Things Occupying My Time

So Something Ventured has been kinda quiet for a month or so now and I felt that I owed my (very small) readership an explanation. I've been working on a number of side projects these past few weeks, including a pair of open ended storylines that could be construed as proto-novels, and my Anime review blog, LABNotes.

Combine this with the moving back to school transition, and you have a fair amount work and not a lot of time for pleasure blogging. Not that my side projects aren't for pleasure, just that it's a different sort of fun than pure philosophical rhetoric.

And who doesn't love rhetoric?

Anyway, if you want to keep tabs on my Anime viewings, check out LABNotes. I've been told my reviews are pretty good, if a bit wordy. And I might get around to posting some stuff from my two fiction projects if I feel that they merit it. Anyway, Bon Chance

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Yes They... Can?

I'm going to preface this entry by saying that I am not a student of political science, nor am I an expert on how campaigns are supposed to be run. These are just the observations of an educated student.

I attended a home meeting for the Obama presidential campaign today. It was hosted by an old friend of the family and I was sort of bullied into attendance. However, I had spent most of the primary season divorced from politics because I very quickly got tired of the Clinton vs. Obama grudge match. So I took this as a good opportunity to get caught up on the political climate.

Aside from the utter stupidity that was the Democrat's primary season, I didn't know much about Obama. I was originally a Clinton supporter, because of her strong stance on health care, which I very much support. I expected this little house meeting to brief its attendance on exactly what platforms Obama was choosing to focus on in the coming months.

But what actually happened was a half-hour ramble on why Obama's campaign is so strong. It became increasingly clear as the meeting went on, that Obama intends to run his entire presidential campaign, on the strength of his primary campaign. That is to say, there was no content in the meeting whatsoever. If he is elected, it will be based solely on the fact that he generated a 'grass roots' support group in the primary, who's entire goal was to elect any democrat to office.

Obama has been criticized by the media for not having strong stances on major issues and not having the sort of voting record that would establish his commitment to any causes. However, I did not quite realize that these deficits were forcing him to run a hollow campaign. There is no substance, on the local level, behind Obama. And while his publicists can spin him into positive positions on almost any issue, there really isn't anything that the average voter can get behind.

Which is not to say that I will not be voting for Obama come November 2^nd. While McCain's stance on the environment is refreshing from the Right, Obama's declared democratic leanings align more closely with my beliefs. But this is no excuse for the utter lack of substance that Obama is presenting. A man's intellect and articulation can only take a nation so far. But without stronger stances on the issues and clear goals for his term in office, the nation might as well be electing Jim Carry.

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Darker than black

Somewhere deep inside me is a sane person. Someday, someone will get to talk to him.

There's something very primal about real darkness. Not city darkness, because that is just shadows and absences. But real darkness has a presence. It has a physicality.

In a forest, the dark is a gentle unknown, full of mystery, a dash of fear and the joy of being in a place so full of life. In a theater, the black is blank canvas, waiting for a splash of light to illuminate something out of the imagination. In the middle of the ocean, the darkness is a crushing blanket, pressing you to the surface of the sea.

I've long since ceased to be afraid of the dark. I know too much about it to let if frighten me anymore. Sometimes I'll let myself be afraid of whats in the dark, but that is a different matter entirely. And yet, there is something truly terrifying about the dark of an empty house.

I'm not talking about Home Alone scared, or even horror movie terrified. I'm talking about that deeply seeded primal fear of death that unconsciously haunts each and every one of us who know what death is like. The ones who have gone past the place where we still think we're immortal.

Mind you, I don't think I'm about to keel over dead in my sleep. It's just this sense that has been flirting with my conscious mind in the wee hours of the morning/night when I should be sleeping. I've never liked being alone. I fill the void with music or a good book or the electronic comfort of my computer. Preferably two of the three. But in the dark of the night, the oppressive absence crushes back in on me.

Hmm...

Well, that was depressing.

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Review and Thoughts: Revelation Space

It is rare that a book, or anything for that matter drives me to the point of staying up three or four hours past the point when I was going to go to sleep in order to finish it. It is even rarer for that same book to do so for more than three nights. And it is downright unheard of that said book would then force me out of bed and back to the warm glow of my laptop to write about it.

This being said, Alastair Reynolds' Revelation Space is one of these rare, gripping books. Not only is it well written, it is a compelling and somehow realistic vision of a future that may not be so far off.

My penchant for Sci-Fi Opera aside, the book asks some very pointed questions about the nature of humanity, what makes us individuals and, surprisingly, the fate of a soul after death. In the best traditions of philosophical fiction, the book provides no real answers, but merely a collection of 'facts' that the denizens of the world have to deal with.

My favorite example of philosophical fiction is still the Anime classic, Ghost in the Shell. The single most influential piece of artwork to come out of Japan, with the possible exception of Akira, shares a lot with my latest mind-snaring obsession.

In both universes, cyberization, (or Chimerics as Reynolds titles them) has become extensive, and human personalities can be scribed to massive computer simulations, the most advanced of which confer a sort of digital immortality, if at the cost of one's real body. The line between the digital reality and the visceral reality that we know is clearly marked, but the lines drawn between program and human are becoming distressingly blurred.

Ghost in the Shell was years ahead of its time when it addressed these concerns back in 1989 when it pioneered the genre of cyberpunk along with the 1984 novel Neuromancer by William Gibson. Yet both of these genre defining works are rich with some of the moral and ethical problems arising in 2008. Reynolds writes his version of the future from the much more recent year 2000, but updates surprisingly little of the digital setting. While his future is decidedly more space flavored, the same tenants of virtual vs. real are still there.

Of course, it will be year before one of us is forced to make the decision to back up a parent (or ourselves) to a machine, but the line between the digital and real is becoming ragged even now. Even as I write this, entire relationships are unfolding in cyberspace, between people who have not met and probably never will. Communication boils down to texting and instant messaging, and phone calls, once considered inadequate for real personal communication, are becoming the new kind of formal lunch.

It's easy to draw that invisible line and say that, sure things are moving a little fast today, but cyborgs and AI are generations away. What's to worry about? And I'm not saying that we need to worry about it now, or even at all. But the world is changing in drastic and sudden ways. We have a responsibility to society and ourselves to monitor the changes we experience and figure out if we're using the technology, or it's using us.

From my perspective, I'm as much a victim of the future as anyone else. I mean, I'm up at 4:30 blogging about a book. Does that seem right to you?

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Hey Mr. DJ, put a record on.

Well, the school year ended abruptly and without much fanfare. I'm glad it's over. Now I get to start working on next semester.

And start writing again. Between huge, last second papers and an equally huge last second stage management job that literally ate two days of my life, I haven't had much time to write anything. And I wanted to.

A couple of weeks ago, I was asked to provide music for the end of year party for the theater department gang. The party, called Debacle, was my second attempt at DJing an event, even if it wasn't so much DJing as it was picking out a playlist and plugging my iPod in. But it was a lot of fun and the party was widely considered to be a success.

Backstory in place, I thought I'd take a post to write about the process of selecting music. It's not something that is easy to do and when you're trying to condense over 2400 hours of music into a 5 or 6 hour playlist, some stuff is going to hit the cutting room floor.

My process went a little something like this:

1: Theme. I like dance music. I like it a lot. Techno, Trance, Electronica, straight up Dance and especially House music. Which is great, but most of the people out there don't have a real appreciation of it. Some days, I can't say I blame them. There's a lot of crap out there to work though before you find the real gems that make up a good dance playlist. So I had to temper my list with some more mainstream rock and pop.

Of course, thematically, there isn't a lot of difference between pop and dance, but sometimes familiarity is enough to capture an audience and let them slip into some less familiar territory.

One place I won't go is rap. I do have a lot of respect for R&B and the original rap culture, but contemporary rap is simplistic, over-produced (and yes, I say that being a fan of electronica) and vulgar. It's not good for real dancing, with a few exceptions.

2: Tone. I think a lot of the problem that plagues dance halls these days is the overwhelming drive towards sex. Not that sex is bad or needs to be repressed, but a party should be about having fun in the moment, not driving people into each other. Of course, a lot of the music I ended up playing is also about sex or love, but the tone behind the music can do a lot to change the way the energy of the room moves.

Of course, there's nothing I can do about how some people behave, but if the crowed is mostly dancing or singing along, rather than grinding and making out, I think it's a huge success. Music is supposed to be fun, and I try to focus in on that fun rather than just giving into sex.

3: Style. DJing is as much about your own style as it is providing music for the masses. And to that end, while I did temper the theme of the list, the music is dominated by my love of House music and rocking dance beats. It's happy. It's peppy. It's a little gay but it's all me. And a little bit of my friends who reminded me about awesome songs I didn't have in my library.

I don't listen to music that a lot of other people listen to, but that just makes the dancefloor a more interesting place. I'll post the playlist I used for the party in a little bit, as soon as I figure out how to make it text again.

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Connections

It's rare that I have multiple blog entries on queue. But my trip to Texas over spring break was full of a number of unusual events, which prompted me to get started writing again, and given my recent dearth of posts, it has been coming.

While I was in Houston, I had the rare opportunity to meet a few of the people who make up my World of Warcraft guild, Legends. I met the players behind my Guild Leader, and two of the more prominent members of the guild. I had been meaning to make time for this during one of my annual Thanksgiving trips, but it had never worked out and the convention provided me with the perfect excuse to work out a meeting.

Now, some of you are saying, "What the hell are you thinking? You've never met these people before. They could kill you!" But the truth is, I do know these people, just over a different medium. The Guild system in WoW requires a great deal of time commitment in the upper echelons, which our guild, Legends, is definitely a member of. I have spent many a fond hour with all of the people I met on my trip and meeting them face to face was exciting, if not terribly new.

We were like old friends who hadn't seen each other for a while.

Not to wax philosophical, but the encounter was a really good example of how much modern communication, in this case over the VOIP system of Ventrilo, has brought people from across the nation together. Not in any grand, meaningful way, but just as friends. I don't think that it is a replacement for real human contact, but it isn't the horrible substitute your parents think it is.

Muah!
Lyrinoir

Updated, related, inundated and elated

Ok. Life's been busy. Really busy. Hamlet wrapped up nicely. (only one major tantrum on my part) School started sorting itself out. (Ok, that's a lie, but I'm working on it) Spring break was a relaxing and interesting diversion. (... also a lie.) And I'm ready for whatever life has to throw at me.

LIES!

I took the week of spring break to travel down to my sometime stomping ground of Houston, Texas for the United States Institute of Theater Technology (USITT) conference. It was... awesome in a life draining, bone weakening sort of way. It's long for one thing. A full four days demanding at least eight hours each, if not more (I pulled nearly 13 on Thursday) and I threw in a couple of random commitments both scholarly and not.

The actual conference was very, and I do not like to use this word, cool. There's something about LED lights that just grabs my logic and defenestrates it. (Just making up for cool) And now that the industry is starting to go, "Huh, these aren't completely useless" there is a lot more buzz about them. The first thing you saw when you walked into the exhibition hall was a pair of large, low-rez LED tube screens looking like the coolest concert you never saw.

Please pardon the techno-geek drool. It doesn't stain, I promise.

I was lucky to have family in the Houston area. It saved me the trouble of having to room in the hotel with the rest of the group from my school. Not that I don't like them, but I have a personal thing about consuming $250 worth of alcohol on an ostensibly school run trip. And that was the professors.

Now, normally, I have the patience of a small child when it comes to elderly relatives, but fortunately, my great aunt is nothing like most women her age, let alone the women her age in Texas. She's a feisty liberal ex-hippie socialite who has got to be pushing 80, though I would never dare ask her age. She owns a lovely flat not six blocks from the convention center and living with her for a week is more like a candy coated candy than the somewhat bitter cough drop that most people expect.

Which brings me to the Swag! One of the pleasant bonuses of the convention, aside from all of the distributing of business cards and the making of good impressions, was the large quantity of free stuff I acquired. Three, very high quality bags with acceptable corporate logos, a half-dozen lanyards, four fully up-to-date Gel books, (it's a lighting thing)a bright red leather bound notepad, and a metric ton of nifty literature on everything from branch circuits to wallbox assemblies. And a t-shirt!

I don't really know where it's all going, but I'm happy to have it.

And that was spring break. Except for those other things.

Which get their own post. At some point

Muah!
Lyrinoir