Country Wife

[...]On the third day after his return, the Godking gave audience to his rescuers. The young man was still gaunt and had a brittle, sensitive air about him, the horrors he had witnessed still plainly evident through his new clothes and freshly bathed skin. The Godking's seconddaughter stood just a pace behind and to one side of the young man, looking little better. Neither had spoken much over the in between days, forcing little smiles at the servants who insisted on thanking them personally or offering them sons or daughters in marriage. This attention had quickly waned, fortunately for the two youths, and they were allowed to recover mostly in seclusion until this morning, when a page had summoned them here, into the Godking's presence.

A delicate string of saliva slowly oozed out the corner of the old king's broken mouth as he gently coughed. The page boy quickly dabbed it away with a kerchief. Taking a deep, rattly breath, the Godking opened his rheumy eyes leaned forward, resting a gnarled arm against an equally bony knee.

"Boy, the maidens are already singing songs about you," he wheezed. "Never have i ever seen such bravery. Foolishness, my knights would have called it, but thanks to you, my kingdom is once again safe. In thanks, i now grant you a boon: your reward is limited only by your imagination, up to the hand of my firstdaughter in marriage."

The throne room went quite still at this announcement. The courtiers where aghast. It was well known that the dowry of the firstdaughter was the entire kingdom. Several of the wealthier nobles had been angling for years to be in this boy's very position. This farm boy's position.

Throughout the pronouncement, the youth met the Godking's gaze confidently. Now he closed his eyes and took a slow, deep breath - which only shook the tiniest bit - and released it. His thoughts gathered, he opened his eyes and spoke in a clear, steady voice:

"King, i want you to know that what your seconddaughter and i did, we did not out of a sense of duty, or nationality to your great empire. We did not do it for fame and we certainly did not do it for any reward. We put our lives in harm's way because it was what was required of us. It was right. Therefore, i humbly relinquish any right to your boon and ask for nothing."

A lady in the gallery fainted.

The king blinked for several long heartbeats before beginning to violently rock back and forth. On the fourth attempt, the terrified page finally understood and helped the Godking to his feet. The old man began to rage, shaking his fist at the youth, foam spraying from his bared teeth.

"Don't be daft, you foolish boy! I offer you land the vastness of which you could not experience even if you devoted the rest of your life to travelling it. I offer you so much gold that you could not count it all before you perished. The hand of my beautiful firstdaughter is your's for the taking and you spit upon her?"

The young man did not respond as the king tired himself out and was helped back into his throne by the page. When the old man had finished coughing and sputtering into the page's proffered kerchief, the youth spoke again, and again his voice was clear and strong

"Sire, i do not wish you to think i spurn your generosity, for i do request something. My lord, i come to you now as a suitor and ask for your seconddaughter's hand in marriage."

Wispy sound of conversation began to drift down from the galleries as the king stared at the lad before him.

"My dear boy, you're not thinking clearly. My seconddaughter has no worth to you; you gain nothing by marrying her and you well know this. Now speak: tell me whatever your heart desires and that shall be the value of your reward."

The young man glanced beside him at the girl by his side, reached out his hand and took her's.

"I want whatever she's worth."

The Red Queen

I am often jealous of those writers i follow on the internets whose products are, day after day, clever and hysterical. They are the sitcom writers of my generation and i often envision their lives as idyllic versions of my own, filled with quiet, sunlit mornings and very few worldly cares. Oh! how i yearn to be one of their kind, recognized and admitted into their most awesome of circles.

To that end, i'm going to be funny today.

My grandmother is bipolar. My earliest memories of the woman involve sad stories my mother used to tell me about the after-grade-school snacks of cookies and creme de menthe her mom used to prepare for her, just so she wouldn't have to drink alone. My own experiences have a much rosier shade and involve mostly images and feelings of adventure: being shown gramma's collection of cane swords; admiring her many knick-knacks from around the globe; looking askance at my brother and cousins as she leaps from a doorway to bar our path, brandishing an antique threshing flail.

I particularly remember my first experience with what my mother described as one of my gramma's "manic phases." We were vacationing down in North Carolina (where my grandmother lived for many years), visiting my aunt and cousins, and gramma offered to take the four of us cousins out to a local flea market. For reasons i no longer remember - perhaps a debilitating case of the sniffles - i opted out of going on this adventure. To this day, i regret my decision, for my brother and cousins came back with all manners of treasures! I distinctly remember a neon orange shag throw rug, a couple of turkish fezes, and the looks of exasperation on the faces of my aunt and mother which i would only understand years later.

Gramma lives up in New Jersey now, within driving distance of my house. It was decided that my aunt had had to deal with enough of her shenanigans and - now that gramma was retiring to an assisted-living sort of facility - that it was now my mother's turn to deal with her. This new proximity has allowed me to witness all sorts of new sides of the woman that i'd only previously heard of second hand.

The Thanksgiving of 2008 saw my aunt and cousins up north and my ol' G-Ma solidly in the middle of a manic phase. It was that particular year when my mother took it upon herself to educate my cousins and i about what to expect from an almost-80-year-old woman in full-blown bipolar mania. She gave Paul and i actual photocopied textbook pages with lists of symptoms. I had long known about the inhuman levels of energy, the disjointed thoughts, the feelings of euphoria, but it was that year that i learned about the hallucinations, the delusions, and the "hypersexuality."

Think about that last bit for a second.

About mid-way through that week, i woke up in the middle of the night and ventured downstairs for a drink. Being a boxer-sleeper, the first thing i noticed upon reaching the half-way point in my stealthy descent of the stairs was the frigid temperature of the first floor. A careful look around the corner set the scene quite effectively. The hall was empty, the hall bathroom door open with both light and fan on, the living room dark and empty, the front door open with only the glass screen door keeping out the cold and the smoke from my grandmother's Misty cigarettes. I could see her silhouette out on the porch, so i swept as quickly and quietly as i could down the hall and into the kitchen where i found the source of the cold air: the wide open back door. I shut the door, grabbed my drink and retreated as fast as i could to the warmth and privacy of my room.

The next morning, i mentioned the occurrence to my mother. Apparently when she got up in the morning, she found the kitchen in a similar state to the one i described above. When she asked my grandmother about it, the old lady informed my mother that PSE&G had gotten in touch with her last night to inform her about a potentially hazardous gas leak. Checking the phone, my mother very delicately asked her how the gas company had talked to my gramma, since there were no records of any calls going through last night, either incoming or outgoing.

"There's more than one way of getting in touch with people," my grandmother replied sagaciously and with a sly wink.

The Interminable Skittering of Anthropomorphized Words

I am quickly approaching what feels like a critical mass of nuggets and ideas. They rattle about in my skull to the point of being distracting, what with their collisions and then endless human interest pieces about the loving families of the concepts lost in the great catastrophe of the right prefrontal cortex.

Bitches.

While a cornucopia of potential projects seems like a fantastic thing in theory, my particular creative bent tends to end just there: at the idea stage. I have half-theories and choruses, novel conflicts and juxtapositions, species and tonalities all logged away in my head without any framing in which to put them.

You know how annoying it is when you have the chorus of a song stuck in your head, but you can't remember the rest of the song? It's worse when you wrote the blinking chorus.

Some of my frustration comes from my - for lack of a more accurate term - Renaissance tendencies; that is to say, my interest - and perhaps competence - in many fields without ever achieving expertise in any of them. So while my idea for a sky-born fish monster is nifty and i'd love to show it to other people, my drawing skills limit my ability to effectively portray the concept.

I have entire casts of characters with no plot for them to be a part of; beautiful, poignant scenes which cannot benefit from the scope of context; clever turns of phrase, naked of verse.

Still, they are mine. These little acts of creation, this instances of pristine beauty, give me focus and energy. Just as lethargy and apathy are sure signs of my depression, creativity is a signal to myself of a Good Place. The weather is turning colder and as it does, my thoughts stir, awakening to the world around me and its myriad inspirations.

Customs and Practices of a Man Called Murph

I find myself frequently blaming a man long dead for the seemingly-chaotic happenstance which plagues, oh, pretty much everybody. I refer, of course, to one Edward Murphy.

For posterity, here is the list of "laws" from which i exhume my nuggets of nonchalance (photo-jacked from a poster in the men's room of Zoe's Double Hex Cafe, Manchester, VT):

No good deed goes unpunished.

Leak-proof seals - will.

Self-starters - will not.

Interchangeable parts - won't.

There is always one more bug.

Nature is a mother.

Don't mess with Mrs. Murphy.

50% of everything is crap.

If you're feeling good, don't worry, you'll get over it.

All warranties expire upon payment of invoice.

Where you stand on an issue depends on where you sit.

Never eat prunes when you are famished.

Friends come and go, but enemies accumulate.

If you try to please everybody, nobody will like it.

A short cut is the longest distance between two points.

Anything that can go wrong, will go wrong.

You will always find something in the last place you look.

The chance of a piece of bread falling with the buttered side down is directly proportional to the cost of the carpet.

No matter how long or hard you shop for an item, after you've bought it, it will be on sale somewhere cheaper.

No one's life, liberty, or property are safe while the legislature is in session.

The other line always moves faster.

In order to get a loan, you must first prove you don't need it.

Anything you try to fix will take longer and cost more than you thought.

If you fool around with a thing for very long, you will screw it up.

A $300.00 picture tube will protect a $0.10 fuse by blowing first.

If it jams - force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway.

Any tool dropped while repairing a car will roll underneath to the exact center.

The repairman will never have seen a model quite like your's before.

When a broken appliance is demonstrated for the repairman, it will work perfectly.

A pipe gives a wise man time to think and a fool something to stick in his mouth.

Everybody believes in something - I believe I'll have another drink.

Build a system that even a fool can use and only a fool will use it.

Everyone has a scheme to get rich quick that will not work.

In every hierarchy, each individual rises to his own level of incompetence and then remains there.

You will remember that you forgot to take out the trash when the garbage truck is two doors away.

The race is not always to the swift, nor the battle to the strong, but that's the way to bet.

There's never time to do it right, but there's always time to do it over.

When in doubt, mumble, when in trouble, delegate.

Anything good in life is either illegal, immoral, or fattening.

It is morally wrong to allow suckers to keep their money.

A bird in hand is safer than one overhead.

Murphy's Golden Rule: whoever has the gold makes the rules.

Everything east of the San Andreas fault will eventually plunge into the Atlantic Ocean.

Nature always sides with the hidden flaw.

The light at the end of the tunnel is the headlamp of an oncoming train.

Celibacy is not hereditary.

Never sleep with anyone crazier than yourself.

Beauty is only skin deep, ugly goes to the bone.

To know yourself is the ultimate form of aggression (Freudian Psychology).

Never play leapfrog with a unicorn.

A Smith & Wesson beats four aces.

If everything seems to be going wrong, you obviously don't know what the hell is going on.

If more than one person is responsible for a miscalculation, no one will be at fault.

In case of doubt, make it sound convincing.

Never argue with a fool, people might not know the difference.

Hope for the Hopeless/The Kindness of Strangers

I love PostSecret. For those who aren't familiar, this dude, Frank Warren began in 2004 what he calls a "community art project" which displays the secrets of others. Every Sunday, Frank puts up 20 postcards that were sent to him anonymously, each of which reveals a deep-dark secret from its sender. Some are depressing, some are inspiration, some are funny. Just in the past four years he has received over 300,000 cards.

I first heard about the project not to long after it went live, sometime in my freshman year of college. Over the years, it has provided innumerable instances of true humanity into the landscape of my experience. It has helped me form my Everyone Is Crap theory. It has helped me love people for who they are.

For Frank, he has used his stumbled-upon fame to support The National Hopeline Network and 1.800.SUICIDE. He has created an anonymous, mostly online community of acceptance, honesty, forgiveness, love.

Today, i stumbled upon the postcard above. It yanked at my heart, as i know the pains and struggles of that level of depression. I know, for that person, even send that card must have been amazingly cathartic. I hope it helps him. If not, there's always this:

The Please Don't Jump facebook group is now 26,000 members. It was started the day the secret went upand was over 20k in less than 24 hours. Covering the wall of the group's page are exhortations from randoms strangers saying "come live here. We want you." This sort of support is inspiring, but in the sort of social media sitethat has a Group supporting a pickle who's sole purpose was to have more members than the Nickleback-supporting group. That group had 1.5 million members, apparently.

The Together For Life! facebook group is taking a FAR more active approach to this kid. An anonymous member of the PS community wrote in saying:

"On Sunday the 13th at noon I plan on printing up all the caring comments from facebook, taking them to the Golden Gate Bridge and taping them up all along the walkway."

Lindsey Salazar saw the comment and started an event to garner some further support. So far, 107 people have said they're going to show up and show this random individual how much they love him or her - even though none of them have ever met the anonymous sender.

Hopefully, this story will have an ending we can see. Hopefully, it'll be a happy one. I know that PostSecret has had a huge impact in the short time its been around, but this would be a big win for the kind of awareness that Frank - and everyone who follows PS.com - is hoping to see.

EDIT: Sorry for broken links. Now i can't even find the groups anymore, blarg.

Orly?

I've recently been thinking on a post i wanted to write about the nature of the experience that is a musical concert. Instead, today's post is going to comment more upon the nature of Art as a whole. You see, Twitter brought to my attention Roger Ebert's recent article delineating why video games are not, and can never be, Art. As a rabid geek, self-described gamer, artist, writer, this assertion rankled with me. The riling nature of his opinions are all the more exacerbated by the fact that, as near as i can tell, Mr. Ebert has played few - if any - video games.

This nest-rattling claim was first made way back in 2005 and has been brought up every now and again ever since, responded to by such names as Tycho & Gabe, Kellee Santiago, my fellow writers at Cracked.com, and many others. The debate has only recently come to my attention, although i've held the Gamer's position for many years now, not even considering the opinions of the general masses, let alone considering them for any length of time.

Many good points are made on both sides. Ebert's big talking point - and the one i have the most difficulty refuting - is that the very interactive nature of a game is in conflict with what his conception of what a piece of art is. This view, i must believe, is generally shared with the non-gaming public; Art is viewed, appreciated, experienced, but not "played". The gamers' usual rebuttal begins with Ebert's admission that he's never seen a video game worth playing. Some simply leave it at that, since it proves his stance, however well thought out, comes from a place of complete ignorance regarding the medium. Many, however, go further into the fray, formulating complex arguments with all the rich design that one would see in the programming of one of their exemplary games. And that is why this fight will never end.

Eventually, all the arguments come down to trying to define what Art is in such a way that their view point falls within its parameters and the other side's doesn't. Obviously, any rhetorical conflict is doomed to idiocy when the parties involved cannot agree upon the definitions which make up the very foundation of any point they might try to make. It seemed Ebert tried to clarify this at least once, in 2007, when he admitted that what he should have said is that, "games could not be high art, as i understand it", but since has become so mired in his single-minded position that the thesis of his most recent article is simply "Video Games Can Never Be Art". This claim is the last nail in the coffin Gamer Good Will.

Let's go a couple steps back and look at why i consider video games to qualify as Art. First off, let me say that i do not believe all games to be Art, just as i don't think all music or movies are Art. Wilco's "Yankee Hotel Foxtrot" is a paramount of modern rock and roll and rewards careful and repeated listens, but i'd get pretty stabby if someone tried to tell me that the new Hannah Montana album is Art. Gus Van Sant's "Elephant", yes. Keenan Wayans' "Scary Movie 2", no. I think its safe to say that all examples do not have to qualify in order to claim that the medium can be considered Art. With that supposition in mind, i formulated my own definition of Art, then talked to my brother (of Good Night, States fame) for his thoughts. His thoughts are thus:

Art is that which is crafted using physical means in an attempt to comment on something metaphysical. Personally, while this definition is rather weighty, i think that very factor is important. Good art should strike you in a way which you cannot precisely define. This point is complimentary to my original thought, namely, that art is anything which is both aesthetically pleasing AND evokes an emotional or visceral response in the perceiver. I'm sure there are as many different views on the concept as there are possible readers of these words.

After our conversation, i found myself unable to reconcile a specific aspect of Steve's definition with my own thoughts. The problem is that my definition leaves out the idea of intentionality. Both my brother and Mr. Ebert agree that Art is created by an artist. This is important.

Very few (if any) games are designed to be works of Art. Hell, not many movies these days are, either, but this does not mean that they are not beautiful.

This is the delineation which i believe is causing such a schism. We, the video game-playing generation, have spent decades sharing a metaphysical experience in the interactive, narrative, sometimes-competitive landscape of a plethora of games, video or otherwise. Be it the sweeping story arc of a beloved Dungeon Master or that one cut scene in Final Fantasy Whatever, we have all be touched by a game we have played in a way that just slightly defies explanation. We have found beauty, and it has changed us.

What makes us such a unified front is that these experiences, while often occurring in the stereotypically dank, isolated caverns of our mother's basement, has been shared by millions of gamers. This effect has cleaved us together, mind and soul, with a bond much akin to that shared by the audience of a momentous event, or the brothers-in-arms of a conflict. We all watched Aeris die. We all dread Water Temples. We all know that the cake is a lie. We all recognize the Konami Code. These experiences make up the shared history of Gamers in a way that is no less meaningful than any other demographic-defining denominator.

And this, dear reader, is why we, the gaming community, are so pissed at Roger Ebert. I think Cracked.com writer Robert Brockway put it very well in the closing paragraph of his defense:

"But why even bother with all of this? Ebert himself wonders: 'Why are gamers so intensely concerned, anyway, that games be defined as art? Bobby Fischer, Michael Jordan and Dick Butkus never said they thought their games were an art form….Why aren’t gamers content to play their games and simply enjoy themselves?' And he’s already answered his own question: 'do we as their consumers become more or less complex, thoughtful, insightful, witty, empathetic, intelligent, philosophical (and so on) by experiencing them?' Anybody who’s ever felt even an inkling of something like that from a game is going to be understandably 'concerned' when you insist that they’re lying."

The aging critic is just lucky he doesn't drop any purples, or there'd be a queue to take a crack at him.

In Memorium

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