspires to the same harsh, bitter world that Raymond Chandler and Dashiel Hammett saw, the same world that Humphrey Bogart stalked through. It's colored (pardon the word) more by a modern sense of violence, but like the classic film noir it exists in shades of grey so that it can cast both the black and the white in starker relief.

When I left the movie on Friday, I said that I'd like to rent it on video when he comes out. By now, I think I'd like to see it again next weekend.

I'm looking for a book written by one Harlan Ellison. You may have heard of him. The book I'm looking for is called Deathbird Stories. It's a collection of short stories first published in 1975 and re-printed various times since then, most recently in 2001. It's been out of print, as far as I can tell, for about four years and is something of a hot commodity.

I've tried Amazon, The Strand, the various used bookstores in the U. District and at Pike's Place Market here in Seattle and I've tried a general run of desperate web searching. I'd see if I could check it out from a library, but I need to own this book.

I haven't given up, but I figure that multiple heads are better than one (unless you're fighting Hercules, at which point the man's already got your number, so you might as well give in), so I'm opening my search up to the public at large. If you find yourself in a bookstore, at a library getting rid of books, a rummage sale or with a few spare minutes to kill online, do me a favor and keep your eyes open for a readable copy of Harlan Ellison's Deathbird Stories. I'd appreciate it and I'd pay you back.

one

I'm only taking two classes this term, but they're keeping me very busy during the week. It's probably going to be one of my busiest terms. I suspect this is because I'm actually doing all of the reading. I suspect the reason for that is that I'm required to take and turn in copious notes on everything I read. Bastard professors.

two

To be fair, I'm taking two cool classes this term, with interesting reading. They are "New Religions in East Asia" (aka "Japanese Cults") and "History, Culture and Conflict in Japan" (aka "Japanese Protest Movements"). These two courses are pretty much going to form the basic research of my Master's Thesis, whatever that ends up being about, so I figure it's a good idea to pay close attention.

three

In my readings I've gotten to "reacquaint" myself with some "old friends." Which is to say I get to read about the writings of anthropologist and religious types that I read as an undergrad. Guys like Weber and Durkheim and Geertz and Marx. Also Foucault, who (to grossly stereotype, as is my wont) is one of the only cool French people. Ever.

four

There's a weird cycle of secondary vs. primary sources going on here. As an underclassman, I read secondary sources (i.e. Scholars writing about shit they had read or observed). As an upperclassman, I read mostly primary sources (i.e. Writings that were actually from a given time period in history, actual religious scripture, etc. Usually in translation.). Now I've gone back to reading secondary sources. Some folks have some interesting ideas (see above), but it's sort of frustrating.

five

There's a girl in my Culture & Conflict class who looks a lot like Ann. It's sort of creepy.

six

I watch the Daily Show every night. They have journalists on a lot, who write books. They write books about the government, but also a lot about what's going on in the world today. Which is, I guess, what journalists do. Academics do the same thing. Hunter S. Thompson, he went to ride around with the Hell's Angels for a while and then published a book on them. That's journalist, sure, but it's also anthropology. I mean, exactly the same thing. So, what's the difference?

The differences are speed and depth. The most recent stuff I get to read in class was published maybe five years ago, and was probably in research for two years and then peer review for another year after that. Which means I'm reading about phenomenon that are eight years old. That makes it tough to dealing with contemporary culture, which is what I'm trying to do. How do you make predictions when the movement you want to make predictions for is already gone? At the same time, a scholarly work is (in theory) deeper, more critical and more accurate for having taken so long and been so carefully looked at.

But I wonder if this carefulness doesn't make scholars too slow. How can scholarship stay relevent when it's continually out of date? I wonder if there maybe isn't a way to speed scholarship up a little, to reach some comprimise between depth and speed. I think maybe not publishing more or less exclusively through academic presses is a good place to start; being, instead, like journalists and publishing through the mainstream media.

I wonder if this is actually a good idea, or just seems like one at nearly two in the morning...

seven

Part of course readings early in the term, even for graduate courses, is what I call "getting on the same page." You read a brief run of introductory philosophy stuff, the sort of stuff I was talking about under three, and you frame the terms of the debate for the rest of the class. It feels like reinventing the wheel a lot of the time, but all in all it isn't a horrible idea. So, we were trying to define "religion" the other day. This is particularly relevant for the New Religions in East Asia, 'cause a lot of them don't have much in common with what most people think of as religion.

But every approach, every thinker, has his flaws. Social Science theory's been stuck for a while with this very West-centric bias, these Enlightenment and Economic models that really don't effectively describe what we observe in the world. I mean that right now, the way people (and I mean politicians and lawyers and journalists - the people who ostensibly hold the power in our society - as well as the "common folk" like you and I) look at the world is rooted in theories that have their start in the Enlightenment and with Marx's conception of class struggle and Nietzsche and it's all wrong.

And thinking about that, I thought about some psychics theory that I was learning from Ogre this summer (clearly nothing involving actual math - just conceptual stuff), and I realized that what the social sciences need is the same break physics had. Physics went from Classical to Quantum mechanics. Someone needs to figure out a Quantum Theory for the social sciences. If someone can do it right, it'll spread and we will have a new way of looking at the world.

It'll take a while, of course. A generation, maybe two or three. But if someone figures out how, we can change the way people see the world for the better. This is the responsibility for social change that academics have - to change the way people think about the world, and to change it for the better.

Or, I dunno, maybe I just like the phrase "quantum social science theory."

eight

Quarters suck as compared to semesters. I've done both now, and I say this after careful observation. I am not covering a greater amount of material in class and I am not covering it in more depth with quarters than with semesters. I may, in fact, be covering less material; at the very least, I have less time to discuss the material (fewer actual in-class hours per class) with classmates and professors, so I may be covering it in less depth. But group-learning aside, with less time in which to process the same amount of material I am able to absorb less of it and think about it less critically before I'm forced to move on to something else, and I am therefore getting a poorer education.

I am covering the material in less time than under semesters, but I'm taking fewer classes at once, so the actual rate of education has not increased, either.

I read Green Lantern: Rebirth #5 today.

Could you tell?

(Subtitled: I Am STILL Such a Geek)

I just watched the Kim Possible movie So The Drama. (We use the word movie loosely here, since it ain't exactly a theatrical release or anything.) It was... Well, to steal a line from the world of Kim Possible, it was spankin'.

They bumped up the frame rate and used some cg, so it looked great (including opening sequence done in Jame's Bond silhouette-style), but it's the content that really gets me. Most of the action revolves, as usual, around Kim & Ron's daily life, interspersed with the schemes and plots of evil villains Dr. Drakken and his hench-woman Shego.

Drakken's in rare form. He's got a cadre of ninjas with laser swords and a legion of advanced humanoid syntho-drones and he plays his master plan close to his chest. He actually seems like a credible threat. But without losing his characteristic goofiness - his poor attempts to be hip, his pathetic self-doubt, his inability to remember Ron's name.

The little villain touches are nice (he actually says "You've failed me for the last time, Shego!"), too, but the best is when Shego's trying her hardest to figure out Drakken's evil plot. He refuses to tell and explains that it's because Kim is no smarter than she is; if Shego hasn't figured it out yet, Drakken knows that Kim hasn't, either. See? Credible threat! (And I'll admit that until that scene I hadn't figured out Drakken's exact plot, either.)

As for the personal stuff, it starts with Kim worrying that she'll have to go to the prom with Ron; he's the not-boyfriend, which Kim finds awkward given that everyone else she knows is dating someone. That's when the new guy shows up, and you cue the usual run of drama and self-discovery. (Shorthand for the media impaired: Kim & new guy start dating and Ron's pushed to the side, thereby growing jealous and realizing that he's in love with Kim. It's good that they don't ignore show continuity here; Ron brings up Kim's previous boyfriend and how he wasn't jealous of him.) It says something about me that I found the entire sequence here absolutely heartbreaking.

The movie ends pretty much as you'd expect it to - Drakken's plot is foiled, Kim & Ron finally get together (with an actual kiss - sort of risque for the Disney Channel, no?). A very sweet and happy ending for both the movie and the series.

I might buy it on DVD, if I could get a boxed set of the whole series to go along with it, but I want to at least see it - it's got a few extra scenes and a never-aired episode on it, too, involving the return of the Japanese ninja high school that Ron spent a week at one episode. This also means the return of my favorite Kim Possible villain, Lord Monkey Fist, as well as cool ninja chick, Yuri, voiced by Keiko Agena who, of course, plays Lane on Gilmore Girls!

Oh! Oh! And Kim swaps her usual khaki mission-getup for a skin-tight, self-repairing, force-field-generating, energy-projecting super-suit. Which is so cool!

Ok, I'm done geeking out now. Well, for now...

I'm sick right now, that sort of raw illness that draws you slightly away from the world, that shrinks your skin but expands everything else. No fever, but stuffed sinuses and a marked difficultly concentrating on things. My sinuses clear up when I'm standing, but I feel sort of silly just standing in the middle of the room. Not that I'm good for much else right now.

I don't know where this came from - I felt fine yesterday. I went out for The Delightful Jeni Garber's going away party. I got to see some of her friends again (the cool local ones) and meet a few others (also cool) for the first time. I was up a little late, but not unreasonably so (I was up until 2, but since I'm usually up until 1...). I didn't drink a lot (hardly anything - one beer at the start of the night, half a vodka and tonic at the end). And yet here I am feeling sort of worn around the edges.

I hope this goes away soon; I've got a lot of shit to do, and I'm no good when I'm like this.

Through a short web-crawl related to my watching of the Kim Possible Movie on Friday, I ended up at a clothing site called blacklava. They sell clothing designed to "raise questions about how Asian Americans are viewed in today's society." Some of their stuff is reasonably clever, and some of it about prejudice in general rather than specifically directed. One shirt, though, made me say "huh." It reminded me of a situation from a while back, when Ann came to visit me in Jersey and we had lunch with her cousin. He asked me if I was interested in Ann because of the "geisha image." I think I laughed at him.

But reading the shirt and the poem(?) to the left of it, I had a very bizarre moment. I'm exceedingly white, no doubt about that. At the same time, I'm getting a Master's degree in Japan Studies, writing serialized fiction where the main characters are pulled from the Asian zodiac, revising a novel themed around Chinese literature...

I'm suddenly waiting for someone to ask me where the hell I get the nerve.

Do I have nerve? I wasn't attracted to Ann because she was Asian any more than I was attracted to Lena because she was Russian or any other girl for any similar reason. I've got my "type," like anyone else, but I like people for who they are. I set up the Fables like I did because I wanted a thematically finite set of characters. Earth & Heaven is what it is as a conscious counter-point to boring (to me) Western fantasy (and also because Three Kingdoms is hella fun). I'm a Japan Studies grad student because... ok, I got nothing, there.

None of which is to say that I feel I've got to defend myself. Just, well, sometimes some things strike me as being a little funny.

I don't know. Am I making any sense, or should I just chalk this up to my feeling sick and leave it at that?

Good: I was able to cohere well enough yesterday to do at least the immediately pressing things I had to do and in a reasonably comprehensible fashion. You can find evidence of this over at the Fables.

Bad: Some time before I went to sleep last night, I developed a fever. I doubt that anyone actually enjoys having a fever, but mine tend to involve pain in unlikely areas, such as my arm pits. So, while uncomfortable, they're at least interesting.

Good: In the middle of the night, my fever broke and I woke up. It lasted no more than eight hours, which is some sort of record for me.

Bad: By that point the sun was already creeping through my window, which kept me awake for another three hours.

Good: In finally fell asleep again.

Bad: I fell asleep at about the time I was supposed to wake up.

Good: I feel generally ok and won't have a problem making it through class today.

Bad: I'm still a little stuffy, and a little achey.

Also, as a follow-up to my last post, I found an article from Salon . com linked to through Kissui.net, a blog I read. (I gave you the Kissui.net link - it quotes the article extensively, and this way you won't have to do Salon's lame day-pass thing.) The article's more or less exactly what I'm talking about when I say "fetishizing" and is the opposite of what I'd like to do (which is to say "understand the culture.")

I know I tend to be a little down on medieval Europe these days, in a mostly "been there, done that" sort of way, but I just came across one of those impressively huge collections of lore that makes me ooh and ahh. Fordham hosts the Internet Medieval Sourcebook, which is lots and lots of text on the middle ages, mostly translations of primary sources. A lot of it's religious (so they have St. Augustine, St. Anselm and Thomas Aquinas), but they also have translations of Dante, the full text of the Decameron(!), legal stuff (the Code of Justinian, texts from Gratian on the origins of common/civil law), economic sources (toll records, even!) and just about... well... everything. Including Saint's Lives and excerpts from the Angl-Saxon Chronicle (no surprise - neither are exactly rare).

(Also, but it's sort of funky to read the various letters that medieval folks - especially medieval church folks - sent back and forth to each other. A lot of them read like internet flame wars. Only, you know, without the internet.)

The site's little hard to navigate, at times, but this is a rich source of information. Very cool.

Let me state, for the record, that I don't usually think bumper stickers, applied to areas they're meant to be applied, are particularly cool.

to the comment-spammer who posted more than thirty online poker ads between this blog and the Fables in the middle of the night, from over twenty five IP addresses, thereby forcing me to spit into the wind by deleting the spam and banning the IP addresses:

There is a very special layer of hell reserved for people like you, and in that layer of hell people like me are given egg beaters and stacks of poker chips and asked to be creative.

I am very, very creative.

"Dear Jason,

We notice that you recently paid us a lot of money. We would prefer if you don't do that. You see, that way we get to charge you interest. But look how low the interest is! It's like you wouldn't be paying us a lot of money at all! And we promise we won't rub it in or anything."

If you say "Eisner" to most people, they'll say "huh, what? Who are you? Why are you in my living room?" But after you've explained to them that they should put the phone down because you are, in fact, holding a gun and that you simply wanted to know who they associate with the last name Eisner, most people will say Michael Eisner, former something-or-other (CEO? CFO? UFO?) of Disney.

I think of Will Eisner and the awards that are given out annually in his name. Awards for comic books. Here is this year's list.

These are my thoughts:

Ex Machina #1 and Global Frequency #12 were both nominated for Best Single Issue. Much as I'm Warren Ellis' whore, I'd give this one to Ex Machina. That whole series has been great, but issue #1 was golden, a sort of ideal kick-off that I couldn't have asked to be any better.

The next four issues of Ex Machina also come up against Warren Ellis, though this time in the Planetary title, issues 19 and 20, for Best Serialized Story. I haven't read those bits of Planetary yet, but I feel bad about dissing Warren last time. Plus, from the set up in Planetary #18, the story after has to be damn cool.

Best Continuing Series... hey, look! Ex Machina! And Best New Series, too!

At this point if I say I'd award Best Writer to Brian Vaughan (the writer on Ex Machina), you won't be surprised, right? 'Cause that's what I'd do.

Best Graphic Album - New I'd give to It's A Bird... which is the best Superman story I've ever read. I think it most captures what the character's all about. This is distinctive as Superman doesn't actually appear in the book. Nor does any other super-powered individual.

I'd give Best Penciller/Inker to John Cassaday, because his work on Planetary is beyond belief.

There's other categories, too, and other people in the categories I've named. Joss Whedon, in particular, has been nominated for four awards (the first four I mention above). That's pretty impressive; if I could still bring myself to read an X-Men book, I might pick up his run. There's also a bunch of indy folk. Which I guess is nice. But I stand by my devotion to Warren Ellis and Brian Vaughan, because their work is absolutely fucking brilliant. I hope they win.

The Delightful Jeni Garber and I hung out tonight for dinner and a movie. I want to talk about each of them in turn:

Dinner

We had pizza. But not just any pizza. We had Extreme Pizza pizza.

How was it? At the risk of being cliche, it was extremely not bad. For horribly processed, artificial chain-restaurant pizza. God I miss pizza. Someone in New York: Mail me a pizza! Qucikly, dammit!

Boy was it extreme. There were surfers and snowboarders and skateboarders all over the fucking place. Or at least pictures of them on the walls. Extreme. Sweet Zombie Jesus! It's fucking PIZZA! There is no way to make it extreme and no purpose to be served by so doing!

Movie

We watched Ocean's Twelve. We'd both liked Ocean's Eleven, so why not the sequel, right?

Wrong.

As far as I'm concerned, there's exactly one clever part in this movie, and it's only mildly clever at best. It's about fifteen or twenty minutes in and all of the characters are standing around wondering why, collectively, they're called "Ocean's Eleven." It lasts for about thirty seconds.

Also, it was cool to suddenly see Eddie Izzard. He wasn't cool in the movie, it was just cool to suddenly see him. The excitement faded quickly.

The rest of the movie's overly intricate, impossible to follow, under-characterized, poorly planned...

The Delightful Jeni Garber has a less flattering opinion of the movie than I do.

And it's such a pity. Because the first one was so clever. It fell into such perfect place. It worked out so well. It was cool! I really, really wanted the sequel to be as good.

It wasn't.

Not even close.

It's been about nine years since the album came out, but I'm finally starting to like Blues Traveler's Straight On 'Til Morning. A lot of people didn't like it because it wasn't as pop-y as Four, which was the album before it. I'd always liked Travelers & Thieves better, anyway, so it wasn't any skin off of my nose. I just never thought the album was very good, that's all.

But it's been growing on me in the past week or so.

Go figure.

I'm taking procrastination to a whole new level tonight; I'm reaching a personal best. I've got a paper due tomorrow (well, today), just before noon. I didn't start writing this paper until ten o'clock this evening. I wasn't busy this weekend, I just didn't feel like doing it. So I put it off until close to the last possible minute.

I've been doing this with all of my school stuff. I just keep putting it of. I don't mind, except that it's impacting my ability to do other productive things. Write, for example. The weight of my acumulating work hangs around my neck like an albatross and drags me away from doing something useful. I'm finding it difficult to break that mold.

It's not that my school work is boring, either, just that I'm having a really hard time caring if it gets done; like a focused form of ennui. It's a motivation issue; I have no motivation to get this done.

I'd like to be motivated, but there's no scholastic reason to do my work at any time before the last minute; it doesn't hurt me academically. That means that my only motivation for getting my school work done quickly is to get some proper writing done. For a reason that's still obscure to me I'm not finding that to be sufficient motivation.

So: Motivate me! Intrigue me! Get me moving again! Dangle a juicy carrot in front of my donkey-like face! Just don't try to use logic.

I bought a couch today, from my friend Mike. It's a relatively new couch, but Mike sold it to me for cheap, since he needed to get rid of it and he's not the type of guy to price-gouge. Go Mike! So, except for the wait, there's now pretty much no way in which it was bad for me that the delivery guys couldn't get the last couch I bought up the stairs into my apartment a year and a half ago.

I should maybe point out that this is The Most Comfortable Couch in the World™. In theory, another couch as commodious may exist in some bejeweled pleasure dome that lies in the mist-shrouded valley of fabled Shangri La. It's concievable that a couch approaching this level of luxury sunk with lost Atlantis. But I tell you true that the only couch that's more comfortable than this supports the mighty buttocks of one-eyed Odin as he quaffs his wine from the place of honor in many-doored Valhalla.

At least according to Lukas, who I just paraphrased. If by "paraphrased" I were to mean "invented whole-cloth every sentence of that last paragraph except for the first one."

But yes, I now have relaxing seating for more than one person and this is good.

Also, I saw an Outback on my way to Mike's and now I really want a steak.

I present to you the bestest blog ever:

The Darth Side

I read a book about Aum Shinrikyo, the religion responsible for the sarin gas attack in the Tokyo subway a decade ago, for my New Religions class this weekend. It's helped my motivation immensely; this religion and the concepts surrounding it are pretty much the reason I took the class to begin with. I don't want to make light of a group who killed about a hundred people, injured a thousand more and, well, engaged in some serious domestic terrorism, but these guys are unreal. Here's a sample of what they're all about:

According to Aum Shinrikyo, the world is a corrupt, evil place and just living in the world causes you to absorb all sorts of bad "data" that will cause you to go to hell when you die.

Yes, data.

To avoid going to hell, Aum Shinrikyo members tried to purify themselves through ascetic practices like fasting, meditation and mortification. Which included being buried alive for days on end. They called these practices "cloning the guru," because they were trying to reprogram their minds by erasing their normal, bad thoughts and replacing them with the thought patterns of the guru, their leader.

Yes, cloning.

To purge bad data Aum Shinrikyo members also wore some electronic headgear called PSI ("Perfect Salvation Initiation") units, which Aum Shinrikyo's technicians had developed, and drank down parts of their leader, like his blood or his bath water or a liquid that those technicians made that they claimed replicated his DNA structure.

Yes, electronic headgear. Yes, religious technicians (who also made the sarin gas they used in the subway). Yes, blood drinking.

Aum Shinrikyo was a millenial cult, meaning that they believed the world would end soon. But they weren't talking nuclear war. That was too pedestrian for them. The guru was preaching more about plasma canons and lasers and kilometer-long mirrors in orbit around the earth that could reflect and focus the rays of the sun to incinerate everything beneath it.

All of which is freaky enough, but remember that these dudes went out and killed people, too. Why? Well, there were a lot of factors that lead up to the actual attack, but the reasons that an attack like that is valid within the belief structure to begin with run a little something like this: You can't help but being infected by corrupted data so long as you live in the world. The guru and other high ranking members of the religion, however, were advanced spiritual beings and could perform prayer rituals for the dead that would purge them of the bad data. See the connection? Killing you is actually saving you from falling into hell. They're doing it for your own good.

They read like a freaky bit of fiction. Which makes their reality all the more freaky.

The problem, when flirting with the (incredibly cute) teller at your bank, is that she knows how much money you have. Or don't have.

It makes the process just a little bit strange.

Also, it makes the customers in line behind you grumpy.