Scalped #35

Jesus, there hasn't been anything here in a month. I keep thinking I should write something and never do it. The next Marathon is in my head, but it's somehow not making the transition to the screen. It's too massive and I haven't been able to sit down with nothing distracting me and writing it. It's about home and not being at home. My version? It's about home home, the United States as home and Allegheny as home.

But, this one is about a single issue of Scalped that goes against what you expect from the pitiless series. Also, Blogger's no longer going to be powering the site, because we're the one percent affected by their changes. Don't worry. We're looking into migrating the content on a different platform. Same URL.

I've never read Scalped before, but I found number 35, a one-shot, to be painful and surprising. The sum of my Scalped knowledge is this: noir set on a Native American reservation. Because this is a noir, crime is organized, and because crime is organized, the FBI is involved. To quote Blacklisted, that ain't real much.

For 35, though, I don't have to know anything about the main characters in the story. It's about an older couple (Mance and Hazel) who love each other who live reasonably close to an Air Force base, within driving distance of the town where the main arc takes place. By the end of the issue, one person dies, there is an explosion and the house is destroyed. But it's not what you think. The first page is the couple walking in the desolate, unforgiving snow, wrapped up in blankets. It's unclear if they're going to make it to the destination and it sets the mood.

Past here are spoilers.

The couple is running out of food and money. Quickly. The man is the first to say that he's going to have to go into town. This is important because what is meant by that is they're picking up food by acknowledging the couple's poverty and inability to survive without help from the government.

They get food. Things are good. Then, the wife, Hazel falls to the ground, her kidney trouble finally catching up to her. Mance puts Hazel in bed, saying he's going into town to get her medicine. She doesn't want to die in the bed, so she goes with him. They go into town again. She gets her medicine and they go back to their house. In the middle of the drive, far enough from town, the car breaks down.

#35 plays on your expectations of Scalped. One person dies. There is a house-destroying explosion. There is no intrigue. Yes, there is compromise and pride in an arithmetic, but not in the noir conceit. There is no femme fatale. There is no evil businessman/mob kingpin, at least not one that's relevant to their story. Yes, there is the casino that is one of the focal points of the main story, which is passed in two panels and used as the difference between the old couple and the rest of the characters in the narrative. The only emotional hurdle or land mine between them is the acknowledgment of their plight, which is dealt with in...a page. They decide they're going to ask for assistance and the scene ends with Hazel and Mance holding each other in bed.

It is because their lifestyle is not one built on glamour or a desire for more wealth. They require each other and that fills their cup. I don't want to be reciting a virtuous poverty/savage story, but instead noting that their life is not caught in the web of deceit, lies and crime that the series is known for. Hell, I don't think a single law is broken in the issue.

It's a heart-warming issue. That's the surprise. Things just keep going wrong and because the characters have the spine to acknowledge the bad things that happen to them and admit they need help (government assistance and Hazel not staying in bed while her husband gets the medicine), things work out. The explosion in house is an Air Force jet crashing into it and the person who died is the pilot. The Air Force covers the cost of their medicine and pays for the rebuilding of their house. It's not happily ever after, they're still older and have health problems, they probably have a construction crew to build them a new house and friends that are invested in seeing them happy.

Above here are spoilers.

Yes, I understand that the issue rewards the idea of a heterosexual monogamous relationship in the key of true love since the teenage years and that's a uniquely Western romantic thing, but it's a rare ray of sunshine in a series that's bleak enough to rival Battlestar Galactica or the Wire.

I hope you buy it.

Mission Convincers.

I've written pretty often about Trap Them, about how they're absolutely wonderful and about how they make me happy. Well, the title is the last track on their much venerated (by me) 2008 record, Seizures in Barren Praise, it's seven minutes long and might count as a d-beat opus.

Anyway. I wrote this originally for the Loyola Phoenix, but cleaned it up a little for here. A person called Michael Coyne wrote in pretty much saying that Guantanamo Bay was reasonably comparable to a Hyatt. We disagree.

You can find the original here. But! This is a cleaned up version. With links! And me talking.

I feel compelled to respond to last week’s Letter to the Editor from Michael Coyne.

It is my opinion that the Guantanamo Bay prison is not as comfortable as Mr. Coyne believes. First and foremost: He says the U.S. Congress has reviewed the facility and deemed it fair. Given that Congress reviewed the evidence for the war in Iraq and found it sufficient, their approval does not satisfy me.

Second, whatever the formal religious accommodations are, they’re undercut by the guards spraying urine on the Qur'an and sexually assaulting the prisoners, according to an internal U.S. military review and the FBI, respectively.

Third, the Red Cross has reviewed the detention center and is far less charitable than Mr. Coyne, specifically using the phrase “tantamount to torture.” But ignoring the Red Cross, most striking is what the FBI (and the Department of Defense) allege about the facility: That the prisoners were shackled for 18 hours at a time and forced to urinate and defecate on themselves.

As for the idea that Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be tried in a civilian court and kept in maximum security prisons like any other criminal, I say yes. The point is not to throw suspected terrorists in a gulag that resembles limbo or a relatively high circle of hell, but to expedite justice.

Apparently, the increased security supposedly needed for the trial will cost more money. It’s money well spent, in my eyes. The U.S. has a budget of trillions of dollars. Money can be found. This is about the vindication of our justice system when the entire world is watching. This is what you spend money on. And yes, we have a sizable deficit. At this point, another couple million is comparative pocket change.

Khalid Sheikh Mohammed should be held in the super maximum security prison in Illinois. The building was created to detain the most dangerous criminals we can apprehend. The idea that it’s going to make the prison or the surrounding communities a target is a bit late. The prison created to detain the the worst offenders we can find and capture is already built. It is a target, by virtue of its existence, even if it didn't house people from Guantanamo Bay. And I do mean people. Specifically, human beings, to whom we have an obligation.

Mr. Coyne ends his letter throwing his support behind the execution of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed. I believe this to be unwise. Killing Khalid Sheikh Mohammed brings back no victims from the grave and gives our enemies another martyr and recruiting tool.

In short, I think Mr. Coyne is mistaking revenge for justice. Our criminal justice system makes tragic mistakes on a daily basis, but Khalid Sheikh Mohammed doesn’t have to be one of them. As much as it hurts, I believe this country ought to give Khalid Sheikh Mohammed a better trial than he deserves, and, if at the end of it he is found guilty, then we let the rule of law decide what to do with him.

Revenge is cheap. Justice is time-consuming, boring and expensive.

Black Lanterns and Overkill

My pen name in Overkill was Charles Victor Szasz. It's nuts to type it this many times in an article. Anyway. I submitted this elsewhere and apparently, it didn't take. Here's something about the Question #37.

Go Saints!

I got excited from the first five words: Charles Victor Szasz of Earth.

During a DC Universe-wide event (Something big happens in the fictional universe, to which the monthly series respond and draw upon) Blackest Night, the main artist took some time off and in the place of the main story, 10 cancelled series were brought back for a one-off issue tying into the event.

One of those was the Question, a little known monthly series active in the 80s, starring a C-list hero called the Question. It ran for 36 issues and ended there, influencing most of today's top writers and hadn't been touched since. (The characters were used elsewhere, but not in their own ongoing monthly series.) The series itself was a mix of Mike Royko and Batman, a 200-level philosophy final and Zen Bhudduism that congealed around Charles Victor Szasz, a TV news anchor who went out crusading as the vigilante without a face, the Question, at night.

It ended with him leaving the city because he was too attached to the city and to his lover there to be the Question without emotional pain.

The big event in universe to thank for the one-shot, Blackest Night, is about zombies. Evil zombies feeding off of the emotions for the person, if I had to be specific. In universe, Szasz is dead from lung cancer and his protege, Renee Montoya, is the current Question.

The issue's storyline goes like this: By an incredibly loose definition of a comic book reanimation, Szasz is back as a Black Lantern and it's up to Aristotle Rodor (mentor), Renee and Lady Shiva (kung-fu master, hyper violent) to beat Black Lantern Szasz.

Trouble is, they can't.

Past this point are spoilers, by the way.

The way this is dealt with is what sells me on the book. They don't defeat Black Lantern Szasz in combat. The vision of the Black Lanterns only extends to beings with emotions they can feel. A person who has no emotions will disappear and that's what the group does. They let go of their feelings towards Szasz and Black Lantern Szasz can't see them, so he walks out into the rain.

In short: Szasz had to let go to truly become the Question and his friends had to let go of their feelings for Szasz to survive. If you're aware of the history, it's a callback and if not, it's a unique piece of the larger Blackest Night mystery revealed. This issue, #37, has many different weights on it and shoulders them all. It's one part resolution for the lingering memories of Szasz and one part Blackest Night puzzle piece, set up and done in a way that is reminiscent of the series from years ago.

The issue was done the right way, with the original artist and writer coming back, even titling the issue One More Question. Shame that there's only the one.

Keep On Dancing, Right As the Curtain Is Closing

I wrote this listening to the new Felix Culpa record, available January 24th (also my birthday) from Youth Conspiracy Records. It's pretty long (out of the 66 minutes, they could have cut anywhere from seven to 10 minutes), but it's all an intense ride. I suggest you buy it.

The title comes from the Bane song End With An Ellipsis, a song about the vocalist seeing the end coming for his band, but not wanting to go sadly. Anyway, the meat of this is about S.W.O.R.D., an ongoing from Marvel that just this week made its way to the "buy me" pile, got cancelled. At least it's in good company, though, with Doctor Voodoo, Captain Britain and MI:13 and the Immortal Iron Fist.

S.W.O.R.D. got cancelled at issue #5 (cover left) due to poor sales, which everyone with a functioning brain saw coming. Everyone on the series saw that coming and it was even written as if it would end at issue #5, according to writer Kieron Gillen, (lover of obscure British pop) known also for Phonogram, a comic I enjoy quite a bit.

It's a shame, because it's a neat little spinoff comic focusing on different characters in the Marvel Universe with a tangential relation to established franchises (X-Men). I picked up issue #3 last week and while I found Beast a little bit too whip-smart and it took getting used seeing Beast look more like a horse, I warmed up to it quickly.

Gillen posits two explanations:

1. New ongoings in a shitty economy are extremely risky. (true)

2. The first two issues are ordered before anyone has read the first one so the new series might be on grounds to be cancelled before anyone has the opportunity to buy a single issue. A crazy systemic problem with comics. (true)

Quoted by CBR's Robot 6, Gillen said "It was already on unsteady ground before anyone had even read the thing."

And as soon as I read that, my mind goes to another recent launch: Batwoman. Both are spinoffs of established series (S.W.O.R.D. has X-Men and Batwoman has Batman) but their launches couldn't be more different.

Consider: Batwoman's stories have appeared in Detective Comics, 52 and Final Crisis (52 and Final Crisis being DC events) and the talk only now is coming to her own ongoing. S.W.O.R.D. (created by Joss Whedon during his Astonishing X-Men run in 2004) was thrown into its own ongoing with no lead up or introduction to the characters outside of Secret Invasion, an event from two years ago before the launch of S.W.O.R.D.

The artist on Batwoman is the stupid talented J.H. Williams III, narrowly losing to the guy drawing Blackest Night (46% to 54%) as the artist of the year in a Newsarama poll, but winning the cover of the year with his work on Detective 855 (see right). J.H. also did Promethea with Alan Moore, which also had amazing layouts. Also! Take a look at those colors. Dave Stewart (the colorist) deserves some serious kudos. Suffice to say the art team on S.W.O.R.D. doesn't have that pedigree.

I'm not sure Gillen is in the same league as Rucka, but I buy Gillen's books more frequently than I do Rucka's, so the kangaroo court of my mind has a sizable pro-Gillen bias.

The connection to the X-Men is Beast, which could have been reinforced a little bit more. What's Nightcrawler doing these days? He would fit note-perfect in an ongoing about aliens, earth and alienation. It's Beast, Abagail Brand and "everyone's favorite paper pusher" as the front and center players from the Marvel Universe.

The short version of all this is: based on this criteria, my guess is S.W.O.R.D. just didn't have the editorial backing that Batwoman did. If you want people to buy another new book, then you have to have Things Happen in the book, but also, you have to put your top-tier people on it. The new book needs to be a must-read. S.W.O.R.D. wasn't positioned as a book that's must-read. It's cool if it is read.

I want to come back to Gillen McKelvie's quote: "It was on unsteady ground before anyone had even read the thing." Marvel, I think, didn't take enough steps to compensate for the unsteadiness of the new ground and combine that with the viciousness of a market that's already hurting from an economic collapse and S.W.O.R.D.'s numbers were limited, in this case, from the start.

Of course, that's not to say S.W.O.R.D. was boring. Far from it. The first issue I picked up, ,#3, had a spectacular visual for a cover (see below), Beast being an incorrigible badass, a firebreathing dragon and xenophobia.

You've got a tiny dragon pointing guns with three barrels at you and not just that, but a shotgun and an assault rifle strapped to his back. Awwwww! S.W.O.R.D. will be missed for that reason, for its ability to blend being cute and intelligent. But hey. It's fun and it's got two issues left.

Like Conan, S.W.O.R.D. got screwed, but at least there's a trade in the future. That said, there's a fun feeling to buying the remaining issues of a cult-classic series that's walking dead. You were in before people realized it was so cool, so even if it's gonna end, pick up the issues.

Like many of Mr. Gillen's favorite artists, his work was under-appreciated the first time around and would gain significance only after the band's finished. For his first unique Marvel ongoing, it seems appropriate S.W.O.R.D. ends the same way.

The Fear The Fear The Fear

It's been an entire twelve days since the last post. Two weeks have happened, basically. In that time, I've been listening to the Steal non-stop. They're a raucous hardcore band that sounds like the first time you went downhill on your bike as fast as you could.

Go download all their records on their official website. The title is also the title of a Defiance, Ohio record, who are nowhere near as good as the Steal, but the title's stuck with me for years. Marathon #5 before the end of this month. And now, for a drastic change in tone.

Al-Qai'da's attack on Christmas doesn't register much with me. One, I didn't know it happened until a couple days later. There's been a lot of talk about how he evaded American security apparatus, but let's be honest: he got on a plane in Europe and came into America that way. Would New York airport security have caught him, I don't know. There's a lot of fear going around that something "could have" happened and that Al-Qai'da still has a lot of pull.

Let's examine what happened. Al-Qai'da attacks usually are redundant. By that I mean, if one plan goes down, there's still another one in place. 9/11 is an example. One plane failed. Three didn't. In this case, there was one (and only one) person, using the same method the shoe bomber did, which also failed.

The suicide bomber didn't even commit suicide. What he did manage to get past non-American airport security was incendiary, not explosive. (It burned as opposed to blow up.) I'm inclined to believe that's a victory. Al-Qai'da is also known for having camps devoted to these kind of activities, so they had to know that this device was improvised and "hoping for the best".

Fareed Zakaria puts it better: On Christmas a Qaeda affiliate launched an operation using one person, with no special target, and a failed technique tried eight years ago by "shoe bomber" Richard Reid. The plot seems to have been an opportunity that the group seized rather than the result of a well-considered strategic plan.

That's worrisome, but not terrifying. America is not some kind of fortress and even if it was, it wouldn't be America. America was not founded on the idea to keep foreigners and "dangerous types" out. It is meant to be a place with open arms. Those that would trade liberty for security deserve neither, Franklin said. It's worth repeating.

A young Al-Qai'da affiliate (think of the terror organization like a franchise) literally threw something together that didn't work the first time around, failed on putting an explosive on an airplane and they still managed to freak out the American public.

The fear currently going isn't logical. The evidence doesn't bear it out. There's a terrorist incident, speaking roughly, every 16.5 million departures, Nate Silver tells us. It is significantly more dangerous to take a car to wherever you're going. Those who practice suicide terror want us to be very afraid. Killing tons of people is a bonus, but the point is to strike fear a mass audience. And, like a charm, we're all very, very afraid. That's why Al Qai'da celebrated it.

And that's why I'm not at all hopeful about the war on terror.

2010

Well, it's just past five in the morning and I'm awake and relatively clear-headed for some awful reason, so I might as well.

This, then, is 2010, the year when everything changes. (I've just made that up. Or, more likely, someone else made that up and I've just made it up again.) From the perspective of about an hour and a half of consciousness: it's not bad. The eggs are quite good, and going back to sleep will be lovely. I feel hopeful for the rest of the year.

And it's not hard to being feeling a bit of hope right now, not least because 2009 is, to slip into the parlance of the times, finally fucking dead in the ground, and we can get on with it. The 'it' is, I believe, living and growing and loving and pushing ourselves to do more and better.

2009! It wasn't the best year for me, but it certainly wasn't the worst. I've had major accomplishments and fuck-ups, but a lot of my friends have had it really bad. Things haven't gone right, and people and institutions were, and still are in some cases, collapsing all around us. There is fear and unease in the air, and the change promised us seems less real every day.

Winter showed up late this year, or maybe never left at all: if you think of centuries as having seasons, of hundred year cycles of growth, abundance, harvest and decay, or perhaps sleep, then we''re somewhere in February of the new century, marching on through the slush and ice.

On this scale, I've been in winter for my entire adult life. The whole world has. We've just come through the coldest, hardest part of winter: January into February, when trees explode and every living thing barely clings to life, when your breath freezes in your lungs and your face goes numb the second you step outside.

We're tired, but we aren't exhausted. And ahead--past the groaning ice--is the coming Spring. It's not quite here yet, and we're going to have to work hard to make it through, but on this day especially, you can feel that it might be true, that we are perched at the beginning of a new century, waiting to rise up out of the snow.

There is, of course, no reason to think about centuries having seasons. I've just been playing the oldest trick in the book on you, and myself: telling you a pretty story about how the sun is going to come back and there will be deer and blackberries and warm summer light again, here, in the dark and the cold and the ice. It's the oldest holiday tradition. Singing to keep the dark at bay.

But the sun does come back, and the world can get better. Spring is the sweetest season. Let's bring it.

December Wolves: Whys and Wherefores

Title is stolen from the final trade paperback of Y: The Last Man. The ending caught me by surprise, but it was sweet nonetheless. I'm going over everything I did and didn't do with the December Wolves project. Consider it the pre-post-mortem.

The fact that I'm even doing this shows just how disorganized and uncommitted to the project I am when it was easy to be organized and committed to the project. I have 14 updates in the hole by 10:16 and I'm pumping out the final one less than 100 minutes before time is up. It's disappointing. But. We're here, so let's go over what went well and what went so horrifyingly wrong.

The comic book reviews/deconstructions/thoughts went well, I think. I'm no stranger to criticism, so that was a little bit in my comfort zone, but having to push myself to be critical of something completely different is a good exercise, intellectually. I had to think differently about how I looked at a piece of consumable media. Also, the YouTube experiment was fun.

With that, I also had to think differently about how my language needed work but also how to keep the viewer's attention. Without putting too much effort into video-blogging, putting together the YouTube clips sucked away a whole bunch of my time. My skills are very rudimentary, but thanks to intuitive and user-friendly software, I dived in and put something together. Ideally, I'd like them to be shorter, since six minutes plus is a long time to stare at anything without it being broken up somehow, but again that's a matter of time.

Time, not surprisingly, is something I didn't use well. Whether it was starting at eight or nine on the second day with a germ of an idea or completely missing a foundational aspect of the hate for Twilight's vampire resurgences, in a lot of cases, I didn't marshal my time effectively. I spent hours staring at the screen whether it was watching YouTube or other videos, but by the end of the night, felt like I was a good two thirds done, but too tired to continue, so I put up the update, promising I'll swing harder next time.

Usually, I didn't. Going back to that Twilight post, I felt like I should have been a lot more specific in my judgment about it and wasn't. And yes, I know with the internet I can go and change it and no one's gonna know, but it's cheating. I wrote what I wrote and published what I published. Maybe I'll add some clearly labeled edit markers. But that's in the future. The Phonogram video feels like I was just going DUDE A COMIC ABOUT MUSIC THAT'S TOTALLY AWESOMESAUCE. But then again, it's been 6, 7 days since I published it, so I hope history is kinder to it than I am now.

There was also some difficulty with the software, specifically in how it warped photos. One day it worked on a sliding scale so that I could perfectly scale it down to the pixel, how big I wanted the image to be. One day, (you can guess which one by the size and placement of the images) it just plopped the image down in the window with no ability to control size whatsoever. That can also be changed in the future.

I'm taking away from this project that I need to invest more time at the front end and stop, cold turkey, putting things off until I have a night clear. Maybe if it's as simple as 15 minutes, every 2 hours, write something in the box and see what happens, the posts will improve. But, I need to learn and master that discipline.

I don't think December Wolves failed, as a concept. As a project, I know it didn't, because there's 15 updates on the 31st. But only under a limited view did it succeed. I did put up 15 original posts in 31 days. And it was grueling, but only in spots and it could have been easier on me. My choices led me to do the December Wolves project. But I also made the choices of dicking around on YouTube or Giant Bomb when I could have been synthesizing my ideas better, writing, or editing what I already written.

We'll see what launches in 2010. I'm thinking one post every three days, but that's only a thought, I can't be held to it and the usual. Perhaps 2010 will be the year of discipline. But now, I'm going to ring in 2010 by going to sleep. May your intoxication be long and your hangovers brief. I'm out.

December Wolves: I Ain't Thinking Of Slowing Down

Well, the year is almost up and I was concerned that I wasn't going to be able to make it to an internet portal to make good on my 15 by the 31st promise. With just one more to go and two hours to complete a look back, I think I can do it.

The title comes from the new Defeater record called Lost Ground. It's about a young African American soldier, before during and after World War II. It comes from the first song, called the Red, White and Blues. The narrator is spending his last night in town before deployment, goes to the cemetery to say goodbye to his mother, who was recently laid to rest and spends the rest of the time in the tavern drinking whiskey. He tells the bartender to keep pouring him shots, he's not slowing down.

So, five more things below. Happy New Year.

11. Having Seventy Times Seven sung for me in GFC. It felt really good to have a song played for me, at random. Seventy Times Seven being a Brand New song I never thought I'd hear live feels even better. It felt like a reward. In a strange way, from a group of people that I realized I intersected with but didn't know I made that kind of impact on. That realization, coupled with live music just made me smile at the end of the final semester. I felt satisfied.

12. Penny Bar. Despite my fear/avoidance around alcohol, it's nice to settle into a local bar and for 2009, the Penny Bar was it. Less a place than the people and the experiences inside it, the Penny Bar was an oasis of intoxication, available at a bargain basement price. Much of the rest is noise, blurs of Yuengling and generic, well-intentioned tomfoolery. One can't curse, which sounds bad, until you realize it weeds out the bad apples. Best drawback ever.

13. The End of a Year interview. The End of a Year Self Defense Family Force Five Iron Frenzy Band (okay, it's just End of a Year and they're changing their name to Self Defense Family, but work with me here...) is a group I only recently got into. They do some pretty hilarious youtube videos that I saw got almost no hits. I liked the cut of their jib, and finally sent some questions over to the band. I was expecting it to be in text format, but it turned out the guys went ahead and did it in the YouTube format. Hilariously, I was expected to be a chick, have Daisy Dukes and be attractive. That didn't work out well.

The questions were answered with unflinching honesty, with the self-deprecation and oddly specific answers. Also, they said nice things about me. There's nothing like hearing people you respect say good things about you to make you feel like you've made a couple good decisions in your life.

14. Joining Issue Oriented, the Millionaires post. I've been a fan of Ronen Kauffman's former band Zombie Apocalypse for a long time and I've also enjoyed the podcast he runs, Issue Oriented. So, when I got the text message saying "would you be interested in doing some blogging for us" I said yes before I could stop to say no. That's pretty cool. But what's even cooler is seeing something on the internet you know is wrong, saying it's wrong and actually realizing that after you wrote it you're still right and on the moral high ground.

Punk rock has seen worse than Millionaires and it will see worse than them in short order, I promise.

15. Gen Con. And internet on the megabus to GenCon. There aren't that many times when I feel like I'm in the definitive future. One time this year, stood out and that was going to Gen Con. Gen Con itself was three days, four nights of nerdery and alcohol, so that was pretty cool, but I really felt like I was in the future when I was getting internet access on my laptop while I was on the bus, in the middle of Indiana.

I'll repeat that. I had reliable internet access on a moving bus in the middle of Indiana. That's a huge step forward. Throw that in with finding out there was a cover of Bad Religion's 21st Century Digital Boy by Groove Coverage (oddly appropriate, right?) and by the end of the trip, I had a new song on my iPod, downloaded while I was on a moving bus just felt too cool for words.

December Wolves: All I Know Is I Hope That We're Better Than That

The title comes from an ALL song called Better Than That. This post is obviously based on the fact that I'm not.

Okay. Jersey Shore.

First. I'm not Italian in any kind of meaningful quantity, so the use of guido as a term of endearment and solidarity is intriguing. I mean, the people (who are only a little bit older than me) are dumb enough to have no idea of the history of the word, but hey. It's their history and not mine.

Second. Seriously, these kids are dumb and self-absorbed.

Third. If I was being plied with vaguely attractive women, literally gallons of alcohol and a boring job (working at a tshirt store) with my crazy roomates, would I act that stupid? I've done really dumb shit when I was drinking. This is the time for them to do idiotic things. I did very dumb things this year and the difference between them and me is that I didn't have an MTV camera crew following me, I didn't spend an hour on my hair, I don't work out an eighth as much as they do. If i was there, what would I do? I'm not sure. I would probably have a complete mental break within two weeks after I realize that I am being watched as I urinate.

I mean, I read Hellboy books (the Library editions of them, anyway). I could fill a row of shelves with the books I own. My life would not be terribly interesting to film. But hell. These kids doesn't seem so bad. No, wait, I take that back. they do. They seem kind of stir-crazy, honestly. And when you add stir-craziness to a group of kids that never really grew up, it's not a good scene.

There's the Real World staples:
+The haughty, bitchy alpha girl that thrives on discord and assault.
+Dumb mooks of guys who make up for brains with brawn and chiseled bodies.
+One slightly self-aware girl.
+One completely pants-on-head crazy guy who gives himself a nickname.

Yeah, I'm going to have to back away from this now on the idea that I read books. Pretty much obsessively. All of that said, though. I'm scared of falling into the "well, thank God I'm not like them" trap. But really, I'm not quite as self-absorbed as those people, I hope, but I can sink to the same levels as them. I'm not as shallow, I hope, but then again, I've looked down girl's shirts and stared at butts. They're just being more straightforward and honest about it.

I just hope there's a difference between them and me that is more than one of degree, but that hope doesn't make it so.

Okay. Karl Rove.

I was excited when I heard that Karl Rove got a divorce. I shouldn't be. He hasn't done anything to me personally. He's good at what he does and what he does isn't nice. Okay, I'm being glib

again. But mostly, I disagree with the policies he proposed and the way he went about his business. Outing a CIA agent because her husband hammered the administration in a New York Times op-ed crosses the line.

But which line? I don't wish him dead. I just wish him out of his comfortable job. I wish him stop being so smug. I wish his life is harder, but intruding into his personal life seems like I'm going a bit far, even for a person whose actions I despise. And if I hate him this much then what's wrong with hoping his personal life disintegrates for everything he's done? I know the answer to that question, of course, because for whatever reason, I view the personal sphere as something sacred.

Then, he puts out a statement saying that he wants other people to respect his privacy. A call for privacy from a guy who sold out an undercover agent's identity for payback. Man, I want the jackals to hound him. I want some CNN 3 ring circus shit around his home and personal sphere. But no matter how poetic the justice sounds, it still doesn't feel like justice. It doesn't feel right. I want some blood from Rove for all he's done, but like this, it isn't justice. It's revenge. Justice is that the trail of evidence clearly and unambiguously catches up to Rove in a way that buries his political career.

I'll say this: Karl Rove, if you read this, I'm sorry for being happy that you got divorced. And I don't hope that there's a media circus around your divorce, but if there is, I'm not going to move to stop it or defend you, even with the slim patina of humanity.

What kills me is that it's probably more than you deserve.

December Wolves: This Is What You Wanted

I came home exhausted from work and I want nothing more than to fall face first onto the bed 3 feet from me. It was mostly because I stayed up way too late last night to get different done. I made a statement, though, that I ought to stand by. Then again, I made it on Twitter, so I have to live up to it.

This is what I want. I want to write. But to get there, I have to do it for free. Often. So here I am. It's more the often. Without a deadline, I can pick endlessly at what I've already written instead of actually writing. So this one is about Christmas. It's a big enterprise (but not too big) in the household I'm in. And every year, it's the same deal. Christmas comes and I know that I have ironclad obligations to my parents.

And after a couple decades, that gets repetitive. I get annoyed, because it's so same-y. Year in, year out. Big dinner at home Christmas Eve, big dinner elsewhere Christmas Day. The Good Clothes. The Tree. The Stockings. Oh, God, The Presents. So, How Are You Doing This Year? The Tradition.

It's grating. But then, I hear that a couple friends of mine have lived without it and they actually find it cool that my family has traditions. And, since my parents are never gonna read this, I can say it: After hearing this, I almost kind of agree with them. Okay, yes, tradition and I have a pretty fractured relationship these days. And yes, it's inconvenient around the Christmas holiday to set a certain amount of daily real estate aside for something that only happens once a year and for a select group of people. But hey: This thing has been happening for more than two decades now so the fact that it goes on by its own inertia is pretty cool. On some level, that's what this website set out to be.

But the tradition in this case isn't cool because it's still around. There are plenty of things that are still around that are terrible. It allows friends to have something ironclad to gather around that's positive and is a safe space. And as I'm getting older (it being relative), I realize I want that more and more. Gifts or toys (books excepted, of course, because they're manna from heaven) are nice, but that's what I want more than anything: A chance to see my friends.

It's taken me a lot of nights of troubled sleep to realize that. And tomorrow, I will go to sleep in the same building as my grandparents and extended family. Yes, New Year's Eve will not be exciting, but it will be with the ones I love and now, I realize how valuable of a gift that is.

December Wolves: The Everything Else List Round 2

More lists. I don't know if this is my price for lazing about on this stuff, but ending the wolves with lists feels somewhat defeating. Never fear, though. There's at least four more posts left and there's one non-list post in the can. Fifteen was the number I said I'd make and fifteen will be the number by 31st, whether by hook or crook.

I'll push the fear out of the way.

6. The way Kristian from Crime In Stereo's eyes lit up when he talked about his new record, I Was Describing You To Someone. Every band says their new record is their best before its been released, but the way Kristian seemed stoked about it (outside of the Metro) is something it's hard to find a parallel for. They clearly want these songs to be heard, blasted and compared explicitly to their previous material. That's rare and frankly magical.

7. Hearing and believing I'm an inspiration to other people. Hearing that those people believe my writing is "inspiring, interesting and intelligent" is very, very flattering, but even more flattering is that my writing inspired other people to write. Those words still make me blush a unflattering red.

8. Auto-Tune the News. I'm of a single mind on Auto-Tune the News. It has the emotional weight of a carrot, the depth of a dog's water dish and the nutritional value of a Slurpee. Then again, it's a full pop song about the month's news, fed through a vocoder and even had T-Pain guest on a song. From that perspective, it's a neat snippet of 2009. Yes, people mistake it for saying something politically, but you shouldn't hold that against the show.

9. Beating the final mission of Starcraft: Brood War without cheat codes. I've said repeatedly that Starcraft is a defining moment in my childhood and continuing growth, so putting the entire single player campaign to rest is a real accomplishment. I probably sunk an entire day into beating this mission with all the re-starts and save states, but frankly, I just ended up outlasting the computer and using the cheats of a walkthrough and constantly saving my progress.

It went like this: Take out the nuclear Terrans (with their fucking siege tanks) as fast as humanly possible, assimilate their base. Defend my base. Build up my force. Break off pieces of Battlecruiser/Valkyrie Terrans. Defend my base. Build up my force. Break off another piece of B/V Terran territory. Assimilate base. Defend my base. Rinse, repeat.

By the time I got around to the Protoss that had unfettered access to the bottom half of the map (and attacked me throughout the mission), it had run out of resources in its own base and it hadn't expanded. It's not quite the same as beating a human player, but the payoff of destroying three forces dead set on my destruction, that started off with nuclear weapons, Battlecruisers and a half-started 'Toss tech tree is still sweet.

10. Obama being sworn in. I cried and nearly ran out of my Oral Presentation class to make sure I caught whatever was left of the swearing in. Our long national nightmare was over, I texted. Finally, the feckless, thuggish era of Bush was done. And it hasn't been sunshine, gumdrops, rainbows and Candyland since, but that day, I felt hopeful and inspired. Yes, I would rather be lead by a President that got out of college and chose to do community organizing instead of a guy who coasted around on Daddy's money and ran businesses into the ground. I would rather have my country lead by a guy who taught Constitutional Law at the University of Chicago for a decade than a guy who couldn't be bothered to look into the details of his decisions.

Let me hedge my bets just a little. He's continuing some of the Bush policies that I find repugnant. Then again, Al-Qai'da tried to attack us Christmas Day and should have succeeded. Oddly enough, the reason why they didn't succeed was because what they got on the plane was incendiary than explosive and the passengers (!!) put it out. But then again, Al-Qai'da attacks are usually redundant, so there should have been someone else on that plane that had a bomb, but apparently, there wasn't. Strange. Suicide terror is crazy.

The short version is this: I sleep better knowing Obama is at the desk and not Bush and that inauguration was the day when it first felt real.

December Wolves: the Everything Else List

For my other website, every year I do an end of year recap which includes a list of the CDs I enjoyed the most. In 2006 and 2007, it was a huge, sprawling, all-consuming thing that took up a couple weeks of my free time since I had to put everything down that I thought was important in there.

It ended up being 20+ pages on Word. 2008, I stepped back from that, but it was still a pretty long document and involved a week or so of prep and writing. This year, my list was done in sporadic, quixotic bursts, avoiding a numerical list while maintaining a year-end favorite (in this case, P.O.S.' Never Better) that I think is roughly 2,000 words and not nearly as many pages in a word doc. I think it communicates everything essential.

The list itself is little more than a time-capsule and a specific imprint of what I was listening to this year, warts and "terrible choices" and all. The music list hasn't gone up yet and I'm jonesing to get a year-end something out before 2010 hits. An idea struck me walking outside and suddenly another member of the pack is ready for it's close up. Here's a different time capsule for Eleven Names: The Everything Else list.

Since pastepunk is awesome and I already covered the recorded music I listened to, I had other, non-musical experiences that were great, but didn't fit the bill of the first list, the Everything Else list is a list of everything else I enjoyed, or a list of cool experiences, media and so on. It will continue through the 31st.

1. Batman and Robin. Grant Morrison doing Batman is one way I described it to the ARGO kids, but the title of the comic tells you exactly what it's about, even if it requires a little bit of deconstruction. The comic is about legacies of Batman and Robin and the people behind the cowl. The current Batman was previously a Robin. He is training a new Robin, the test-tube baby of Batman, while fighting another former Robin who

has turned into a villain.

All of this is happening while the upcoming plotline is that the new Batman is trying to revive the old Batman. It's about growing up, coming to grips with the new responsibilities with the hope that the actual Batman comes back soon. The new Robin (the test-tube baby) is precocious enough to believe that he ought to be Batman, so the current Batman (former Robin) is trying to hold it all together.

2. Graduating college. I have a nice plaque. Okay, but no seriously, it's an accomplishment that I'm proud of. At the very least, it's provided the spark of creativity for a good third of my posts here.

3. The ARGO column. I wrote a sweet column about growing out of college gracefully. It's one of the things that I go back to and sometimes think I'm a good writer or I'm at least making something universal personal and location specific. The fact that it resonated with people who weren't in the club was something that I worked very hard on and to have the audience recognize that was and is very reassuring.

4. Meeting Jordan. After three or four years of helping Jordan out with it, I managed to hop on a drive to D.C. for the sole and express purpose of meeting up with him. I've never met Adam or Aubin or Brian from punknews, so I've always felt like there was something missing from the last three, four years of our collaborations, so finally meeting him felt awesome and a capstone on an incredible academic ride.

5. End of college radio show. It's an excuse to play all my favorite songs that don't have vulgarities and giving two endings. This two endings part is incredibly important.

The first being the appropriate "things change, it's scary but we move on" song, sung by Vienna Teng, an attractive woman, playing the piano. It's a lullaby for a child being scared by the rain. Note perfect. The actual ending, a little more...ragged.

The first track was John Coulton's Still Alive, a little ARGO hoorah, which I'm sure you know and if you don't know it, learn.

The second was Thunder In the Night Forever by Planes Mistaken For Stars. It is the sonic embodiment of this picture. It is about taking the fight of your expression to the billboards and ideologies that have gouged your eyes and ruined your friends lives with velvet-lined promises of fame, purity and higher callings. The subtitle is We Ride to Fight! and it reflects its performers, a dirty, beautiful song. I think I like women like Planes songs, breathtakingly intelligent, frighteningly powerful and with a pretty edge and this song is one of Planes' defining works.

The third was Bane's Ante Up, a song with an opening drum tattoo made for the purpose of engender stage dives. It is a song about understanding that you have made mistakes and bad things have happened, but you have to get up and put yourself forward in a way that leaves you totally vulnerable and with all your chips in the balance.

Heavy-hearted hymns are my thing, and it's Bane that finds the light at the end of the tunnel without neglecting the fact that it's dark in that tunnel. What's the point of writing about overcoming if the hurdles aren't that high and you aren't stabbed during the marathon?

December Wolves: Phonogram

More rough edits on a comic book. Recorded on Christmas morning, so merry Christmas, belatedly. I'm wearing a Crime In Stereo shirt. Expect more updates, a deluge of them, before the 31st.

December Wolves/Marathon: This Is Probably About You (4 of 13)

Fourth in the Marathon series. Fourth on the record. This one and Jolly Roger hit a little too close to home, so I usually ended up skipping them, which was a mistake. The song, Don't Ask If This Is About You, is about the narrator going to a party, looking for a night or two of physical intimacy to get him through a rough period in his life.

Sound familiar?

Additionally, I'm way behind on December Wolves. Again. But, I got a kick in my ass in the form of an email and this came out of it. Number five, based on Home Is Where The Van Is, should be much easier, but then again, I said that about number four and it took me the better part of two months to come up with what's in front of you.

I guess I thought I'd write this about ex-girlfriends. Somehow, getting all of those emotions off my chest again I think would be easier. I have to admit things I've admitted before. But now, I just have to admit I'm an interloper at a college where I'm taking a class. Christ. I'm going to a nominally Catholic school and taking His name in vain there seemed appropriate. I have to admit that my plans aren't coming together quite as nicely as I'd like and I...I've...

I've checked out of college.

So, what am I doing going to the anime organization and thinking about hitting on these girls? I don't know if I've really checked out. I'd like to say I have, but it's not all that clear. I would like my life to be comfortable and one of those ways is college. But I feel skeezy, and even when I contribute something to that club, I still feel like a lecher, like it's their thing and I'm shoehorning myself into it.

I know what I need is a relationship and what I want, which is closer to my grasp, so I believe, is physical contact period. It's what I see in Don't Ask If This Is About You. There's a line, "sorry, I don't mean to be so old and drunk." It sums up perfectly my self-loathing feelings hanging around the kids I don't know watching anime. In short, the creepy old man.

I don't want to get too fatalistic, though. It might confirm a couple popular theories about me, spread by girls I have been linked with. I have nothing to prove to any of them. Not a single sexual partner. I have tried and failed. I have slept alone and I have slept with them. I've been scared of at least one and I've never woke up so refreshed when I opened my eyes and saw another one was still there.

And yes, while I'm coming close to a line, I'll say this: There will be no regurgitating of private, privileged information here. My feelings, though, are fair game. Theirs, less so. Less tellingly, if you want "the stories", you can go look for the entry where I am so paranoid, I see my ex-girlfriend's concern about me and dexterity with navigating gossip as the Russian mercenaries patrolling the newly captured Big Shell in Metal Gear Solid 2.

Shit gets unreal.

But where I'm breaking from the song is this: I'm willing to wait. I'm not taking anyone out I don't want to. There was a year (this one) where I looked for a year of "just getting me by" romantically. It didn't work. I was so fucking stupid. I a) didn't get laid that often and even if I did, b) it just reinforced how much sex and feelings are mixed up for me. I felt like an outsider in the anime group even when I was legitimately trying to be a part of it without the onus of boning.

I wanted someone to hold me to get me through. I was looking for that "just" moment. Maybe I'm being overly critical of myself. It wouldn't be the first time, certainly. But in "looking for someone to touch tonight", I allowed myself to disbelieve what a wise Italian woman told me. I let people down. I don't want to be leant a blanket by anyone I don't want to sleep with for months to come. I'll be alright. I can hold myself.

I have my own parallels. Specifically, Daredevil. He got fed up with corruption in NYC, pushed all his friends away, fought off 100 Yakuza stooges for three minutes until the FBI arrived and then he disappeared. His soon to be wife left him, serving him with an annulment and his life spiraled even further out of control. Black Widow (attractive Russian secret agent lady, redhead) showed up in his house, because her cover got broken and despite the near constant flirting from her, they didn't have sex. Why? He hadn't signed the annulment yet and he didn't ask his girlfriend to marry him under false pretenses.

If you're willing to swallow the pill of monogamy intellectually (which you don't have to), that kind of decision and control takes backbone. If not, well, you've probably stopped reading a while ago. I hope I can face the future with that kind of commitment and resolve. I'll let the future come when I wake up. But for now, no one's holding me when I sleep and the difference between 2009 and now is I'm choosing it this way. Breathe in. Breathe out. Survive. Now, to grit my teeth and make it through the year. Alternatively: Be awesome.

I think I'll choose awesome.

December Wolves:We Are So Fucking Witty

Fuck nostalgia. I am alive in this moment and no other. Now, excuse me while I update my facebook status with that. This is another blog about how stupid and short-sighted I am.

Congratulations on complaining about reposting on a useless facebook group.

Really, I was moments away from commenting that on a thread but luckily, I realized I had nothing to say except berate other people on a thread for berating other people. Realizing this, I felt like a real winner.

It goes like this. One of the people is super catty about making sure there aren't reposts in a Facebook group with over 9000 pictures on it. So, she and this other guy (both friends of Eleven Names, by the way) constantly post on the thread that the picture is already here. Infuriatingly, they don't provide links. It's frustrating to have someone tell you it's already there and not have the courtesy of showing where.

But yes. Posting on a facebook thread and being smug about how people are wasting their time seems lie a bad way to go about the business of the entertainment in my life. It's not like I'm contributing anything. Snark is a vessel for showing how intelligent you believe yourself to be. And in a conversation where people are already getting out of hand, it's unwise.

Beyond that, it's more embarrassing for me that I was actively searching for that thread so I could look smarter. I had to look for that picture at work and then type something into that little text box and look for a way to put those people down. I should be bigger than that. I've been on the internet for a good decade of my life now and I'm reinforcing this tendency for replies and attention?

I'm a college graduate, man. I'm too old for shit like this. But I'm not, really, am I?

I want other people to see how intelligent I am, damn it! I want to be recognized, by the universe at large, I suppose. I reinforce this dumb cycle of hate with everyone "in before Person X says Y" or every witty comment I feel compelled to make. I know it's a larger part of the game of top dog, but for whatever reason, I'm hesitant to walk away from it. (I mean, I just love Courage Wolf!) It's one way of staying in touch. But reading it I just feel like I'm done.

That's it. Simply fed up and tired. This feeling might pass in the morning. I hope it does, but if I take nothing else from it, I guess I'm just going to try to leave positive messages or none at all. Hey, that sounds kind of familiar. What's old is new.

(And no, I'm not going to end the blog on that note. I've done that too many times before and by now that's one of my tropes. The other, in case you're wondering, is trying to connect myself to a larger idea.) Life is short and I should have better things to do than prance around on the internet showing off my presumed plumage. And if I don't, frankly, I ought to shut up and create them. So I'm going to go do that.