Results of Ruminations

When I talked about dual identities a while ago, I focused on the Batman and a little on the Hulk. I had originally planned on incorporating an analysis of how Peter Parker and Spider-Man intersect as identities, but the essay was going too long by that point. I cut the stuff--which, for me, means highlighting the text and pressing Delete . So whatever I was thinking about apropos of Peter/Spidey, it's gone now. However, I'm at the precipice of beginning another school year  and I've been feeling incipient stirrings of what I can only assume is the (apparently) real phenomenon of a mid-life crisis. My parents were pretty steady, stay-the-course kind of parents, so I don't have a lot of up-close context for these feelings, but I've been struggling a lot with what I understand of myself, my goals, my ambitions, my dreams, and my realities. One of the things that I've always used as part of my identity, with varying degrees of severity, is my obsession with Spid...

Nestled in the foothills of Provo, beneath the gleaming white Y that's painted on the face of the mountain, a water park gurgles thirstily to itself. This is Seven Peaks Water Park, a place that I have been going to, almost every summer, since I was I don't know how old (the old park, Raging Waters, falling out of favor). Now that I have children of my own, a modest budget, and ample summer time, we decided to visit Seven Peaks and swim around for a few hours this morning. As we pulled in, my boys--who were rather excited about the day's activity--wondered aloud about the parking situation. "Pay When You Leave?" asked my seven year old, reading the sign in the parking lot. "What does that mean?" "Instead of paying right now, we'll pay on our way out," I said. "How much does it cost?" he said (I imagine; this is partially paraphrased). "Seven dollars." "Wow! That's a lot!" "Yup." I gu...

Klosterman's But What if We're Wrong? is bubbling in my brain. I mentioned it before , and I've pushed deeper into it since then. In it, Klosterman tries to imagine where and how the next great piece of literature will come into being. His argument is that it will be someone fringe--someone who is outside of societal mores, someone who is part of a minority so small that no one can really anticipate or think of anything worthwhile coming from that direction. The argument makes a lot of sense, as he explains it (and, though I'm not done with the book, I do recommend picking it up). I'm only sketching here, because his thinking got me thinking about the past, rather than the future. As I drove from a lunch with a former student, I texted my friend, who is our resident Classics expert, and threw down a different idea of how we could define what a classic is (as opposed to the Classics, of course). It's something that has been nebulous if only because we're...

I happened upon Verso Books '* summer sale and picked up five books for a buck each. I bought five ( General Intellects, Beneath the Streets, and The Spectacle of Disintegration, all   by Mckenzie Wark, Beyond the Pale  by Vron Ware, and In Defense of Lost Causes  by Slavoj Zizek), but I wanted to go a little meta, a little rhizomatic, and talk about one piece, taken out of context, from the beginning of Zizek's book. I've mentioned Zizek before , and he's a fascinating thinker, albeit hard to understand (as much his speech patterns, his lisp, his accent, his thoughts, his writing as anything else about him). Nevertheless, there's a lot about him that I can't help but be attracted to, and when I started off, he hit me with this particular phrase: "the rhizomatic texture of reality" (loc. 93). The broader context is that he's going off on the idea that, because there are no more "big ideas", some think that "we need 'weak though...

Jacques Derrida (as quoted in How to Read Derrida  pg 77): For there to be a gift, there must be no reciprocity, return, exchange, countergift, or debt. If the other gives me back  or owes  me or has to give me back what I give him or her, there will not have been a gift, whether this restitution is immediate or whether it is programmed by a complex calculation of a long term deferral or difference [ differance ]. This is all too obvious if the other, the donee, gives me back immediately  the same thing...For there to be a gift, it is  necessary that the donee not give back, amortize, reimburse, acquit himself, enter into a contract, and that he never have contracted a debt...The donee owes it to himself  even not to give back, he ought not owe  and the donor ought not count on restitution. Is it thus necessary, at the limit, that he not recognize  the gift as gift? If he recognizes it as  gift, if the gift appears to him as such , if the p...

I'm listening to All the Single Ladies , a tracing of feminism in America. I'm only a couple hours into it, so I'm not really reviewing the book, but listening to some of the struggles that women have had to deal with in the United States reminded me of another book about important steps in the feminism movement: Wonder Woman. The book, The Secret History of Wonder Woman , is an interesting read that's focused more on the bizarre, somewhat eccentric life of William Moulton Marston, Wonder Woman's creator. With the new movie (please be good, please be good) on the horizon, now's a great time to get into what was happening in the background, before the comic became one of the mainstays of the DC brand. The book, however, treats the personal, familial dynamics more thoroughly than as an analysis of the character, which is fine (though I was hoping for more of the latter when I read it), so there were a lot of different pieces that were unexpected in the story. Fo...

Slavoj Žižek--philosopher, writer, and lisp-talker-- wrote a book called The Parallax View. It is really dense, so I have only hit a few dozen pages in it, despite having owned it for years. Still, the concept of a parallax gap is interesting to me: ...the confrontation of two closely linked perspectives between which no neutral common ground is possible. (4) His introductory piece discusses the idea of the parallax view  as being one in which it's impossible to get both views to square: A strong either/or sensation. Of course, what is happening inside  that disconnect of similar ideas is what the rest of the 400 paged book explores. It's all very heady stuff, and, like I said, I haven't pushed more than twenty or so pages through. But the idea of seams is interesting to me. Perhaps it's because my wife has, in the last couple of years, become more and more interested in sewing costumes. It's a hobby (one which has made a lot more money than the one I do where...

I feel like I used to be able to think better than I do. I know that I know more  than I used to--it's an outgrowth of my time as a teacher--but I don't think as well  as I used to. In some ways, this is probably what a college athlete feels: A sense of accomplishment with a lurking belief that she's peaked in her mid-twenties and nothing else she does the remainder of her life will be able to live up to that level of capacity. Maybe that's what a midlife crisis actually sounds like? All I know is that I used to be able to read something like this: simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model, the cybernetic game--total operationality, hyperreality, aim of total control. (Baudrillard 121) and mark in my marginalia "YES!" (complete with exclamation mark) and enthusiastic arrows to some opaque point that meant a lot in 2009 but is a murkier now. There's a chance that, were I to review the entire  work of (in this case) Baudrillard's ...

This tweet made me think. Okay, actually, it was the full thread, but this was one of the main points. It's an interesting comment, especially since the tweeter (?) is an avowed and happy progressive socialist (though how far left he leans I'm not fully sure). Anyway, his critiques of capitalism are always thought provoking, and it interested me. Echoes of Debord and Baudrillard came to the fore when he said that, particularly Debord's critique of the society of the spectacle. He wrote: The whole life of those societies in which modern conditions of production prevail presents itself as an immense accumulation of spectacles. All that one was directly lived has become mere representation. (1) The emphasis is in the original, and it is fascinating within gamer theory as much as our post-capitalist capitalist society. Debord wrote this in the late '60s, along with a lot of other French philosophers and literary theorists, and I can't help but feel there's a ...

There is great difficulty when approaching the Everyman that is supposed to be Solid Snake. His appearance in subsequent games--most canonical, some not ( Super Smash Brothers Melee and the Ac!d games come to mind)--has slowly, almost reluctantly revealed the explosive past and personality of a character who was originally designed to be more transparent. Hideo Kojima explains in an interview: "When I created the main character [Snake], I knew he is essentially the player...I wanted the character to be vague. That way, players will project their own personalities onto the character, and form a stronger connection with Snake." This technique is not unique to games, yet the tropes of transparent characters rarely see such success. Few narratives can readily rely on a blank Everyman, though some do ( Moby-Dick is perhaps the greatest example). The result is perhaps crucial to Snake as an avatar. That isn't to say the character doesn't have personality or a past. The tr...

NOTE: As always, there's a standing spoiler alert for any game I discuss on this blog. Here, I will be talking about Metal Gear Solid for the first PlayStation. Most of the discussion will focus on and spoil only that storyline, but because the five games that comprise the saga (as of this writing, with MGS: Portable Ops taking a necessary place) are linked, it's important to know that some things may get spoiled if you haven't played everything. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Liquid In a certain sense, Metal Gear Solid is Liquid's game. Ever one to want to emulate the Patriots--albeit a type of radical, hate-twisted emulation, similar to the one that he has for Big Boss--Liquid takes it upon himself to manipulate, control, and twist Snake's progress. If anyone controls Snake, it should be Liquid, not the gamer. The controller in the hands of the audience is happenstance, for the entire ballet of Shadow Moses is...

NOTE: This one is best read as a follow up to the one about violence and the one about the next level of gaming. I am, admittedly, rather disappointed in this particular essay, but I want to see what others think before I scrap it entirely. Particularly the end—it smacks of being too preachy. You tell me. Also, there is a footnote. Just FYI. Death of the Avatar Roland Barthes in 'Death of the Author': “Writing is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body writing” (Image, Music, Text, 1977). Replace 'writing' with 'gaming', and we have a new instance of death within video games--indeed, may very well be the only death within video games that matters. “[Gaming] is that neutral, composite, oblique space where our subject slips away, the negative where all identity is lost, starting with the very identity of the body [gaming].” Much has been said about t...

I finished it! After three weeks, I finally managed to finish Simulation and Simulacra. It's 165 pages......and, as the pictures reveal, I spent some time trying to wade through it. The colored tabs represent different ideas and quotes that I found worthwhile, a lot of which will end up in Press Start . I'm pretty excited. Oh! My thumb is visible! Go thumb!

Two little things to contemplate: Thing First— Having muscled my way through the majority of Simulacra and Simulation by Baudrillard , I am excited to say that there are some amazing things that this text will be bringing to Press Start (by the way, I just took the time to Bing (not Google!) Press Start and I think I'll need a new name. Well, that's why it's just a working title). I read it to Gayle, geeking out all the while. She nodded and said it sounded good. Anyway, here's the quote. I know it isn't in full context, and you have to know what simulacra means (the OED defines it as " something having merely the form or appearance of a certain thing, without possessing its substance or proper qualities; a mere image, a specious imitation or likeness, of something) , but I'm excited about it: simulacra of simulation, founded on information, the model, the cybernetic game—total operationality , hyperreality , aim of total control. This is, in my mind, t...