Bits For Rent

It’s hard to believe it has been over 11 months since I last sat down and gave myself the time to place my thoughts into sentences. In fact, it is almost a year to the day since my second-to-last entry here. What fascinates me about this is that I cannot even count the number of times each week I will think of a subject and say to myself, “Hmm, this would be a great blog post.” Suffice it to say that it would be quite high. And yet, after 11 months, I have naught to show for it but these few short sentences expressing my regret at all the things I lacked the time to do.

Time is a fascinating thing. And thinking about it has caused me to want to make some pretty spectacular sweeping generalizations about people. The rest of this post will be rife with those, so literalists and fact-checkers may want to take their ball and go home before I start causing smoke to come out of your ears. Everyone else, enjoy the ride.

The Illusion of Control

As humans, it is in our very nature to attempt to control as many of the variables in the world as possible. For those that we cannot control, we build up such great amounts of data that we are able to predict, within one or two standard deviations, what the likely occurrence will be. In the world of technology, Moore’s Law tells us that the number of transistors that we can place in a computer chip will double every two years. This statement has held true for over 40 years. With weather, we lose accuracy the further out we predict, but 24 and 48 hour forecasts hold an incredibly high level of accuracy. (Thanks to the spread of 3G networks and WiFi, we are able to keep up with adjustments to a forecast on the fly, thereby lessening the likelihood of incorrect forecasts from negatively impacting our personal plans.)

My favorite example is the odds-makers in Vegas, though. The amount of times I have heard, or even said myself, how incredibly accurate the line is… well, let’s just say the amount of nickels could afford someone a free lunch, and possibly dinner. The beauty of Vegas’s system is similar to that of the New York Stock Exchange– the actual measure of the point spread (or stock value) is directly correlated with our own assumptions as a whole. There’s a fascinating book about this by James Suroweicki called The Wisdom of Crowds which I won’t go into at length, but the crux of the book is this: people, so long as they have some knowledge about the subject, will as a group deliver an estimate of that subject’s worth, outcome — whatever it is that is being measured — with almost startling accuracy.  When pressed into guesswork or speculation, be it for Fantasy Football or the outcome of an election, we do a damn good job of predicting the future.

Yet despite all of our cunning and data analysis, cross-referencing and fact-checking, gut feelings and soothsayings, we make for especially rotten self-analysts. We routinely stack our plates with more than we can handle, build up incredible backlogs of things that we “must” get done but that are not of a high enough priority to actually get done, and never fail to lament our perpetual lack of time (case in point: this post). A lot of things can be blamed for this, such as becoming bogged down in minutiae, spending too much time on things that are of no practical benefit, sleeping too much, or sacrificing personal time for the sake of socializing with others. None of which is really important, though. It’s nice to be able to assign the blame elsewhere and list reasons X,Y, and Z as to why we never finished that book or made it to the gym yesterday, but again that’s really just us being human and needing to categorize, number, and file away all of life’s particulars.  The point I suppose I set out to make is that we actually have very little control of our own lives, despite our firm belief otherwise. Holding your breath will not slow down time any more than a Shake Weight will get you into shape. Which is, I believe, largely why we do our best to ignore it.

To be more clear, what I think we ignore is more the long-term span of time, not the immediate and ongoing elements of time. Think about it like this: when people reach certain milestones in their life, such as a birthday or anniversary, we typically celebrate those moments retrospectively. New Year’s Day is probably the biggest exception, due to resolutions and the optimism and hope that a new year brings, but even birthdays tend to be focuses around what has been, not what will be. We do not care for analyzing our personal future because we are hardwired to not think about it, just as we are hardwired to not think about our own inevitable deaths. The reason for this is the same reason we have weather forecasts and Vegas over/under lines: we hate uncertainty. With a passion.

Two examples to help me illustrate this point:

Imagine if you were to knock down every wall in an IKEA and take away all of the signs that indicated what section you were in and where you could find certain items. It would take what is already, in my humble opinion, an excruciating experience and turn it into torture. Nothing would make sense without the guide lines there to show us the way, and no doubt the store would have a very difficult time attracting customers. (In fairness, there are people that enjoy sifting through clutter to find hidden gems, much like a child will rifle through a bag of LEGOs in order to find the one block he needs to build something. In these cases the end goal is always clear beforehand, though. I will concede I’m generalizing a bit here.)

My second example is a bit more partial to my job, but think about MySpace versus Facebook. Even without the exclusivity of “college students only” that propelled the latter site to such heights, Facebook was always better positioned to succeed. And the reason for that really comes down to two factors: uniformity and user authenticity. By only allowing users to modify the content they shared, and not the design of the site, Facebook maintains a consistent appearance and style throughout all of its pages. Likewise, the insistence on users listing their real names and using photos of themselves as their profile picture encourages a sense of legitimacy and authenticity to the experience… which, on the Internet, is quite honestly a fucking miracle. The internet is the world of Anonymous, and yet Facebook has over 500 million people (mostly) representing themselves authentically. People are drawn to it because it can be trusted to deliver on these two points.

With time, though, we can’t trust anything that has not already happened. “The best laid plans of mice and men often go awry.” That may be the single most accurate statement ever written, other than perhaps, “The French are rude.” But I digress. The point I suppose I’m driving at is that we live in a society where we are constantly aware of what is immediately in front of or behind us, but we too often fail to see the forest for the trees. Americans, in particular, are guilty of a life where everything must be full-throttle, on the quick, and we’ll sleep when we’re dead. Even I am guilty of this, and I love sleeping in. The unfortunate thing is that this is ultimately a part of our human nature, or so I would posit. You can crush an ant hill and sit and watch as the colony frantically rebuilds its home and laugh at how pointless it seems, but then you’ll go on Facebook and see one of your friends post something like, “Lost phone, need #s.” The catalog of the past matters more than the future, because it is the record of our lives and all that we will leave behind when we’re gone. It’s why photos are the first thing people rush to save in a fire. “Don’t worry,” you can console someone, “all that stuff can be replaced.” But he or she will still feel miserable, because our accumulation of “stuff” — experiences, clothes, phone numbers, friends, CDs — is what defines us. In the end, afterlife or no afterlife, or record of existing on this planet comes from those people, places, and things we touched. On a base level, we realize that; but in the here and now, it’s often too easy to get lost in the hustle and bustle without considering what each action will mean in a day, a week, a year, or even a decade. (Obviously some choices matter less than others so we don’t need to be microscopically analyzing every choice, but bear with me — I already warned you I’d be generalizing.)

But why then do we always wish we could have done more? Why do we work so hard and make so many sacrifices only to look back at the end of each day and reflect on all the things we did not have time to get done? Maybe it’s because, deep down, we hear the seconds ticking away and know that there can only be so many more to come. Maybe it’s because we want to hold ourselves to a higher standard, and our shortcomings are indicative of how we could improve. Maybe it’s both of those, and more. But control is an illusion. Time is the scarcest resource known to man, and we will always feel as if we are at a lack for it because it is the one thing we can never get back (well, that and your taxes). So we make our decisions deliberately, prioritizing what to get done and what to shelve every minute of every day, knowing full well that every cause will have an effect and that each task completed leaves behind two that we’ll never get to. It’s like a never ending case of buyer’s remorse, us wishing we had been able to have done the other thing or possibly done them all. Perhaps that’s part of human nature, too. For all of our efforts to reduce uncertainty and live life in control of the information available to us, we’ll always feel the need to make that information more complete. Each opportunity that passes us by grates on us because it’s one more data point that must be left blank, like those MP3 files you have without the album art.

“Great,” you may be thinking, “so what was the point of this post again?” Good question. To me, it I appears I wrote over 1700 words of meandering, navel-gazing prose that leaps from point to point without drawing any definitive conclusions, other than life is rather short on definitives but most certainly has a conclusion. Time marches on, with or without us, and it can often feel like a race we’re struggling to stay in. All I know is that in the time it took me to write this, I could have done a load of laundry, taken out the trash, dusted my apartment, and probably read a few news clips to catch up on current events.

But, hey, that’s what tomorrow’s for, right?

Finishing this today. It’s gross, it’s mostly a build-up for the two sequels, but it’s still almost impossible to to put down. Even when you know that the character you’re reading about is almost certainly going to get offed, you can’t help but wait to see how it happens and cringe at the outcome. Not for the faint of heart, for sure.

Halfway through this, but taking a break to read a bunch of fiction that I’ve been piling up. They call it the definitive book on WWII. Given the step-by-step analysis of the war and the research behind everything, I’d be willing to say that’s probably accurate. Recommended for history buffs who want to read about the entire war in under 600 pages with no pro-/anti-Axis sentiment in the writing.

They call this McCarthy’s masterpiece. Personally, I enjoyed All the Pretty Horses, The Road, and No Country for Old Men far more than this book, but there is something to be said for the sheer shock you feel when reading the levels of violence depicted across these pages. This is a dirty, apathetic, middle finger of a book where every character save one is a walking pile of curses, stink, and booze. However, like Chigurh was to NCfOM, The Judge is the reason you will finish this book. His monologues are heavy-handed lessons in gnosticism and the godliness of the animal-man, but his words and actions build towards a climatic encounter on the book’s closing pages that will have you scratching your head or stunned in disbelief, depending on how you interpret it. For McCarthy fans only. Everyone else, go read The Road or No Country and come back to this one later.

What I will be reading once I finish the Strain. It got a lot of good press last fall and the paperback was like $5.50 at Wal-Mart so I figured I’d give it a shot. Child abduction in Soviet Russia with political intrigue and fur hats is good enough for me to give it a shot.

I read the first few pages of this in Barnes and Noble and I’m already certain I’ll like it. Child is found alone after going out with his friends into the woods, with no trace of the two missing children to be found. The kid then becomes a detective, determined to resolve the case. The writing was really strong and this book and its sequel, The Likeness, get a ton of love on Amazon. Fans of thriller writers like Cussler and Brown should check it out.

“The time has come,” the Walrus said,
“To talk of many things:
Of loans–and groans–and politics–
Of cabbages–and kings–
And why the sea is boiling hot–
And whether pigs have wings.”

When America was formed by the founding fathers, it was never intended to be run by politicians from a warring two party system. In fact, our first two presidents, particularly George Washington, abhorred the ideas of “party lines” and dividing the populace between those who supported states’ rights and those that favored the power of the federal government, or even between those that favored slavery over those that did not. First and foremost, we were all Americans, and that truth–in the minds of these great men–was the one and only factor a political party should ever concern itself with. Alas, we barely made it through a decade before it was clear such a wholesome, united vision of America’s future would be cleaved in two: the Federalists falling to one side (and soon to perish entirely) and the mighty Jeffersonian Republicans on the other. The rest is, as they say, history.

The question I propose now is thus: if the unified party structure was truly so deficient in its ability to represent the will of the people that we had to create a schism clean through to the foundation of our republic (i.e., down to the men who fought for it), why were the originators of this great and lasting (fingers crossed, right?) body politic so keen on sticking to it? Were they blinded by the discontent of the southern states — some of whom had gone begrudgingly into war with Britain when talk of independence first sprouted — who wanted nothing more than to keep to themselves and their cotton fields and large plantations, thank-you-very-much? Perhaps they simply shrugged off the complaints they heard over the taxes and tariffs from those states, knowing in their hearts that they were steering the country on the correct path — away from foreign wars and towards control of its own borders — and that the southerners, just like anyone else, could never truly be satisfied with any concession given to them. (The old story of giving a moose a muffin springs to mind.) But could these noble patriots really have the gall and audacity to give their compatriots the cold shoulder “for the good of the country”?

The answer, I think, is that they were, in fact, worried about the demands of the south and the dichotomy of life in the northern, industrial states versus that in the southern, rural states. With a nation so young, having just finished a war for its own independence, could the government withstand infighting much less appeasement of each and every embittered male landowner? No, I do not think so.

The situation is not so very different today. Our government must choose to punish some (the wealthy, the landowners, the elderly, and more importantly the auto industry), while aiding others (the union workers, the lower class, the unemployed, etc.) in what are ultimately small steps in a very large plan to salvage our economy, as well as our nation, from the perilous decline which has shaken the great powers of the world to their cores.

Do I think that Obama is the same as Washington or Adams, struggling to keep our nation out of conflicts while wrestling with the demands placed on him at home as well as abroad? Not entirely. Obama has inherited a war, not avoided one (a la Adams), and if anything his speeches last November should lead us to believe that more conflict, not less, will be in our country’s future as we fight to restore peace (or rather the facade of peace) to countries in the Middle East and crush the Taliban before it can ever again bring harm upon innocent lives. I think there is a dormant aggression in our new leader that many choose to overlook, or even ignore. A man does not get to become President of the United States with sweaty hands and knocking knees; there is a ferocity hidden in even the most tame of democrats (though Van Buren was a bit of nancy boy). Woodrow Wilson, for one, despised war and believed adamantly in the power of diplomacy to resolve disputes (he set the standard for rulers of today, some argue), but still lead our country valiantly to the defense of France and Britain in the First World War. In fact, I think Obama has inherited many traits from his democratic ancestor, including that passion for diplomacy and a strong versing in literature and oratory. But that is a subject for another, very different blog post.

What moves me today is a concern for the divide spreading through the heart of our country. More and more, Americans are picking sides in a war of words and opinions and they are being fueled on by the inflammatory and outrageous political media. If you were to talk to a moderate or conservative American citizen today, I would bet dollars to doughnuts that they would express some sort of opinion that the media tends to lean to the left and that it is in some way rotting away the values of our nation, perhaps even harming our children. My counter to these claims is, of course, that for every wrong or falsehood expounded by a “liberal” outlet, there is an equally wrong claim from Fox News. For a station that began its tenure under the slogan “fair and balanced” — a campaign they still use today, if I am not mistaken — to be so boldly and daftly conservative in its news coverage, I would say that either someone needs to calibrate the scales or Rupert Murdoch is laughing all the way to the bank. But it is too easy to sit here and criticize a media outlet for doing its job in what I must confess is a very effective manner. Fox News, for good or ill, provides a service that people of certain persuasions find entertaining if not informative, and no different can be said of the other cable news channels such as CNN and MSNBC. It is not the messengers that I have my quarrel with, for they can poison both sides if the viewers are not discerning enough. No, my fight is with you, the people.

Let’s wind the clock back a bit, first.

Thomas Hobbes, a famous philosopher, originated the theory of the Social Contract. In short, this theory claims that before humans enter into what we would call a society, there is an agreement, or rather a concession, made by all involved parties to abide by certain principles and forgo certain civil liberties. For instance, we can say that as a society we will continue to work for our own selfish interests (e.g. money, cars, women, booze) and not for those of a collective (communism lost the war, remember?), but at the same time we won’t kill our neighbor if they happen to borrow a pair of hedge clippers without asking. Even though that guy with the dachshund throws really loud parties on weeknights and your pretty sure he’s stealing cable, you leave him alone because that’s what society demands of you. Now here’s the rub, which Hobbes was also cognizant enough to point out (unlike some other philosophers like Kant who just believe they’re right and don’t address arguments): even though we are taught and/or forced to restrict these desires by the social contract, it does not remove them. In other words, you can’t take the jungle out of the tiger. So while we can all line up at the voting booths each November and be cordial to one another as we submit our ballots and walk off with the firm belief that our candidates will be the winner, the truth is many of us could quite easily turn these “civil” elections into far more barbarous occasions. In America, we often hear the social contract referred to as “the Christian thing to do,” or something similar; irregardless of the title, it is clear that logic and education are what keep civilized man civil — if you want to call it God, well, that works too.

But what happens when we remove the contract, or God, from the equation? (Yes yes, He is omnipotent and omnipresent, I know, just play along.) Well, it just so happens there are many such examples of this transpiring in human history, some of which you’ve probably heard of (Nazi death camps, the battle of Little Big Horn, pretty much all of the crusades). So let’s pick one you may not be familiar with.

On July 2, 1816, a French frigate by the name of Medusa was shipwrecked off the western coast of Africa. The ship has run close along the shore and, despite warnings from the crew, the captain proceeded farther and farther into the shallows until the ship at last ran aground. As if the situation were not horrific enough for the passengers, the Medusa had been grounded during a spring high tide, making it very hard to re-float the frigate. To exacerbate the problem, the captain refused to remove the ship’s cannons, weighing over a dozen tons a piece, and so after vain attempts to dislodge ship from sand, the crew began preparing to abandon the vessel. Though 17 men stayed with the ship and a few others made made the 60 mile trek to shore, the majority of the crew found themselves in either the frigate’s lifeboats, or on a raft which was hastily assembled from parts of the Medusa. When a storm threatened to break up the grounded ship, 146 men and one woman hurried aboard the raft and, along with the lifeboats, took to the sea.

The story of the raft can be found in much more detail in either book form or even on Wikipedia, but the pertinent details come from the raft’s next few weeks on the open sea. With half of the raft underwater at almost all times, no drinking water to be found (only wine), and the inescapable burning of the sun overhead, the survivors took very little time to break with whatever social contract they once enjoyed, and soon found themselves in a gruesome, terrifying struggle. Abandoned by the lifeboats, whose passengers had feared being overtaken by the men on the raft, twenty people were killed or committed suicide the first night at sea. More died trying to fight toward the raft’s center, the only part which was not completely or partially submerged, or by being cast off the raft from the turbulent weather. After four days, only 67 men remained. With no food, cannibalism began to tempt the minds and stomachs of the refugees. By day eight, only fifty men remained.

When I first read this story a few months ago, I was reminded of something from the movie The Dark Knight. In the final showdown between the Batman and the Joker, Heath Ledger’s villain, despite having been fully thwarted by both the people of Gotham and the Batman, remains adamant that society is just a loose set of rules and ideals binding people into living dull, ordinary, and sane lives. “Madness is like gravity,” he explains. “All it takes is a little push.” Are the ties that bind us together really so fragile?

In today’s world, the threats we deal with are not as extreme as isolation on the open seas or massive acts of terrorism by a costumed villain. Instead, they come from disturbed youths bringing weapons into their schools or religious radicals asserting their world views through violence. But most importantly, they come from fear.

The media is quick to cover stories in which something terrible has happened, and for good reason: our right brain is designed to feed on primal urges, and the coverage of violence, death, or panic locks in our attention with a kind of animal magnetism. In an industry fueled by market share and ratings, it would be remiss of us to condemn them for taking these actions. Sure, the swine flu scare has been overexposed and most likely has been played up well beyond even its theoretical potency, but with whom does the blame truly lie? Do we assume that the viewer, affixed to his television with unwavering attention, is the victim? Or is it his need for this sort of stimulus which created the broadcasts in the first place? There’s a saying in the business world that one must let no need go unsatisfied, and as entrepreneurs it is ultimately your goal to find one or many unfulfilled needs and provide the product or service that fulfills them. Like most things in the universe, the forces of supply and demand desire to be in equilibrium — hence why television, music, clothing, and culture continue to adapt and react to one another, year after year, decade after decade. We are all, inevitably, in search of our own sort of personal “happy medium.” The problem is, a perfect equilibrium is an impossibility in this world, and so we continue to adjust and make due with the changes over time — to roll with the punches, if you will. Thus, I stand by my statement earlier that the media is not the issue, as it is ultimately a force seeking to help some of us find that balance.

The problem is with the players, not how the game is being played. According to the social contract, or in less abstract terms the Constitution and Declaration of Independence, we all enter society as equals (“all men are created equal”). However, the benefits given to us as individuals are perfectly heterogeneous — that is, not one person will share the same education, family background, interests, hobbies, skills, etc. as another. By adulthood, we are no longer a nation of “united” states, but rather individual states.

And herein lies the problem with union, be it the Union that is the good ol’ U.S. of A. or the union between you and a friend. Because we are all our own persons — something I am personally a big fan of; monotony sucks — eventually there will arise an issue that two people cannot agree upon. Expand this to a massive scale, and, tada!, you have just found yourself in the battle between Democrats and Republicans. While one side clamors for the end of abortion, the other shouts that individuals rights and beliefs are what make this argument even possible, and therefore the practice should be upheld as a legal option for a mother and her child (or to be permitted by the social contract, you could say). For these same reasons, we can find ourselves caught in conundrums. A right-leaning college educated male who is a devout Christian can support the death penalty, even though his religion forbids murder. Why does he support it, even if his education and spiritual beliefs tell him otherwise? Perhaps his father was gunned down in a convenience store robbery, and he feels justice must sometimes be exacted at the “eye for an eye” level. Or perhaps it’s just a result of the chemical composition in his brain, as a scientist might argue (sometime scientists suck, I know).

(A quick aside: in preparing for this post, I joked with a friend that the only perfectly harmonious society that has ever existed, to my knowledge, was the jellyfish, which in some species will actually link up to form massive colonies that work sort of like a school of fish. The catch is that jellyfish have no brains, and so any decision they make to live as a colony is purely out of some sort of reaction on the chemical level, thus proving my point once again that allowing people, or at least certain people, to think is the source of all our problems. Why is Paris Hilton famous again?)

I know that these are challenging ideas and very large concepts that I am attempting to condense into a very abstract argument, but if you’re still with me, I am grateful. My point today, or rather the idea that I hope to impress to you readers, is that if there is ever to be a reconciliation, a redrawing of the social contract, it has to begin at the most fundamental level–with you and I. The more we make ourselves aware of why we take certain actions, the more capable we are of controlling those actions and not letting those actions control us. Much like my last politically-charged post, think of this as a sort of call to arms. The next time you find yourself nodding in agreement with one of the talking heads on TV, take a minute to try to reason out why it is that you’re nodding. Our minds are always looking to solve puzzles and make the irrational world make sense. Try to harness that ability on a conscious level. It’s like one of those draw-by-numbers books: you start off just connecting the dots, and by the time you finish, there’s a freaking Pegasus leaping off the page.

Believe it or not, this is the principle upon with our government was built. Why do you think people joke about writing a letter to your congressman? Because, a long time ago, it actually did more than jack and shit. Our politicians are representatives of the will of the people, and therefore the power of the country lies in us, not them. We can sit by and watch as the Dems and Reps on Capitol Hill bicker with one another about the future of our country, or we can use our voices and speak up. I’m not saying you need to start watching C-SPAN — I’m not a sadist. But if we want to stop party politics from becoming the new class lines, ignorance is not an option. In the future, will Romeo not be allowed to marry Juliet because his family supports gay marriage and hers still calls African Americans “colored” people? A difference of opinion can be a great thing in a friendship, or even a relationship. Lord knows I don’t agree with my friends on every issue (though most of the time it’s because they’re just utterly wrong), but we’re still friends all the same. Just because your religion tells you homosexuality is wrong does not mean all gays are riding shotgun with Lucifer on the highway to hell. But still I see the judgment in people’s eyes when two guys seem a little too close to each other. I’m sorry, I thought it was the 21st century. Haven’t we gotten past this yet?

Bottom line: the code of conduct in our society is not written in words, but in actions. Do not let ignorance and fear act as controlling forces in your mind. We do not need to be categorized by party, social class, or sexual interest — labels are a shortcut to help make expressing negative opinions easier. Fight them. Think through your actions and understand the sources of your beliefs. Deduction, my dear Watson, is a wonderful thing.

Pay attention to your surroundings; don’t let things happen to you, let yourself be the one who dictates the change. There is no way to please everyone, so focus on doing what’s right for yourself; more often than not, it will be what’s best for everyone.

And for the love of God, if you get shipwrecked somewhere, don’t eat the person next to you. He might have swine flu.

In a perfect world, this essay would cover solely ‘90s music, as my last retrospective was intended to be my first and only reflection on the 1980s. But, like so many things in the world, you really just can’t ignore 10 years of music evolution. Particularly because so much of the music that came out of the early ‘90s was a reaction to the previous decade—much like the arena rock and punk of the ‘80s were two very different types of reactions to the 1970s (the former building on the showmanship and sensationalism and the latter tearing the music back down to its dirty, parents-be-warned roots). So as I begin my diatribe on the musical movements of the ‘90s, I find myself once again surprised to find that, yes, there was music made in the ‘80s that I can enjoy.

Hip-hop, for one, owes a lot to its genesis in the very late ‘70s and early ‘80s. It was a revolution for music in many ways, but three factors stand out to me the most. One, it was almost exclusively the domain of lyrical performers. There are very few bands in hip-hop (The Roots perhaps being the most famous), and even if the group should choose to play its own instruments, the focus remains first and foremost on the lyricism and not the melody behind it. Sure, you can easily argue that there have been plenty of pop artists in past decades that only sang and did not have to play instruments to be famous, but the style of delivery in hip-hop—rapping as opposed to singing—completely changes the nature of performer. It was no longer a matter of whether or not you had a good voice; it was only a matter of whether or not what you were saying resonated with the listener as it flowed over the beat. The connection had to be more personal (note: I’m referring to early/actual hip-hop and not “rap”, which is first and foremost beat-oriented and usually contains garbage for lyrics). Two, it marked the first real rise in African-American culture. We had seen a few black stars in music prior to the introduction of hip-hop (Chuck Berry, Jimi Hendrix, Little Richard), but the music they played was always within the realms of either a predominantly white medium, or a variation on the blues. Hip-hop was the first time since the ‘50s really that black music broke new ground. After establishing rock and roll and having it been adopted by the mainstream, hip-hop was the voice of a new generation of African-Americans, and one that was and is almost impenetrable by any other culture. Finally, and most importantly, hip-hop was the first real alternative to rock and roll the country had seen in over two decades, when Motown and folk music had seen the end of their heyday. Amazingly enough, in many urban locations it has now even surpassed rock as the mainstream music of choice (more so if you lump in R&B and rap, which have merged more and more together of late). For all of these reasons, and without even going into detail on the rise of gangsta rap and crime rap in the early ‘90s, it is plain to see why there is still one more thing we have to thank the ‘80s for—in marked a major shift in our musical and cultural evolution.

Let’s switch gears for a second though. It’s easy to slog on and on about how great hip-hop is or how rap changed everything, but why am I so keen on doing so? For most of my life, and even more now in my college years, I’ve listened more to rock than I have to rap (rap music being terrible lately doesn’t help matters). But in my adolescence, hip-hop grabbed a hold of me and there was hardly anything in my CD player or, later, iPod that wasn’t rap in some form or another. Something about the style of music, whether it’s the gritty subject matter, the fact that parents still hated it in the ‘90s, or maybe just the fact that you have never heard that style of vocal delivery before, seems to really click with Americans in that 13-18 age bracket. I was certainly no exception. In fact, I loved going on my music-stealing service of choice and finding new artists and old artists and hearing the evolution of the genre. Of course there was the west coast rap, the southern rap, and whatever happened to be big at the time, but I also got to hear amazing groups and rappers like Mos Def, A Tribe Called Quest, De La Soul, and Talib Kweli – rap that may have once been popular but was past its time or that was underground and received no radio play. It was incredibly insightful and opened me up to a world that, as white kid in private school in a predominately white town, I would never have known about otherwise.

I suppose that rock works the same way nowadays. There’s just as much terrible pop music on the radio now as there was in the ‘90s, we just traded Ace of Base for the Jonas Brothers (shudder) and Mariah Carey for Miley Cyrus (though Mariah’s got a revival going on right now). Discerning listeners are still going to be able to sift through the music and find music that suits their own tastes. Which brings me again to that wonderful part about living in the ‘90s—the Internet. For good or ill, being able to get a hold of music online has been critical in the growth of the music industry. Bands can now afford to stay indie and underground for years and years thanks to vast networks of fans spreading across the country. Before technology gave us this wonderful power, artists lived or died by two things: word of mouth and their label’s marketing efforts. If you didn’t have people going around raving about you, and you weren’t getting airtime, the future was not bright for you. Now, we have Pandora, Last.fm, Grooveshark, iTunes’ Genius recommendation engine, and a host of other resources that look at music you like and find you more of it. It’s an incredible thing to behold, but it makes me wonder about something: if we’re all plugged in to our own separate sounds, how will musical movements pan out in the future?

Let’s look at grunge music, for instance. Here you have a sound that originated primarily in Seattle as a reaction to the general mediocrity and boring materialism of the ‘80s, and with its rise we had the birth of the melancholic and rebellious 1990s. Combined with alternative music, grunge was setting the tone for a new “new wave” – one taking the ideas of punk and melding it with the counter-culture sentimentality to create what would be in effect a brand new style of mainstream music. But could you imagine that tonal shift happening now? The rap/R&B scene has been relatively the same for the past few years (though there is a noticeable rise in the use of auto-tune), and pop music burnt out after the boy band/girl band crush only to be replaced by Radio Disney. Is there ever going to be another disaffected generation if all the disaffected are just downloading My Chemical Romance off iTunes? It’s a question that worries me, because for so long music and culture have gone hand in hand with one another. I look at my grade school days and I think of the kids who liked Green Day and NOFX and Soundgarden. They were listening to those bands because they knew that if you wanted to seem like the rebel or the “cool” kid that was the type of music that would get you the wary eye from the teachers. But now, is there any chance of that kind of one-to-one relationship?

Honestly, I wouldn’t even know. I am more than guilty of being plugged in to my own musical world, and have been proud of my isolation from the noise for the past four or five years. Maybe the same technologies that refer us music we like are also referring us music that is part of some larger movement. It’s hard to tell, especially since MTV doesn’t cover music and I don’t have TRL to tell me what’s hot and what’s not, but perhaps we have to leave it to the artists to tell us where our culture is heading. Take Bon Jovi, who went from ‘80s mega stars to being relatively quite in the ‘90s to having a huge resurgence in 2000 with “It’s My Life” to making a country record. Country is the undying bastion of music, and I think only country and Christian rock are genres in which sales can pretty much be guaranteed. But then there’s also Metallica, which went from the height of thrash metal to being America’s favorite metal band to being an alternative band for dads to something that is trying to return back to its glorious former metal days. Or Green Day, a band that used to get a ton of hate for their unconventional sound that released an anti-Bush album and blew everyone out of the water.

Perhaps music is, and always will be, inescapably a product of our culture. Maybe we’re just swept up in the changing tides without even knowing it anymore. Like I said before, I don’t really have the answer, but I do know one thing for certain: regardless of whether or not we see another genre born or another shift in mainstream sound, music is still evolving; it always has been and will continue to do so for as long as humankind exists. So as I leave this class and graduate this semester, I look forward to watching, and hearing, what comes next. I just hope it’s not ‘80s cover songs.

A girl I worked with over the summer told me that I have an old soul. I understood what she meant by it at the time, but there are times when I wonder whether or not I can agree with her declaration as I did that day. There’s something in me that clings to childish naivety and impish joys despite the clocks, calendars, and planet all spinning against my will. I have come, in recent years, to relish the sappy, life-loving nature of animated films–the real ones, not the Saturday morning sugar rushes–and several in particular have brought me to experiences that I couldn’t replicate in any live action film or stage play. A book, perhaps, but only because words can reach limits of the imagination no physical media could ever possibly grasp.

I speak of movies like Pixar’s Ratatoille and Wall-e. Two beautiful films about love–a passion for food in the former; a love at first sight in the latter–that massage the heart strings like the experienced, familiar hands of a concert violinist. It’s not just that they achieve so much emotion in their characters, rats and machines, but rather it’s the pure, simple, and honest feeling behind every action and moment that makes them so powerful. When that rat sits on the edge of a pot of soup and makes it into his own creation, he is a place worlds away… there’s nothing that could replace that sensation. Likewise, when Eve tries to repair Wall-e at the end of the movie and you think he’s lost his memory, your can almost feel your own heart breaking with hers. And she’s just a white, egg-shaped robot!

But it’s because they aren’t people playing roles, it’s because they’re characters completely and totally developed and enveloped in their own worlds, that we feel this way. If Daniel Craig was staring into Angelina Jolie’s eyes and couldn’t remember who she was, only that he was a garbage man, would we feel like crying then? Perhaps. But we’d know that it’s just Daniel Craig acting. With animation, that animal, object, or even person transcends its cels or pixels and makes its existence a reality. For 90 minutes, we can live in a world where rats love cooking or robots can feel emotion. When we’re in that dark theater, or even lying in bed watching TV, animation invites us along for the ride. It’s bright, colorful, and full of whimsy–or even, in films like Spirited Away, foreign and frightening–altogether a place NOT possible in reality… but wouldn’t it be nice to visit for a while, just to see what life could be like?

Tonight, I watched another film that took me into its world and warmed my soul. Unlike Pixar’s films, this one was set a little closer to our own reality, but with its own special twists. At first, I wanted to leave, to come back to my own world and stay there. But after a while I started to care about what was happening here. I started paying attention to the heroine’s plight. I wanted her to be Eve, and get her Wall-e back. And when the end finally came, I was, like one of the characters in the film, sad to be returning home… yet grateful for ever having had the experience at all.

The movie is called The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and I recommend it to anyone who, like me, doesn’t mind letting their heart take you to new places every now and then. It’s a Japanese anime that has received high amounts of praise since its release in 2006, and I think that, like Spirited Away, it is proof that even in the world of CGI and Pixar, cel-drawn art still has that magical quality.

I have played two very different games this week, and yet both have had my brain mulling over the same set of principles and concepts. In this new age of gaming (3.0?), the user is being empowered to manipulate the game world and create an experience that is wholly his/her own. I have seen examples of this in both Crysis for the PC and Audiosurf, and will provide some background as to why both are such innovative, enthralling works of modern game design philosophy.

I downloaded the demo for Audiosurf off of Steam on Friday of last week, and didn’t set about playing with it until 4am that night, after an evening of excessive alcohol indulgence. Kids, don’t follow my lead–but at the same time, take this as a possible reason for the game’s powerful effect on me.

The demo lets you select a song right off the bat from your hard drive to start surfing to, and then laces over it a quick and mostly self-explanatory tutorial. Essentially, you bump along to the music, and want to impale your wipeout-esque ship on a bunch of similarly colored notes. There are two game modes, really, but the different “surfers” expand this quite a bit: one has you avoiding gray blocks and collecting the colored ones, the other has a variety of blocks and allows you to mix and match them to create your three-in-a-rows at your discretion. The latter mode reminds me of Lumines or Puzzle League, but at a far more frenetic pace.

Anyway, the trick to this game is just throwing the most random, wild shit you have on your computer at it. The game uses some sort of algorithm to decode the songs and make the tracks, so in a sense each song is one level and will always play the same. That is hardly “user-generated,” no? Well at the same time, I have over 6 or 7,000 music files on my computer, and can queue up whole folders or CDs at a time within the game. That means I can spend an hour surfing a dozen songs, on a dozen levels. And if you switch from the dodge mode to the mix-n-match, that essentially changes the entire pace of the track altogether.

What’s more is that the game has Easy, Medium, and Hard levels of play. So a drunken cruise might suit you at, say, four in the morning, but at two in the afternoon you may feel like absolutely breaking your brain on Hard mode to some System of a Down. Essentially, I see the game as having done this: like the digital music player has liberated us from the monotony of radio, tapes, and CDs, so too does Audiosurf liberate us from the monotony of the puzzle/music genre. It’s a ten-dollar interactive synthesizer, sure, but it’s also one of the most zen-like experiences you can have using your computer to play a song. Passive listening is out. Audiosurfing is in.

* * *

As for Crysis, well, that’s a big departure from our little, low-spec music game, isn’t it? After finally getting the game to run at a solid framerate on my machine and still look good, I’ve finally started to sink more time into Crysis. It’s a very odd game at times: forcing checkpoint objectives in a vast open world that you would otherwise find yourself lost, observing minutia such as falling trees and abandoned kitchens. The checkpoints are essentially enemy strongholds that you are advised to “quietly” enter — but really, stealth is almost impractical in this game. The AI detect movement from a great distance and go on high alert fast (and for long stretches of time); it’s ultimately in your interests to just run at them, guns blazing, and clear the camp out without wasting time being clever. A thinking man’s shooter (given the dexterity of the physics engine), dumbed down by its own developers.

Anyway, once you find the computer at these checkpoints, you get shuffled along to some other gorgeous place, finding more enemy patrols and encampments as you progress. While the feeling of shooting and engaging enemies is ultimately more of the same, the game does provide for some amazing amounts of improvisation–in fact, it often seems to encourage it. Take the following instance as an example:

You just witness a major event early on in the game and must now make your way out of the enemy base, back across the island and down the river to an extraction point. It’s now dark out, and a new elite commando type of enemy has begun patrolling the forests with submachine guns. But before you get to them, you have to find a way out of the base. So I run outside, activate Strength, and jump up over a wall to get out of the sublevel building I just exited. I then switch to Speed and haul ass towards the mountain’s edge, where I then move in a crouch towards the base’s entrance. Unfortunately for me, the nearby Humvee can’t be taken anywhere since the unbreakable (lame) gate is down in front of it. So instead, I blow up the fuel tanks next to it and get the cavalry to show up. In cloak mode, I switch to my silenced pistols, sneak to a well covered position, and then pick off the first three guards in the base. A new Humvee rolls up with a gunner and two more soldiers who exit the vehicle. I Cloak again, switch to my rifle and equip the sniper scope and pop the guy in the gunner seat. I then Speed my way to the two guys on foot and circle around them while firing out some shotgun rounds. After gathering up some ammo, I hop in the Humvee and tear ass down the hill back to the ford in the river. Instead of crossing back over into the rice paddies and mess of infantry, I get out, blow up the vehicle, and jump in a nearby boat. I floor it down the river and drive off a waterfall, bailing immediately in case the fall were to kill me. I survive the fall and swim to shore as the boat slowly moves downstream with the current. A chopper is beginning to approach, but I can’t fight it right now, so I jump back on the boat and haul ass to the bridge ahead, where a trap has been set for me. I shoot some barrels and kill the guys on the docks, and jump to a new boat before the old one gets hit by another rocket from the helicopter. I drive for my life down the river, chopper peppering me as I go, until I crash the boat into rocks by accident and have to make my way to the LZ on foot through what is now more a swamp than a river.

Wow. That was a lot to write. But if you managed to read that, you’ll see that I could have stopped at several points and engaged in long firefights with dozens of soldier goons, or found a better gun to shoot at the helicopter’s fuel tanks with to give myself some breathing room. I never had to take a boat, either, I just wanted to get the fuck out of dodge ASAP. After all, I had just seen some scary shit.

So Crysis is a fantastic game in that it allows the user to approach objectives in a variety of ways rather seamlessly. It’s a game where you can think on your feet and whatever strategy you come up with, it’s safe to say that the means will be in place for you to carry that plan out without having to compromise. (I could detail my awesome beach assault where I raided and destroyed an entire village, but I won’t.) Now, granted, the game is punishingly difficult at times. In fact, F5 has become my closest ally in my sessions with the game. But still, there are few games in the genre that are as hands-off as Crysis; STALKER supposedly offers a similar freedom in its mission structure, but the horror overtones of the game have kept me from seeking it out just yet (played the Condemned 2 demo… Eek!). Assassin’s Creed offered a tremendous amount of cityscape and overworld for the player to explore, but ultimately its missions were a case of wash, rinse, and repeat. That game also lacked cutscenes (which worked against it, IMO–A topic I may discuss later), but I still feel that there’s a lot of promise in the foundations of the gameplay mechanics, particularly the Parkour elements.

Aside from those two, however, most big releases in 2007 were very linear: Super Mario Galaxy let you choose which level to play next, but ultimately a platform cannot avoid its inherent linearity; Call of Duty 4 is the most linear, hand-holding big release of last year by far; Halo 3 had the AI to allow for great combat moments but its structure was also linear; Mass Effect allows you to go at your own pace until you hit a point in the game where you cannot turn back anymore; Uncharted and Ratchet: see SMG… and so on and so forth. Even my game of 2007, Bioshock, was quite linear, even though the world of Rapture was so large and diverse that it hardly felt like a chore to work through the story. That game also had far more entertaining powers than Crysis does, and better enemies, but otherwise there isn’t much to compare the two. I hate to say it, but as great as the games in 2007 were, few were actually breaking new ground.

And without any further justification, I’m out.

I’m not even going to go into why I haven’t written a damned thing in two weeks. Let’s get busy.

I am officially in love with Cormac McCarthy…’s writing. After reading The Road last month I went to the bookstore and purchased the soon-to-be-a-theatrical-film No Country For Old Men, and it was–in a word– stunning. I’ll be very up front about it all: the man does not write comedies. Both books are dark and tragic in their own way, full of death and fear and brutality. Yet at the end of both novels, you realize that the point of the book wasn’t to envelop you in this violent and bloodthirsty reality, but instead to celebrate the smaller victories that come with even the biggest tragedies. I honestly cannot allow myself to say any more on the subject, as ruining either work would feel downright sinful, but rest assured that spending your money on either book will bring you hours of rapture and a strong dosage of enlightenment. For me, having recently suffered a rather dark hour in my own life, finding some solace in McCarthy’s bare prose and terse worlds was truly a blessing. I consider it my duty to inform you that such a feeling should not be hoarded, but shared with as many people as possible. So, go buy a book you bums. It’s summer, after all. I doubt you’re doing anything more productive.

BUT BUT BUT! Before you close this tab (you lazy little scumbuckets that can’t read more than one-hundred word posts I spit at you), Allow me some more gushing.

Planet Earth. I just got the thing on Blu-Ray and–after watching the first episode in HD a few weeks ago–I can’t think of anything I’m more excited to do that pop this bitch in tomorrow. If I ever for a moment regretted purchasing a PS3, this little gem has made it all worth it. Seriously, I haven’t even popped it in yet but somehow owning the series has lifted my spirits and brought a sparkle to my eye. Nature is a beautiful thing, and I am anxious to finally watch something that accurately captures its glory.

Afro Samurai is another one of my purchases, but I haven’t yet watched this Director’s Cut. Apparently most of the new footage is for the sex scene (BOOBIES BOOBIES BOOBIES!), but either way the show is some of the most balls-out ass-kickingly (not a real word) good anime I’ve seen in a while. Of course, the other anime I’m watching is Monster, which is far from ass-kicking but still good, so I guess you could say that I’m in good company as far as video is concerned.

Unfortunately though I haven’t had time to play my purchased copy of Odin Sphere, since I am boycotting myself from playing anything until I beat FFXII, which also means I’m waiting to buy Tomb Raider Anniversary, something I’m rather giddy to sink my teeth into. The other side of this coin is actually uplifting as far as I’m concerned: I’ve stopped playing Pokemon. Yes, I became champion, saw the 150, and quit. I know there’s a whole ‘nother island to go see, and all the 354 or something remaining pokemon to grab, but fuck it, I have more important games to play. Like Lunar Knights. And Tomb Raider. Bah, talking about pokeys gets me angry. I think I’ll leave off here for now. I’m going to go start Suite Francaisse tomorrow (finally!) and of course binge on Planet Earth. I’ll hopefully be back with more on those soon.

I had hoped to never bring up such a personally sensitive subject on my blog again, but when I had someone direct me to such an inflammatory journal entry directed at himself, I couldn’t stand by and bite my tongue. It would be wrong to let this go without a response.

For the unitiated, I said my good-byes to my former stooge and ‘net buddy Afox/Chaz several months ago, after several failed attempts to reconcile what I had considered an amicable and important friendship. Back then, it seemed that one of the parties involved had made a decision to put two years of his life behind him and start his life fresh without any old ties. I understood this, and gave the man his space. However, he still remained in contact with some of our other acquaintances, up to this day even, and this I acknowledged as a simple sign that I had done something to begrudge the good fellow, and it was not my place to speak on the matter of whom he may or may not remain in dialog with. I kept my mouth shut.

Now, though, one of these lingering ties has also received a snarky message of disapproval from this same man I once thought of as a easy-going old chap. The problem being that the third party, who shall remain nameless, has recently undergone personal strife in his life, and was naive enough to share his feelings of remorse and self-pity with another human being, although it is not a person with whom he had ever met in person. Yet hundreds, if not thousands, of people write Dear Abby each year, and she isn’t exactly alive or doing world tours to shake hands with everyone that opens up to her.

To put it bluntly, a person whose mental health hasn’t exactly been the cheeriest of late and who I do have personal concern for tried to express himself to another and was told to not bother that person again until he had sorted his emotions out. I don’t care what kind of “new leaf” you’ve turned over in your life; to shut a person out purely because of your own apathy is disgusting. So he wrote to you about how his life sucks and how hopeless he feels, the least you can do is say, “Hey, cheer up, mate.” But you come across as an absolute dick by publicly posting a message to the guy telling him to fuck off until he feels better just because you don’t want to deal with someone else’s greif. Newsflash: no one wants extra emotional baggage, but if a person thinks of you as a friend and you shut them out because your time is too precious to be wasted on listening to another sob-story, you fail at life. Because if you fall into dire straights, and you need someone to talk to, internet friend or not, you’re only going to feel more like shit when they tell you to hit the road.

People need people, whether they know them or not.  Remember how Edward Norton couldn’t sleep without crying on someone’s shoulder in Fight Club?  It doesn’t take much in the way of human interaction to help someone.  I’m not telling you that you’re a bad person since you don’t think you’re of any help to the guy, I’m saying you’re an ass for not even pretending to care.  It takes less energy to smile than frown, as the saying goes.  The least you could have done was politely stated your thoughts, in private, rather than run roughshod over the poor bastard.

And while I’m at it, let’s look at the rest of that post you made. Hmm… people are addicted to video games because its “Bodiless exultation.” Actually, it’s just exultation. William Gibson uses bodiless because you jack into the cyberspace in his novels, a la Ghost in the Shell. You don’t dive into your mind to play a game, you use a controller with your hands.  Since you seem to detest your former passion, though, I can forgive you for viewing it this way.  (I still like you, just not your current attitude.) And, hell, it’s a nice little phrase to toss around.

I don’t know what your issues with gaming are. You never told me, to be honest, you just left. But you felt the need to repent and so be it, you did so.  That’s fine with me.  Really.  It’s just that now instead of the schizophrenic deluge of nerdy non sequiturs you used to have me rolling in my chair over, all I ever see coming from you reads like a cold handshake and a glassy stare. What gives?

I have a theory I’ve been mulling over for a few days now.  Based upon the casual observance of my fellow apes-in-pants, I believe I am prepared to test the hypothesis that bad parenting makes people inefficient.  Now, I know that wasn’t exactly the word coming to the forefront of most of your minds, my dear readers, but allow me–hell, humor me–to explain my reasoning.

It’s a generally accepted principal that doing chores sucks.  Do you really want to clean your room?  Take out the trash?  Do the dishes, and so on?  Fuck no you don’t, but when Mom/Dad uses that tone of voice or gives you that don’t-fucking-ignore-me look, you get off your ass and do the work.  And why are your parents so loving that they waste their breath asking you to do something they could have done?  Because if they don’t, you’d never know how to do it.

It is a fact, although I’m making it up, that roughly 80% of college students never did laundry before graduating high school.  About 95% probably never touched an iron, and 99% never cleaned the soap scum in their shower.  So are we naturally averse to cleanliness, or just lazy and ignorant?  Let’s presume it’s the latter.

So why, then, does the student, typically male, treat his or her belongings like he lives in a sty?  Enter the parental units.  You see, if Ma and Pa never ask you to do much in the way of cleaning, you lack the experience necessary to perform the task.  Makes sense, right?  But why does that make you a cleaner person?  I look now to Pavlov’s dogs.

For the uninitiated, Pavlov trained his dogs by ringing a bell each time he served them food.  After repeating this process for an extended period, Pavlov was able to make the dogs salivate simply by ringing the bell, even if there was no food to be found.  Likewise, if a parent forces a child into a routine of cleaning their room, making the bed, washing dishes, etc., would they not subconsciously find this task grueling-yet-necessary?  Do we not brush our teeth before sleeping and–hopefully–upon waking?  Who taught us that doing so was a critical process, and why do we do it?  I would hope that the reason is the same for taking out your trash: because keeping things clean and tidy is a healthy practice.

Of course, I know I’m assuming a good deal here, and totally ignoring the “your cleaning habits are a reflection of your mind” philosophy, but that’s a load of horsecrap anyway.  Whether you hate the phrase or not, you do, in fact, serve as a reflection of your parents.  So don’t blame them for making you do chores; it’s better than caking yourself in shit.

…

don’t desert me now

Ugh.  Sometimes you take a look around and wonder where the fuck you are, even though you’re sober and, technically, conscious.  Today was one of those days, and naturally the vessel of this revelation was… wait for it… the Internet!

For reasons I no longer understand, Google News is my homepage.  This means that not only can I enter search strings as soon as I load Firefox, I can also read the daily headlines without turning on the TV or reading a newspaper.  A benefit, surely?  I’m beginning to think otherwise.

Y’see, I started today with a bit of a ponderance: Am I really preparing myself for a lifetime of work in the right field? (For the uninitiated & casual observer, I’m a marketing major hoping to get into the tech and/or games industry)   This lack of assurance was then compounded by that wonderful news.google.com frontpage, which reminded me that hurricanes were decimating Mexico, Iran is flipping the bird to the world, and some poor girl that died 10 years ago may or may not finally be getting justice.

Taking all of this in at once caused me to wonder, and I mean Thinking Man-style wonder, what good, if any, I’d be doing the world with my life.  Are we supposed to make a contribution to the planet with our actions.  As Batman Begins tells us, “it’s not who you are underneath, it’s what you do that defines you.”  Mmm, that’s a delicious nugget of self-importance right there, innit?  But, really, is it not a valid point?  Do we really spend  18 years in school–more for professional schools–just to pull enough money to live comfortably and raise a successor?

Looking back at my post on the Watchmen, I’m reminded of The Comedian.  He wasn’t a funny superhero, he was a G.I. Joe soldier of a man that quipped sardonically about the trivialities of life.  Life, to him, was the greatest comedy ever written.  To consider it as anything else would be foolish.

And so we have two sides of the same coin, with myself standing precipitiously atop the ridged edge, unsure where to place my weight so that one side may fall facing upward, victorious.  I have a feeling that I am unlikely to move from this pinnacle for some time.  I expect that, as the seconds turn to minutes turn to days and years, the world will continue spiraling along its course, heeding not my immobility, and the answer I seek will, like a Cheshire Cat, remain hidden still.

I think there is a reason that people often overlook the Big Picture.  If one were to suddenly stop and truly consider his or her position as a member of the human race, what answer could suffice to make them return to moving forward? I will attempt to answer this myself when I see fit to return.