Inside The Multiplexer

Perhaps you are lying there thinking, “Gee, I enjoy Sigur Ros, especially agaetis byrjun,  but I want that Sigur Ros sound with a more prog-rock edge and less Hopelandish.” If you are that person I offer to you a band called Mogwai from Glasgow and their extremely excellent album, Mr. Beast. Guitar, Bass, Drum, Piano and Computers! They sound marvelous. The sound is richly detailed and multi-layered and the album goes from alternative to metal to that sort of sweeping soundscape. As a taste, you can watch the video for “A Friend of the Night” from Mr. Beast on the Youtubes. Get thee hence and make with the clicky-clicky. I am completely hooked on this album. You should be, too.

If, for some reason, you have never listened to or heard of Sigur Ros, Youtube hosts full channels dedicated to Hopelandish. Search for them on Youtube and click on pretty much anything.

In a completely different vein that sounds nothing like Sigur Ros or Mogwai, I saw that Since I Left You by the Avalanches has been starting to appear quietly and sheepishly on “Best Of” album lists and this made my heart grow three sizes bigger. If you have never heard Frontier Psychiatrist or listened to the other fine and excellent tracks off Since I Left You, you can watch the video on the Youtubes as well. Yes! A Frontier Psychiatrist VIDEO! GASP! It’s an album that richly deserves to be on the best-of lists.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

The beginning to this line of thinking starts off in the murky past and bubbles to the surface every once in a while. The latest bubble to surface was after reading David Foster Wallace’s essay, “Joseph Frank’s Dostoevsky,” read only by the intersection of people who enjoy David Foster Wallace’s essays and Dostoevsky, ie: me. While the essay is largely a rant about the insistence of ripping Dostoevsky’s novels out of their place and time and context to “analyze” them properly, I was struck by a part of the argument which shined light on the instinctual fear and trembling when faced with a book emblazoned with the horrible moniker CLASSIC.

CLASSIC is novel death: if the novel a classic, it sits on a shelf in pristine condition, unopened, unloved, and dusty until the end of time. CLASSIC means boring. CLASSIC means slow and ponderous and dull. Never mind that without Crime and Punishment no CSI would run in a thousand time slots across cable a night, or that the book is the original Crime and Procedural Drama; never mind that Crime and Punishment is eminently readable and enjoyable and Dostoevsky is an excellent and fast read; it is *CRIME AND PUNISHMENT and thus it is DEAD ON ARRIVAL.

I blame the teaching method of the novel in high school settings. A CLASSIC novel is “good for you” the same way lima beans are theoretically good for you (I disbelieve this notion). The CLASSIC is foisted upon the unsuspecting the student. “We are READING the NOVEL,” the teacher says. “There will be… A TEST.” The student muddles through the difficult and impenetrable text as if heading through a dense jungle with a dull knife with nothing more than double-spaced typed essays and exams to discover on the other side. Worse, the exam is about themes, themes which may not even be there, themes about stuff, themes themes themes. Themes completely divorced from the time period and events the author experienced. Read the book, do the essays, choke down the lima beans, cough up the words, extract no joy from the novel or the reading experience. Classic novels are not about literature as joy or discovery or experience or history — Classic novels are about WORK and ANALYSIS. Figure it out or fail the class! Must! Read! Book!

No wonder adults take pains to avoid the classic works. Nevermind that classic books are CLASSIC because they are the froth on the pond scum of the book market. These are the books who survive into multiple reprintings through popularity and name recognition. Nevermind that some very popular favorite books today will one day be considered classics and foisted upon unsuspecting high school students to “analyze” with sad little three page, double-spaced essays and no mention of our history. (Cormac McCarthy’s books anyone?) Nevermind that many of these CLASSIC novels were once bestselling mass market genre novels themselves. They are CLASSIC, and thus, they are toxic.

The hold on the imagination is difficult to break. The tensing up, the feeling of dread in the pit of the stomach, the worry about passing the class, the weird nightmares about final exams. My god, will this book be on the final exam? “What if I don’t like it?” you ask yourself. “Am I allowed to put it down? It’s a CLASSIC novel!” You bought it from Barnes and Noble. You’re stuck reading this thing. It’s supposed to be good! “What if I cannot flee?” you think. AIIIIEEEEE! The screams in the darkness! It’s a downward spiral from the book into depression and alcoholism and drugs and prostitution and appearing in a Darren Aronofsky movie and death because you picked up **Hemingway! The End! The End! The End!

I contend it’s all a bunch of crap. We teach the arts poorly in our schools and the novel worst of all. The novel is important and I rail against the insistence on draining the love from the experience. Read the books outside a classroom setting. Think of them as well-written genre novels. Put down the ones that don’t personally work and move on. Treat them like a paperback fantasy novel. I read Dostoevsky outside the context of the classroom. And Joyce. And Shakespeare. And F Scott Fitzgerald. And the poetry of D.H. Lawrence. And a dozen other classic works. I will argue that Gatsby has magnificent set pieces but no plot — and would fail a class, most certainly. But who cares? Read them! Read a book!

(Full disclosure: I refused to take literature classes in college after being branded ‘too stupid’ to take an AP English class in high school. Too stupid translates into ‘having my own opinions on books.’ Per my High School English teacher, I can neither read nor write in any language and I am too stupid to appreciate Shakespeare for what it is — sex romps and overwrought historical melodramas. Damn my insistence on enjoying a genre novel for what it is. And my neverending hatred for Old Man and the Sea.)

* I have read C&P, despite being told I am too dumb to read C&P. It always appears on my top 5 favorite books list.

** This is what happens when you read Hemingway, by the way. Medical fact.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

Several years ago I went and got my eyes fried with lasers. I hated glasses and had worn contacts since the 7th grade. I spent some time in college with glasses but the moment I could ditch them I could, and the moment I had the cash in hand to get my eyes fried, I did.

Overall, it was a pleasant experience. I sifted through several different offices offering the procedure. I called the one that had a good reputation and was offering a promotional price. I made an appointment to get my eyes checked. The office was neat, clean and offered a state of the art pod coffee machine. Once I qualified for the procedure, I went and had it done. My eyes didn’t heal right the first time so the office gave me a second round of zaps at no charge. I have had 20/20 vision ever since. I am extremely pleased. I paid largely in cash and financed the rest.

LASIK is the great anomaly of the American Health Care system.

* The procedure, once extremely expensive, is now relatively reasonable because the price of the procedure has amortized over time.
* Prices are well-known and customers can shop based on reputation and price.
* LASIK treatment is subject to open, competitive market pressures.
* No insurers were called or consulted. No one was billed except the doctor to me.
* No insurers dictated which LASIK center I could go to, nor did they have to pre-approve the procedure.
* I paid in cash.

Like electronics, the price of LASIK has fallen and normalized. You can walk into the office, give them money, and get the procedure. It is subject to open market pressures. The pricing on LASIK works and the quality has skyrockted.

Let’s look at my current CT Scan. I have had real problems with my chest (left side) recently. The doctor ordered a CT scan because he was worried about what he saw on the X-Rays. Still is, in fact. However:

* I have no idea how much the CT scan cost but I’m sure I will be billed some random and obscene amount of money.
* The insurer would not allow me to get it at the time the doctor ordered the test.
* The doctor had to get on the phone and give justification to the insurer for ordering the test, causing me to wait 5 days.
* I was not allowed to go to the radiologist my doctor recommended and had a working relationship with.
* Instead I was sent to an office across town that was, to put it mildly, “hinky” and “filthy.” But it was either that or no test because the insurer demanded I see this other doctor.

Reality is this — save the interesting outliers like LASIK, US health care is not subject to market pressures, no one knows how much they actually pay for any of it, the prices for procedures are just made up fictions, and because people (hospitals, doctors, specialists, etc) can make up whatever price they want, the prices for procedures are ridiculously expensive. Hey, if I could charge “a million billion bazillion dollars” for a 15 minute procedure, I would, too!

Anyone who claims that the system is a free market system is selling you something.

Take a look at this post on the WaPo about prices in the US health system. We flat-out spend too much money on health care because consumers are completely divorced from pricing systems. I wonder how much something as simple and straight forward as price discovery on procedures and making those prices public by region and state would change the game.

But of course all we’re talking about is health insurance when we should be talking about health care.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

I am totally fascinated by the NY-23 mess of an election.

The Obama Administration took the Congressman from the NY-23 District (R) to be Secretary of the Army and left the seat open.  The New York Constitution sproing into effect and thus the NY-23 District (R) was forced to hold a special election. The GOP put up a regular GOP candidate (Scozzafava) who was on the county council and the Democrats put up a sacrificial lamb (Owens).  The District had gone Republican since pretty much the founding of the country so the election was put down as “Safe R” and we all moved on with our lives — ie, arguing if Chris Christie in the NJ-GOV race is fat or not.

And then the District got carpetbagged.

Scozzafava turned out to be everything the New New NEW John Birch Society does not want representing anyone in the US Congress: (1) female and (2) possibly having air between her and extreme right-wing views.  When Hoffman (Conservative Party — hates the fags, the blacks, the browns, the wimmins, Barack Obama, taxes and the Government except when the Government is giving him free money) showed up he brought the entire Clown Parade with him.  Now everyone — FOX News, Sarah “Tabloid Queen” Palin, idiots on Facebook, Newt Gingrich, Tim Pawlenty — all had something to say about that obscure NY-23rd District.

This guy, Dan Hoffman, isn’t from the NY-23rd District.  In an interview with a local paper, he complained that the questions were not provided before-hand (they were).  He has no idea what the local issues for the district he would be representing are and has admitted to not caring the slightest.  He’s being held up as the great head of a revolt against the “Party Establishment.” (Air quotes, air quotes!)  He’s not: Hoffman is bankrolled by the Establishment far more than Scozzafava ever was.  He is a twinkie: he looks like he has substance but in reality he is made of 100% Twinkie Food Product.

Scozzafava quit on Saturday after being tarred as being not “conservative enough” and endorsed the sacrificial lamb Democrat.  Likeliest that will happen: her supporters will just stay home and not vote because only crazy people vote in off-year special elections anyway, so if your candidate quits, why bother?  So one asks: does the Washington Carpetbagger Crew win or do they lose because people from small, quiet districts don’t like being used and write in Mickey Mouse?  We shall see.

And what the hell does an election in an obscure District in New York State mean?  Why does anyone care?  My guess: success here will shove the Neo-Bircher into even more “purity” purges in other districts in 2010 and push the right wing even more right and leave the last of the moderates out in the cold.  They may have some success in 2010 but it will be overturning Rs with Neo-Birchers, not tossing out Ds with Neo-Birchers. I don’t see too many D-R flops with this tactic.  The D in NY-23 never had the slightest chance to begin with, so there’s no contest here between the R and the D.  It was always the R and the Crazy, and Crazy won.

I am picking up the sticky but undeniable whiff of the Goldwater-Johnson Presidential Race of 1964.  Which, in the end is good for my guy.  I guess.  But I don’t relish living through that.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

I don’t have anything much to add to the Internet Sturm und Drang* about Obama’s surprise Nobel Peace Prize except:

Take that, Moon! Now that Barack Obama has bombed your ass we’re gonna have World Peace! We saw you staring down at us being all moony and shining down and being full once a month and now we’ve gone and taken you out! You think you can take us on? No way! Now we’re united against one great enemy: THE MOON!

You might have the Tycho Monolith that monitors mankind’s progress to the stars but we have Barack Friggin’ Obama!

USA! USA! USA!

Peace out.

* I used the term Sturm und Drang in a status meeting today to describe my week and I was roundly mocked. No one gets Goethe references in technical meetings.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

I finally worked out my personal problems with my wordpress themes and found one I generally liked and was simple enough that I don’t need to maintain it. It also loads quickly and isn’t overburdened with graphics.

I am starting the Great Ponder about doing what all the cool kids are doing — locking down comments on LJ and routing traffic to the wordpress blog. Yes? No? Anyone have any good experiences with that? Bad? Leave comments in both? I certainly won’t stop crossposting.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

Maryland Ren Fest: We took Katie for the first time since she was very small, and she loved it. She got to run around in a princess dress, get her face painted, get her hair braided, ride a pony, play in bubbles, and eat deep fried macaroni n’ cheese on a stick. I finally bought the boots I had been eying for five years. Unfortunately, it started to rain on us around 4 and it was not the sort of rain you can just wait out. We went back to my parent’s house and then we left Katie to spend the night.

Tom Stoppard: Once home, we watched a little Tivo and then watched the 1990 production of Tom Stoppard’s Rosenkrantz and Guildestern are Dead. I had forgotten how wonderful the dialogue is, how hot a young Gary Oldman was, and how much I enjoyed the artistic structure of the play. Unfortunately, I was falling asleep at the end but I still need to own a copy on DVD.

SPX: … and I went to SPX in the afternoon! I nearly exploded in the squee of happiness. I also have far less money but I have far more comic books. I cruised all the tables leaving behind a little trail of butterflies and rainbows in the air wherever I went. I did notice that, since the last time I went to SPX, the quality of the mid-tier comics has really picked up. Also, last time I went the porn – comics ratio was fairly high but this time actual comics outweighed the porn about 20:1. I still don’t have any interest in hand-drawn super-artsy books on xeroxes and stapled together. I like my books to be books and I’m enough of a snob that I do put a huge amount on production values. I also refused to buy anything I could get off the web trivially or pick up in a Barnes and Noble. I must support my favorite artists who are awesome! I ended up with a huge haul:

Never Learn Anything from History by Kate Beaton with a little drawn FAT PONY in the front cover;

Beards of our Forefarthers, Clever Tricks to Stave Off Death and the Annotated Wondermark, all Wondermark collections by David Malki!

To Afghanistan and Back by Ted Rall who drew a whole little Osama bin Laden for me on the front page;

Dignifying Science and Bone Sharps, Cowboys and Thunder Lizards by Jim Ottaviani. He was a little taken back by someone showing insane enthusiasm over his science comics but Two-Fisted Science was one of the best collections on 20th century science I had ever read. I was being evangelizing it to the Unsuspecting around me. He threw in a copy of Charles R. Knight: Autobiography of an Artist.

The Secret Science Alliance and the Copycat Crook by Eleanor Davis for Katie Rose. The production value on this book is spectacular and the whole team did a full color picture for Katie on the frontspiece.

From Top Shelf Books, a copy of the Surrogates (Robert Venditti and Brett Weldele) and VEEPS: Profiles in Insignificance by Bill Kelter and Wane Shellabarger. How was I supposed to pass up a book on Vice Presidents? You tell me that because I could not. I was beholden.

Sadly, all the books for Rice Boy were gone by midway through yesterday. But woo! Comics!

Now I must disappear to read.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

Today I pimp a podcast and a website!

I listened to Lars Brownworth’s original series, the 12 Byzantine Rulers, when it first came out. It was awesome and what got me hooked on academic-leaning podcasts. 12 Byzantine Rulers was recently mystically transformed through occult ritual into dead tree form and it is still available in the full run on iTunes. It was written up by the New York Times and it’s a tremendously fun listening experience at about 15 minutes a pop.

HOWEVER, now he’s doing the Norman Centuries on how the Vikings turned into Normans and became Middle Ages conquering machines. Vikings! Crusades! Norman Conquest of England!

The first episode is up on the webpage and the RSS feed for the podcast is running. I cannot pimp this podcast enough. If you even passingly enjoy learning about the more obscure corners of history, these podcasts are fantastic.

The Internet! Sometimes it’s for learnin’!

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

This morning before work I clicked on a link that took me to some commentary on NBC that went along with polling on the health care debate. I was not expecting it to be a video, but it was. (This was found on Chuck Todd’s twitter stream this morning.)

I largely ignored it until it came to the last guy who was white male skinny WASP type listed as a “Financial Analyst.” And what he said struck me. He’s not in favor of Health Care Reform because:

A. He doesn’t believe that health care is a basic human right.
B. It’s a “hand out” to “poor people” instead of a “hand up.”
C. Poor people can “go other places like to the Red Cross.”

Other than being incorrect on all three points, I was just floored by the comment that “basic health care is not a human right.” Where does this view come from? It’s not Christian (or Jewish or Muslim or Buddhist or…) It’s not liberal. It’s not even conservative. It’s just… selfishness for selfishness sake. From a purely conservative viewpoint, making health care a basic human right helps:

- People who are less afraid for their health work harder, create new business and generate more wealth;
- Families because healthy people stay together as a coherent unit and those with less financial strain hold together better;
- Communities because healthy people contribute more locally and are less of a strain on the local community’s economy including the local religious community;
- Local economies because fewer sick people move less sick around, more people go to work, productivity increases;
- Macro-economy because sick uninsured people are a drain on economic resources, spread disease, go to hospital emergency rooms anyway, push up prices all over the place, and reduce work.

We won’t even talk about the liberal viewpoint (everyone should have a right to see a doctor regardless of financial means) or religious viewpoint (Man should give up a little to help fellow Man to reduce suffering). From a purely conservative viewpoint of keeping up the status quo and generating wealth, calling basic health care as a “hand out” is bewildering. It seems to me that the “monied” class would want healthy people to generate them money!

Then I thought about that guy, the guy who played a pure classism card, who clearly believes that financial analysts who can afford $20K a year at a private University should be the only people allowed to see a doctor in the United States. Let’s say he’s — A. White, B. Male, and C. In the banking sector. Reading the statistics from the recession, the people getting laid off most are: A. White, B. Male, and C. In the banking sector. Should he lose his job, and should he not be able to find another one, should his COBRA (given to him by that socialist Teddy Kennedy) run out and he get sick, should we tell Mr. Douchebag that he shouldn’t get hand out and he should go to the Red Cross? My answer: Yes. And him. In particular.

I don’t know where to start with people like this except label them as douchebags. It’s okay to… what, if they can’t afford $100K or $200K in tuition then they should all die in the street? Die of tuberculosis? What precisely do they want?

The problem with the health care debate is that we’re letting these people a place at the table. I know it’s a democracy and everyone gets to have their voices heard but if we can’t even start at the point of basic human decency and agree that all human beings have a right to have a basic alleviation of suffering through simple modern medicine, then where do we go?

I’m not exactly thrilled with the sausage making in Congress and I don’t have huge amounts of hope for whatever legislation will end up being passed, but for God’s sake people. Look at yourself in a mirror.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

General Option: Awesome

Review: Having been raised on a strong diet of the Beatles and having vivid memories of my parents arguing over the Paul is Dead symbolism on the cover of Abbey Road, I have about 95% of the Beatles catalog committed to memory. I was a little iffy going into the game because the music is such a part of my DNA but I really do enjoy being able to play guitar and sing the songs. The selection of songs was a little puzzling at first — why Taxman instead of Eleanor Rigsby from Revolver, for instance — until I realized the song choices were heavily weighted to George Harrison songs because his son was the one who brought the project and worked to get the licensing. That’s why you get songs like Within You Without You instead of something easier to sing like Lovely Rita from Sgt. Peppers.

I find playing through story mode to be very interesting. I don’t usually listen to the albums in chronological order, and playing through gives me this sense of a band who went from being this bar-blues-band/rip off of Chuck Berry to a group with their own unique sound that still built all the pop songs over a 12-bar blues sequence to a group that tried to push what they could do musically (which culminates with Dig a Pong in the Rock Band collection, in my opinion).

I have mostly played guitar and done a little singing, although the singing is more on par with “what I do in the truck alone on the way to work.” Generally I find the songs well balanced although the guitar is a little picky about being late on hitting the notes. We haven’t explored the harmony option because we need another microphone. Also, Katie is insisting on singing the songs, so we’re happy for No Fail mode. I need to get off my butt and start mastering songs in Hard.

I actually don’t feel dorky playing the songs on a plastic guitar instead of my perfectly good real guitars, surprisingly enough, despite owning piles and piles and piles of Beatles guitar tabs. Maybe because a) I cannot play the harder songs anyway and b) the singing is about the same if it’s car-signing or if it is rock band singing.

Best Songs in the Collection: Something and Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band / With a Little Help from My Friends. We haven’t played yet Dig a Pony but it’s one of my favorites. Katie loves to sing Yellow Submarine, but then again, who doesn’t?

Notable Songs Missing: Help! Penny Lane. Your Mother Should Know. I wish Because was on there but it’s a little more obscure. Most of the 1st album of the White Album. However, the albums are all coming out, starting with Abbey Road, then Sgt Peppers, and Rubber Soul.

Entertaining Easter Egg: There’s a special reward for playing the 32-bar guitar solo on While My Guitar Gently Weeps on Expert without missing a note. I joked this was the special Eric Clapton award since the White Album recording is a Clapton solo.

Random Comments: Twist and Shout and Boys are both covers played by the Beatles of other bands.

I will probably make more comments about Maxwell’s Silver Hammer being the stupidest pop song in existence after Abbey Road is downloadable and I can play it. Who writes an ironic happy pop song in a major key about stalking and double murder?

I found musty live 1964 Beatles concert footage on YouTube this morning. For some reason I cannot remember the song but Ringo is just going crazy on those drums. He looks like a mid-70s punk drummer with that stripped down set. It was awesome.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

Quick roundup of some interesting stuff from over the weekend.

Inglorious Basterds: I am an enormous Tarantino fan so my opinion is likely biased and tainted. I enjoyed it greatly. Long conversations punctuated by extreme violence. Interesting bit about the movie: it felt very much like the opening of a novel and the ending of a novel but the middle 800 pages skipped. I want to see the Aldo the Apache mini-series. Also — Col. Hans Landa is the best Nazi villain of all time.

Ceazar’s Restaurant and International Market: Found on HowChow. A very good Iranian restaurant in Elkridge although they were surprised and confused to have customers on a Sunday lunch time during Ramadan. Not quite ready to handle the restaurant side of things although the food was very good. (Eric pointed out that “Meat on a stick is the highest form of food.”) Attached market intriguing; stuff on the shelves we had never heard of and everything is pickled.

OMG SKULLZ: Eric made me an awesome hoodie in skull-print knits. It’s like wearing a comfy goth blanket. It has skulls. OMG SKULLZ! He went from no hoodie in the afternoon to complete hoodie at 2am. It’s amazing hoodie making magic!

Yarn: Wanted to do the Craft-Zine Craft-A-Long but no one hand the required yarn. It will come to me eventually, but had to order it from online. Sad. Lower-end yarn selection at big box stores pretty sucktastic.

Nordstrom: Running an experiment — ordering replacement cosmetics online. I hate going to the cosmetics counter at any Department store. With the stores having low sales, they have gone from aggressively ignoring me and refusing to sell me things to aggressively upselling me. If I can order my stuff online one of my great life’s problems will be solved. (Anyone else truly hate buying cosmetics? I have had a rare few good experiences buying cosmetics at the counter.)

Katie’s Bronchitis: She’s on a nebulizer with albuterol. It’s better than it was on Thursday and Friday but she was still coughing pretty bad last night. She spent the weekend at Grandma and Grandpa’s watching Spongebob. Grandma bought Katie a Halloween Tree with Halloween Ornaments. Because why should Christmas get all the fun? Also, spooky light-up house! My child, the 4 year old goth.

Presidential Faux-rage: Heard a rumor of white cloistered Midwesterners in flyover states having conniptions of fauxrage and keeping children home over black socialist Marxist propagandist message of “study hard” and “listen to your teachers” beamed into schools. Sent Katie to school this morning in adorable uniform anyway.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

I generally don’t write about work for a large host of reasons and this is far less a work post than an observation on engineering post.

I sat in a big meeting for 8 hours yesterday with a big collection of the “brain trust” at work — system administrators, network engineers, DBAs, lead engineers, and engineering management. What I noticed after an hour was the population mix:

29 guys.
1 me.

This bothered me enough to mention something — I jokingly commented that I felt like the Waldo in a Where’s Waldo drawing and mentioned were no other women in the meeting at all. “So?” was the response which I am sure meant “that doesn’t mean anything.”

It was weird. We do have one other female engineer but she’s exceedingly junior. There are no women in any other direct engineering roles. (We do have women system analysts.) I stand alone.

It’s still bothering me a little and I’m wondering if I’m just over-analyzing or if this is part of the core of why I feel so off all the time. It definitely says something about the culture of engineering, even in Enlightened Liberal Maryland.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

I have been playing, of all things, Final Fantasy XII on an ancient PS2 that is slowly falling apart and one thing that struck me about the main plotline is how emotionally un-invested the main character is in the villain or the results of the villain’s actions.  Vaan, the main character, has no real place in the storyline and even when he sort of shoe-horns a place, he has no investment in the outcome.  The villain is too distant from him for there to be any connection.  As a result, the story is entertaining but it feels stale.  “Why is this guy even here?” I ask.

On the other hand, Final Fantasy VII still lingers because the Sephiroth-Cloud conflict is so personal that even after the game is done the feeling of “oooh, SEPHIROTH” clings.  The plotline makes the villain personal.  It’s relentlessly personal — Sephiroth does all but dance naked in front of you during the main plotline.  If there is something of yours he can take away, he goes after it with a passion.  Near the end, the player is going, “Damn you SEPHIROTH.”  And if you are me, promptly sets your computer background to be Sephiroth wallpaper.

This brought about a sort of rambling discussion about the importance of villains and villainy in a story to make a story emotionally grabbing or “hooky.”  Every story has some kind of challenge to be overcome — be it environmental or time constraints or other human beings.  Otherwise, there’s no actual story.  It’s just a set piece full of people talking Tarantino-like.

If the challenge is another character, the trick is to make the challenge have emotional currency and staying power that builds.  It cannot be simply one knife in the back — it has to be a series of escalating knives in the backs until nothing is left except stabbing time in a big emotional payoff climax.   The villain’s core job is to foster emotional investment in the narrative.   Otherwise, we are stuck with a glorified travel memoir, ala Kerouac’s “On the Road,” which has plenty of great set pieces but never has much emotional staying power.

This lead to wondering “what makes a great villain?”

* Motivation.

* Ambition and drive to achieve goals at any cost.

* Ruthlessness.

The story needs a good antagonist, the antagonist needs a motive and drive, and then the protagonist needs emotional connection to the antagonist on a deep, primal level.  But the protagonist is not the only one on a journey through the story.  The villain needs his own arc, his own story, that is just as compelling as the protagonist’s so that they work as a weight-counterweight.  The villain cannot be a cackling insane bad guy sitting in a tower being evil just to be evil.  He needs to be doing something, and the protagonist has to run to keep up.

This doesn’t just hold for classic good guy – bad guy interactions.  Bad guys can be groups (Nazis), creatures (the whale in Moby Dick; Jaws), and environment (several Jack London novels).  It’s easier to conceive in a common good guy – bad guy interaction.

FF12 is a fantastic example of a villain who simply falls down from the outset.  10 hours into the game and there’s not a shred of emotional connection between Vaan, who is theoretically the main character, and Vayne, the Big Evil Bad Dude.  The story has no sense of cohesion outside of a travelogue.   Things happen around Vaan.  He experiences hardship and victories and boss fights.  Very little happens to Vaan.  Even at one point in dialogue Penolo, who has even less emotional stake in the story, tells one of the lesser bad guys: “I don’t even know why I am here.”  Neither do we.

I am okay with travelogues.  There is nothing wrong with a good road trip.  One of my favorite books of all time is Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas.  But other than some excellent twists of words, it is a story in something happens, but not a story as in a great narrative.  It has to rely on language to be hooky which is a difficult trick to pull off.

I’m thinking about video games because I’m playing video games and it is a ready example, but it holds true for, for example, the two Lock Lamora novels by Scott Lynch where one has a hooky villain (who violates literary convention but that IN ITSELF is another story) and the second does not.  Hell, one can say it works for Shakespeare’s Richard III or Othello but falls down with the lesser and considerably more awful plays because the protagonist-antagonist structure falls apart.

All just fodder for vague thought as I get out of my Epic Dry Spell and back into writing.

Interesting academic exercise: Read some trashy fiction.  Pick out the antagonist/protagonist.  Write down the antagonist’s story.  Does it intersect with the protagonist’s?  How?  Where?  What is the antagonist’s journey?  Does the antagonist’s story have any staying power for you?

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

It’s true. It’s August 26th. Eric and I have been married for nine years today. Nine! Nine full years! Real ones!

And I have yet to sell him in eBay. But I keep thinking I might be able to sell an Eric-KR two-fer pack…

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

Now I understand why people with what I am going to graciously call “hereditary or otherwise non-avoidable sugar issues” (heh) turn into insane gym rats. I do not feel well unless I go and do some pretty vigorous exercise for at least 30 minutes. Otherwise I feel sluggish and sick and edgy. But with exercise, huzzah!

I finally made a compromise with myself to give up the weights and focus on just getting my heart rate into a nice warm spot for 30 minutes, so my poison is currently the stand bike. It lets me a) read and b) pedal which is all I really want. So far the arthritis isn’t firing too bad which is my main concern. I don’t seem to be losing any weight either, but I have given up on that front. If I lose weight, yay. If I don’t, yay. All I care about is feeling okay and getting books read, so this seems to get me there.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

Found on Andrew Sullivan’s Blog over on the Atlantic:

It starts with this Lovely Misogynistic Rant from Jack Welch about how there is no such thing as a “work-life balance” and mostly full of how women are stupid. (Hidden under a paywall for the most part but Andrew Sullivan quotes the good parts.)

Sullivan posts a big rebuttal to this nonsense at: Corporate Chutes and Ladders.

Basically what it comes down to is: if you are female, and you step off the corporate ladder for one second for any reason you will never in your lifetime have any capacity to lead big organizations. Because obviously you are weak. It’s up to the Big Strong MEN! Of course, if a man steps off the corporate ladder for any moment then it’s all good…

Gah.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

I need a Friday Question category. But! The Friday Question is:

I finally have gotten into reading web comics after many years of resisting. I read several but I’m always looking for more. What are your favorite webcomics? Give me your recommendations!

One requirement, though: the webcomic must have an RSS feed.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

I have had an extremely bad case of total creative block for several months now. I can’t write stories, I can’t write music, I can’t do anything. It’s pretty much blown. I can’t seem to shake it, either. I know the root cause but there’s not much I can do other than become a total hermit.

I am trying to bring down my horizons a little to get back in the swing of things. I’m focusing on 500-750 word bits, just a few paragraphs, to get me from being totally blocked to being mostly blocked. If you’re interested, here’s the first little bit. I’ll post them but I’ll keep them under cuts (LJ-only) so they can be easily skipped.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

Seth Godin on blogging – Seth Godin, Blogger: An Interview.

Also, the Press This! on Wordpress has now made me a thousand times more annoying than ever before.

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.

“This helps explain the broader problem with American conservatism right now. It is less a movement than an industry. From Fox News to talk radio to conservative publishing houses, it has created an alternate and lucrative media reality that is worth a fortune to those able to exploit it.”

I totally and completely agree with Andrew Sullivan:

I’m a celebrity – get me out of here..

Originally published at /project/multiplexer. You can comment here or there.