Everything Wants To Be Noticed

Ever notice how, on family sitcoms, that children seem to invent wild and crazy plans to get in or out of trouble? Somehow sneaking on a train to Los Angeles to be on some silly reality show, or using lifelike wax figures of the kids to be in bed while they go off to some big party (Shake it Up and ANT Farm respectively) And no matter how inept the parents are (and believe me, some of the Disney Channel parents are incredibly inept, almost too much so), they find out about the deception and the kids get in trouble.  Of course, there's the inevitable finding out about whatever trouble-making is going on.  Let's take Good Luck Charlie as an example. Gabe (Bradley Steven Perry) releases crickets into the library (one of the best lines delivered on that show, "Library's quiet, crickets are noisy... you try things."), or he pours superglue on his neighbor's front porch. He doesn't really think he's gonna get away with it, does he? Gabe does it for the attention, to be noticed. It's obvious the reasoning is that he's the middle of 4 (or 5) kids, so he does mischievous things to stand out. Then there's the older two, PJ (Jason Dolley) and Teddy (Bridgit Mendler), who try throwing parties when their parents are out of town.  A social ploy, hoping to get noticed in high school. Course, all that ever happens is the parents punishing them.  I remember giving my brother a haircut... all over the kitchen floor.  Course, I didn't think I was going to get into trouble then (probably because I wasn't thinking.), but I did.  If there's one thing that Disney Channel shows have in common, it's that actions have consequences. Inevitably, the kids on those shows do the right thing, even if it takes them a while.



The truth is, as Art Garfunkel and Buddy Mondlock sang on the song, everything wants to be noticed. Its the reason pain is there, a cry for help in the nervous systems in the body.  It's why the clunks and clangs of a car before it breaks down, the grinding of the break pads. Ignore them, and the heart gets worse, the car breaks down.  And people feel the need to be noticed, too.  Even if it means doing something negative, they are noticed.  I feel so badly for those actors who, when they think their careers aren't going anywhere, or not fast enough, do something outrageous to get noticed by the press. The media become the enablers who broadcast stupidity around the world.

Speaking of stupidity, there's a group of child "stars," who feel that being noticed is the apex of their lives.  The internet is quite willing to help them.  Youtube lets us see into the everyday lives of people all around the world.  Amazing, to some extent, as you're able to see how people live in different countries, to see the beauty of mankind and of nature.  Let's focus on one kid, Sam Porttorff, who is famous just for blabbering on Youtube.  He's part of a group of "youtubers" called "Our Second Life."  This is not to say they don't have talent, but they haven't got picked up by any agencies for movies or music or anything.  They stay online and talk about their lives.  Sam has quite a bit of talent, but I think he's going to wasted it trying to get noticed. Take a look at this video, of a trip with his friends to San Diego.  It's the camera work that's amazing, the perspective of the world through the lens.  It brings you along with him, to the beaches and the boardwalks of that California city.



Now go look at any of the related videos afterward, of him chugging Arizona Tea until he vomits, or the endless lip-syncing of the latest Justin Beiber hit.  It's a complete waste of his talent, just so the girls will oogle over him.  And when he grows up? What then? When the teens fall away to some other pre-shaven pre-adolescent whose only desire is to look cute and to be noticed? He will have nothing but the desperation to have what he once had, which drives those like Lohan to act out in negative ways.  Or he can take the gifts he has now and develop them into artwork, into something truly special.  It's his choice, and he'll probably make more money just having girls oogle over him, but at the cost of what happiness?

To return to being noticed... social media does a lot to exacerbate that feeling.  Detectives often find the perpetrators of crimes through their bragging on Facebook or Twitter.  Acts of vandalism here in my county are often solved, and the people arrested, because they brag about spray painting the football field on their social media sites, and someone turns them in.  People do bad things to be noticed, and it's remarkable, since the Internet is triumphed as a place of anonymity.  Be free to say anything you want! Do anything you want to do! No one's watching! Create fake accounts to cyber-bully those in your school, causing undue harm upon them.  Shout obscenities at celebrities who are only trying to reach out to their fans, and do it just because.... to see what happens.  It's all done to see the results of those actions.  To brag to friends, "Look what I did! He/She deleted his/her Twitter account, all because of me! What power I have!!" They want to be noticed.

Davis Cleveland (Shake it Up) has had even worse problems, with someone actually hacking into his social media accounts and taking them over, and worse, effecting his bank accounts and other personal property. And since, supposedly, you can be anonymous online, they can't be caught.  Or so they think.  Most people don't take into consideration that the trail we leave online is traced, logged, and stored in massive databases in case the police need to use it as evidence.  Even if someone uses a VPN server, it's still possible, with a lot of work, to track through the real IP address of the person involved.  In fact, in today's world, I doubt that the people involved in hacking Davis' accounts failed to recognize that fact.  I think they wanted to be noticed.  To say, "This is what I've done!! Look at me!" even while they are led off to jail. The problem is, they will get noticed, but for the very opposite from what they  wanted.

At the end of every Disney show, after the shenanigans and the mischievousness, friends make up, parents and children hug, even after the grounding, and everything's okay.  To look at it through a Christian's eyes, it's about forgiveness.  It's about hoping that these people, who are so full of desperation and negativity, will be noticed by people who love them, not who hate them.  We all need to be loved by someone, by family, friends, our Lord.  And we are, but never seem to realize that.  It would be interesting to see who the person behind Davis' hacking was, why they did it, and what their lives are really like. I think we would see that it's not hate from the world they want, but love from the few people around them.

On Hatred: The Economic Argument

The whole US Government should file into the nearest theatre in Washington DC, and someone should play for them a cartoon that explains the economical situation of America better than any other. Duck Tales, specifically, this episode about inflation. Essentially, the more money is made, the less it's worth, due to supply and demand.  For instance, when Titanic came out on VHS, so many copies were made that Walmart couldn't give them away. They had so many, and so their worth went down. Another example... say you had one coffee cup. You couldn't get another one. How careful would you be with that coffee cup? It would be like gold to you, and the same example would apply to toys children had in years gone by.  Children had one doll, one car, one basketball, and if they got damaged or ruined, there just wasn't enough money to go out and buy another (and especially no credit cards by the handfuls) People were much more careful  about the things they had. Now, you break the coffee cup, you go to Walmart and buy one for $5.00, and you think nothing of it.  For that coffee cup is basically worthless.

Now, to return to the idea of evil, of the hatred that runs through people's veins like a germ.  That hatred must be exercised in different ways. One obvious, and relatively safe way, is through the playing of first-person shooter video games. My brother is really good at it, and I thought the game Carmageddon II was amazing, as you got to run over people with your car as you demolished other vehicles. And if you died or crashed, you just "respawned" in your home base. Just 100 coins, and you get a new life, to put it simply. The value of those lives is diminished as it matters little how many times you get killed.  The situation changes when there's something to be lost when death occurs, in video games, that is. If there are no consequences, then death matters very little.

Outside, in the real world, we experience the same thing.  I call it "population inflation," the idea that, as our population grows, the value of each individual life becomes less. You can see it everywhere. In the south side of Chicago, children are murdered daily, and you hear very little about it outside of the normal body count on the news. You've seen the videos where someone lays bleeding on the sidewalk, and pedestrians just walk around him or her, unwilling to help or to get involved. The value of that life just isn't worth them taking time out of their day. This is the value of human life now. We come a dime a dozen, and when it's time to throw the dead, useless bodies out of the hospice and welcome a new set of elderly in, why, that's the way things go. Squeeze out the last bits of money available, and move on.  Charge them for the Big Mac, the weight loss program, the Cardiologist bill, the increased health insurance premiums, and then be done with them, ready for a new generation to run through the mill.  And there are countless other examples, but those are for other blogs, other rants.

The prime example comes from Newtown, Connecticut  The shooter walks into Sandy Hook Elementary and guns down an entire class of Kindergartners  and then himself.  I would really like to know what he thought was going to happen to those children. Would they simply "respawn" at their houses, to appear the next day at school? Would the shooter and his mom do the same thing? What was the value of each child's life as he took them away? Nothing. He didn't even hold his own life of any value, as, I guess, he thought he would simply appear someplace else, ready to start the next day.

Likewise, the Radical Islamic Terrorists that have plagued the world recently (and let's be honest, they've existed for centuries, but now they have the weapons and we have the 24 hour news broadcasts to make each of them known. Postman: "The Medium is the Message.") have the same view of life as the Newtown shooter did. To them, Islam has taught them that all life outside of Islam is worthless, and people are to be turned or destroyed. Further, Jihad makes suicide a rewarding act, that in the next world, there will be riches for ending their lives after killing Christians (or any other "infidels." The Radical Islam sect encourages the spread of hate, the devaluing of human life, like no other religion on Earth. We have to see this, and endeavor to eradicate that hate anywhere we see it, online, in our prison system, or in the people that we love.  

On Hatred: The Dental Argument

I talked before, in a blog about Anger, how all the negative things that happen in our lives, if not properly dealt with, become a hardened core in the soul, effectively killing the person inside. I've always said that the shooter that went into Columbine High in Colorado was dead long before he actually killed himself. He no longer had a soul, his heart was merely a hard core of anger.

Think of all the negative things that happen in a person's life as the bacteria that forms in the mouth. All the name calling, the insults, the gay slurs posted online, the yelling of parents late at night, all of this, becomes like germs floating around in the brain, in the blood stream. Most people are able to relax, to balance it out with positive influences. They listen to music, they spend time with those that they love, they worship in church, letting God ease those dark times. There are those, however, that let the germs fester, forming, to follow the metaphor, plaque around the teeth, blackening the enamel, hollowing out the insides, making the body a delicate, painful, brittle thing. The pain of a tooth that has been eaten away by plaque is unbearable (and I know from much experience). It's the same as the negativity that flows around in the soul. It becomes hardened, starts eating away at everything that is special and dear. Take the recent terrorists in Boston, they had promising careers, in medicine, sports, etc..., but were eaten away by all the negativity thrown at them from many different sources, not the least of which were the violent anti-American videos promoted by Muslim radicals. By the time they set those bombs at the Marathon, they were simply shells of that evil plaque. It is only by the grace of God that the younger one survived to allow us to know what was actually going on. It does show that maybe the younger brother still had a little soul left in him, something that might be salvageable  else he would have killed himself. (And I say that in total recognition that what he did with his brother was the act of pure evil, and he must receive the consequences of that. I only hope that he can be rescued, Saved (in the Christian sense of the word) before he dies or is executed. Only God can forgive him now.

Going back to evil as a germ, as bacteria, it is easily spread, from one person to another, by bullies at school, by the kids who throw gay slurs at nine year olds online, by anyone that hasn't washed those germs clean. And it's so important that we look out for it in our everyday lives. It's everywhere in society, and we don't even notice it sometimes. Go watch TMZ for an episode, or see the Reality TV shows where people stab each other in the back. Even the night talk shows, like Jay Leno, who insult Lindsay Lohan daily, are doing nothing but making that actress worse. The spiritual life and internal fortitude of those stars must be so strong to withstand the constant barrage of evil thrown at them every single day.

Go to Instagram, on the "popular" page, and pick out any picture of a person (a "selfie," they call it), and you'll see, among the useless cries of "I luv u!!!," girls who post "gay" or "go kill yourself." Then the supporters go after the "trolls," and a cursing war breaks out, all in front of children who don't need that in their lives. I've mentioned before Davis Cleveland, who withstood (and continues to deal with) a constant barrage of insults from people online. And while I know he's strong enough to ignore them and persue his dreams, I worry about the lingering effects of all this. So many child stars have grown up spiraling down into addictions, negative behavior, and some, even suicide (Jonathan Brandis, for instance), and many of them were stars well before the Internet. What effects will social media have on these actors as they mature and grow? The good part about Davis' life is that he has a solid Christian background, supportive parents, and friends both physical and online, that lift him up and provide that positive encouragement. I'm actually surprised in the many young actors now that are Christians, and I hope that God will carry them "through" the fires they face each day.

 

On Hatred: Intro, and The Jungian Argument

[ I'm dividing this series up into different parts, as the blog got way too long as a whole. I'll post one a day for the next 4 days. It deals with evil, hatred, bullying, and how they all come from the same state, whether it be terrorism or cyber-bullying, or late night humor.]

http://www.rockdalecitizen.com/news/2013/apr/02/rockdale-receives-national-bullying-prevention/

So apparently the Rockdale County Public Schools won an award for installing what amounts to an anonymous text program that allows students to report bullying and other issues to authorities without being labeled a snitch. A great tool for students to use whenever they are being victimized.  However, I look about all the "anti-bullying" awareness today, from commercials to efforts by the president...etc..., and I wonder, where was all this 25 years ago?  There were bullies back then, there were victims, there just weren't teachers and a public who cared.  It's become a hot-button topic, and that's fine, it will help many of the students today to recover from some of the awful things that I experienced many years ago.  What is the difference between today's bullying and that of two decades ago?  One thing is that we have the technology to report it, through video cameras in our cell phones (which, when given to the media, makes an instant story and makes the school system look bad, and in this litigious society, opens them up for lawsuits).  We also have social media which is a double edged sword, for it brings the acts of bullies to light, as well as allows those bullies into our own bedrooms.
***

Actually, I've been stuck at that paragraph for quite a while now.  Especially over the past week, with the Boston events showing the world how evil people can be.  The problem that I've been having, I think, apart from general depression (which has nothing to do with the topic on hand), is that the social labels we're giving these people,  "terrorists," "bullies," "victims," are all complicated, and complicating, the actual issues here.  What makes people behave the way they do?

The Jungian Argument

Brief psychology lesson here.  According to Carl Jung, there are three parts of the human mind. The id, a subconscious being that communicates base desires to us.  It wants what it wants, and it will do anything to achieve it.  Sex, food, violence, revenge, those temper tantrums you see kids throw when they don't get the toy they think they want.  That's all id.  The superego is also a subconscious being, comprised of the morals of society, the lessons taught from parents and natural consequences, the natural assumption of right and wrong.  If a baby sticks his finger on an iron (or even a teenager, for that matter.... don't ask) and burns his finger and has to keep it in ice cold water while he gets his hair cut, the lesson learned from that is stored in the superego.  Thus, he never will stick his finger on  an iron again (although, come to think of it, that was the car cigarette lighter...)  The third part is the ego, the conscious mind.  It decides, based on the id, and the superego, and from reason, emotion, and other thought processes, and decides what is right and what is wrong, and thus, what action should be taken.  Take any of these out, and you have a problem on your hands.

It's obvious now, if the superego is lacking, then the only thing the ego (you) has to hear from is the id.  An example.  In 1999,  the Columbine High School shooting (although, technically, there were a few before that, but this was the big one) put into everyone's minds the idea that it's possible to enter a school building and start shooting people. For the shooter to enter the high school, the superego either  hadn't existed, or it was so feeble that the shooter's ego didn't listen. So overpowered it was by the urges of the id to enact violence against his peers.  The superego must learn the lessons taught the person by pain, punishment, or parents.  If discipline at home doesn't exist, then there's nothing to influence the ego (the conscious mind) into thinking anything other than what the id tells it to. If the information that the brain digests from the outside world is nothing but action movies, violence, and pleasure-seeking, there's no societal values to counteract the id either.  Thus you have materialistic, self-centered, self-serving feral beings that will do whatever they want no matter the consequences, because consequences don't mean anything.  There is no one in the home to spank them if they do wrong.  When they become adults and are sent to jail, there's little punishment, except four walls, bad food, and roommates of questionable character.  They can be trained, a superego formed, around the societal norms of a jail cell. They are brainwashed into thinking that blowing up buildings and killing Christians is a good thing.  All this because the superego wasn't formed in time.  And people can see it, they know it, and can brainwash them into doing whatever they want.  It's why many of the school shooters are upper class kids whose parents threw money at them instead of discipline, and thus they weren't taught right from wrong at the very beginning.  How many children, even on a smaller level, have that same attitude? Even those in the poorest ranks, whose parents just aren't there, aren't getting the lessons they need to counteract the base desires the id throws at them every day.

Thoughts of a Bookseller

When asked, in the normal flow of conversation, what I would do if I won the lottery, I, without hesitation, reply, "I would open an independent bookstore that sells new, used, and e-books, and whatever else, and I would hire the employees I know would be experts at saying, 'This book is amazing, you should read it!'" It would be a destination for anyone that just needed a good book. I say this with the full knowledge of the economy presently, and of the insane thought of doing something that would, in most places in the world today, be an utter failure.  But I don't think it would be.

I've come to the conclusion that I love reading.  But I love selling books more.  That reading is both a pleasurable time, an escape to another world, to experience other lives and to see emotions through the minds of other people. It is also a mechanism to gain knowledge of a product.  Much like eating the newest brand of Cheerios. But of course, much more enjoyable.  For reading a book results in reviews, at least, that's what I do after I've read a book and digested it, taken it apart, applied it to my life, related it to every experience I've had, applied philosophies, ideas, poetry, prose, art, and music to every nuance, painted the words in colors with a paintbrush upon a canvas, and sculpted a response to the words of another human being.  What does all this creation do?  It sells books on Amazon, or delivers information on Goodreads.  My thoughts languish out on my blogs and
my reviews for anyone to pick up and chew like licorice, and then to go buy the book and read it.  It's the end result, the conclusion of my efforts. And more than likely, I will never know the rewards of it, but it's good enough.

I've been a bookseller now for 10 years, and have always ended up on the merchandising side of
bookselling.  For good reason.  To enter into a bookstore, there is a clear division of workers. Thought processes that, when analyzed, become a picture of the relationship between the person and the books.  Selling books requires intimate knowledge of the books themselves, so when you know the books, you begin to love them.  There are very few retail locations in which the sellers fall in love with the things they are selling.  Cars maybe, motorcycles, those curmudgeons who love their rusty junk on American Pickers, but it's hard to imagine a grocer falling in love with the boxes of Cheerios.    When a box of cereal becomes outdated, it gets sent back, or thrown away (after credit is given, of course).  The same thing happens with books, but it's much harder for some booksellers to give up the books that are on the shelves that, for whatever reason, don't sell.  It could be the type of customer that frequents the store, or the fact that, shockingly, there are some authors that just don't sell well, no matter how popular they are.  I've blown the dust off of more the late Maeve Binchy's novels.  Case in point, I tried my hardest to merchandise the biography of Ted Turner at Borders some years ago.  I stacked them wherever I could stack them, thinking that, we're in Atlanta, and Ted Turner, for whatever you may think of his political stance, created the 24 hour news channel, something that has radically altered the way we think and communicate.  You could argue that Turner is as important in the history of the spread of ideas as Gutenberg was for the printing press.  But they didn't sell.  Even marked down to 50% off, they didn't sell.  So back they went.


Truth is, I took it as a personal affront that the books didn't sell, because it was somehow my fault that the customers didn't see the books, didn't see the value of the words within the pages.  That's why working in a bookstore is very hard, for a fine balance of revenue and merchandise credit must be there for a bookstore to make any profit.  When bookstore owners decide that they simply can't return the books because they love them, that's when they go out of business.  That's even true of the Friends of the Library bookstore at the Nancy Guinn Library in Conyers.  If we keep all the books forever, waiting for someone to come in, plop down a dollar, and take a book off, we'll never make any money because their won't be any new books, and thus, no one will come to buy the old ones that have already been seen month after month.  There are other workers in a bookstore that are adept at separating their love of books from selling the product in front of them.  They make valuable inventory workers, although many times there are disagreements between inventory and merchandising people.  It happens in every bookstore, even the FOL one, depending on the attitudes of the workers.

So if you ever find me in a Goodwill someplace, or at the Library, come ask me what good books are out there.  I'll find books that I loved, and that I know you will, too.  The joy of reading is only compounded when you're able to spread that joy to other readers.  It's the paradox of having your own mounting collection of books at home.  I know people, who have stacks upon stacks of books, boxes of them, even ones they have read, and they will remain there until they die.  But aren't those books, now having imparted the information in their pages, now more valuable if the words are given to someone else to digest?  Should not a book be read, then given away to someone else?  Of course not..... how silly that is to think about.  These are my books, and no one is going to touch them.  Except that's wrong, and we all know it.  We have fallen in love with our books, and we cannot let them go.  So we go about our lives, with our houses on our backs, as Thoreau would say, except our houses are filled with books, ones we cannot give up, for fear of losing the imaginary worlds within if somehow the physical book vanishes.  It's a complex problem, but one I'd just as soon have as not.  Far more serious is the house with no books, and the owner does not care.  So I shall go through, and weed and prune my books, as a gardener would, and pick the flowers I'm least likely to miss, and they will get donated.  But ask me, and I'll tell you of my garden, of my treasures within, and you can read them if you want.  I'll gladly give you a book, as long as I can replace it.  Now I'll close this chapter, and go read my book.

Book Reviews: Two X Sci-fi

As much as Science Fiction told of mankind leaving Earth and exploring the universe, most authors spend as much time exploring the inner workings of the soul and consciousness.  The "science" in Sci-fi can relate as much to Psychology as to Physics and Astronomy.  To look at the unknown, the impossible as possible, takes not only a solid science education, but the mind and heart of a poet, the creativeness of the muses along with the empirical senses of the scientist.

For the many readers I have encountered that say, "I don't read science fiction, I can't stand all that "alien" stuff," I would rebuke them, saying that the unknown has always been a part of human literature, from Grendel in Beowulf to the White Whale in Melville's classic tale.  I would argue that science fiction has a direct line from the works of the greatest authors to the exploits of Luke Skywalker.  The same themes prevail throughout, the motifs echo through each work, whether the weapon be a sword or a lightsaber.  It is not beyond argument to say that David standing up to Goliath, with but the faith of God and some rocks, is not the same figure as Luke Skywalker standing up to Vader in Cloud City.

So it is that, needing books to read, and trying to stay away from the mindless babble of talking heads on Television, the dribble of escapist nothingness that espouses Truth but is not but useless trash flowing into the minds of today's people, I find myself drawn to the books filling my library.  I glance through the paperbacks, yellow with time, with sparse drawings of other-worldly beings and scantily clad women on the fronts, those with the "Bethany, Oklahoma Library" stamped on the sides, where my dad brought them home and somehow never took them back.  The science fiction of decades past, where the future times that men were flying to the stars has actually already happened (according to the book I finished, Man should already have a shopping mall on Mars, and a base on Mercury.), has an incredible draw to me now.  For I find that while the setting is futuristic and utopian, the themes are as classic as the works I have bound in leather atop my bookshelves.

I wish to review two books: The Dream Master by Roger Zelazny, and A Place Beyond Man written by Cary Neeper.
***

The Dream Master is the second full length novel written by Zelazny in 1966.  The title page informs the reader that it had been a serialized short story in a magazine.  Unfortunately, it reads like a fleshed out, stretched short story.  It becomes disjointed, a series of scenes seemingly unconnected and written at different times, so much so you can tell which parts are original, and which parts are added.

The main story deals with Render, a psychologist who has become known as a pioneer in the new technology of "Dream Therapy," in which he uses a holodeck type machine to enter people's dreams and control them, constructing and deconstructing (in every sense of the philosophical term) until the underlying causes, as Freudian as they may be, are exposed and can be dealt with outside of the sleep state.  Stepping outside of the boundaries his craft sets, he decides to help a blind woman, a professional psychiatrist in her own right, to "see" using dreams.  But, as things go when man tries to play "God," things rarely turn out well.  This is a book that would go along side Le Guin's Lathe of Heaven, Frank Bonham's The Forever Formula,  or Chayefsky's Altered States.  The latter most definitely, since they both deal with the idea of the collective subconsciousness, the idea that there are certain things we see and know that come from the primal state of our being, as a coding of our "form," embedded into our DNA.

Movie based on The Dream Master

Zelazny writes in spurts, in images, in hallucinatory frames, and I would imagine that, like so many other artists in the 60's (18 and 19), that some sort of stimulation was used to create the muse for these writings.  It would remind someone of Coleridge's 'In Xanadu, did Kubla Khan..." or T.S. Eliot's "Wasteland" (April is the cruelest month).  This is not to denigrate the story at all, rather, it rescues it from being unreadable.  In fact, Zelazny's usage of myths, whether we know them or not, of poetic fits in between sections of plot, is what makes this an actually good book to ruminate upon.  Masterful writing style, deep, thoughtful nuggets that you have to mine from the rocky wording, phrases that are pure gold, it makes the once award winning short story well worth reading, despite its obvious flaws. 

Amongst the flat characters are soliloquies of how technology has so placed us in a state of security, of peace, that we become bored, even to the state of having nothing, verily, to live for. He deals with the usage of stories, of myths, to recreate the heart-rendering sorrows that mankind has lost, and the sub-culture of role-playing that has surfaced so that man can actually face that danger, instead of being lost to banality.  This is a theme also taken on by Simak in A Ring Around the Sun, which was a masterful work. I doubtless will use some of Zelazny's thoughts in some of my future blog postings (giving credit, obviously), as they were truly amazing.    Having never read Zelazny's work before, I will certainly find others in my Dad's sci-fi collection pilfered from the Bethany, OK library so many years ago, and read them as well.
***

Having read Cary Neeper's second book, The Webs of Vorak prior to the first, it allowed me to first see the more mature creation before the beginning.  Tolkien, in his essay "On Fairy Stories" talks about the creation of mankind, the constant need for making something, in emulation of God.  Imagine taking a ball of play-doh, and, realizing that you could make anything you wanted, you set out to create a world.  This, as Tolkien calls it, is Faerie. In The Neverending Story, it is Fantasia, and in the PS3 game LittleBigPlanet, it is the Orb of Dreams.  But whatever the name, it is the molding by which we create our dreams, our novels, our gods (if you look at many of the myths from Greece, Rome, and elsewhere).  So Cary Neeper took the mold of her world and created Ellason and Vorak, and on them, she placed the diametrically opposite Vorakians and Ellls.  In 1975, she wrote A Place Beyond Man, which is the account of the first contact between the two alien species and human beings. You can tell that, in the beginning, the mold is forming, becoming the deep and solid world that Neeper wants us to explore.  Get there, she does, and it becomes a magnificent lesson in the humility man will have to have of himself to save the world he lives in and to venture forth into the universe, as so many sci-fi writers will want to have us do.

The fascinating part of the story is the character studies that each of the three main people present to us.  Conn, the Elll, is the personification of Dionysus, pleasure, enjoyment incarnate.  Orram, the Varok, is the antithesis, the voice of Reason, Apollo, standing firm with stolid emotions, using reason and logic to perceive the world.  (I reject the idea of other reviewers that Orram is simply a Vulcan rehash, even though there are similarities.) Thus, to follow Hagel's philosophy, Tandra, the human, is the Synthesis, the balance of emotion and reason.  But this is only one way to look at it. Another perception to each of the characters lies in the "widening gyre" of William Butler Yates.  Control of Orram's emotional states is only possible when the spiral is tight, compacted, governed by cultural and physical boundaries that are strictly enforced.  The same, remarkably, is the case for the Dionysian character Conn, who must stay grounded within the "school" of his amphibious culture.  Even Tandra, who must handle the first contact situation with a balance of emotion and reason, must keep herself in control of her faculties.   In all cases, the sprial unravels, and they must each help one another to return to the sanity which is inherent in their own species. In the strengths of their own characters, they can survive.

In the end, it is Tandra, and us as well, who must see that the first contact situation calls into question everything that we assume about ourselves as human beings, about our position in the universe, about the superior stance we take in the world, and in our own minds.  Tandra becomes much as Jodie Foster's character was in the movie based on Carl Sagan's Contact. There are few humans, as was seen in the movie, and as was rightly guessed by the Ell-Varokian team, that would have successfully reacted and adapted to finding other sentient species in the world, especially ones without the bi-pedal look of current Earth sentient beings (supposedly).

The original 1975 book, published by Dell (now Random House), is out of print, but was reprinted in 2011 by iUniverse.  Neeper is working on a revised edition of this book, which is scheduled for release in a couple of years.  I do recommend reading this book (before or after The Webs of Varok) instead of waiting, as it was a thoroughly enjoyable read, thought provoking, and great addition to the Science-Fiction cannon.  I only hope that more of the classic sci-fi books can be rescued from the shelves of obscurity and reissued to a public that needs to be reminded of just how amazing mankind is, what his potential is, and how fragile our world is, how dangerous it will be if the "centre cannot hold." 

Video Game Review: PS3 - Papo & Yo

Why would anyone spend hours chopping down virtual trees? It's a question I asked myself while laying on the top bunk in one of my friend's college dorm rooms watching him play Ultima Online.  It made no sense to me, to create a character on a game, one with virtually no story, and waste hours of time building up skills and numbers just to go find some huge dragon.  Similarly, watching my brother play Call of Duty, with constant gunfire, constant dying and respawning, doesn't achieve any real goal.  There's no story involved, no need to actually do anything except shoot randomly at other virtual people, hoping to see them fall down in a bloody pool.  I just don't get most video games. There are a number of people who will vehemently disagree with me on this.  I know people who are quite attached to their characters on World Of Warcraft or The Sims. They act and react with the people in the games to create their own storylines, with a little help from those creating the games.  And there are those exceptions of first-person shooter games, for example, that have a quite good storyline.  I loved Half-Life, and in a similar vein, American McGee's Alice.  But I've gone over these ideas before.

I'm very picky when it comes to video games, playing those that I feel will have a great plot, emotional depth, or that speaks to an idea of escape.  It's why I have spent many hours playing Zelda, Final Fantasy, and Psychonauts.  In short, I want my video game experience to be as enthralling as the books that I've read.  I want the video games that I play to be works of art.  


Put in "video games as works of art" in Google and you'll read opinion after opinion on the subject.  One article posted the definition of "art" as written by the Oxford English Dictionary: the expression or application of human creative skill and imagination, typically in a visual form such as painting or sculpture, producing works to be appreciated primarily for their beauty or emotional power. 

I say all this to review a game available on the Playstation Network (on the PS3).  Papo y Yo is a work of art.  Minority Media has created a game with symbolism, emotional depth, catharsis, touching on very serious issues from the real world, blending them into a child's world of fantasy.  Vander Caballero, the creator of the game, sets his intentions from the start, dedicating the game to his family, who had to deal with an alcoholic father.  Quico, who lives in a poor area of what looks like a South American city, hides from the rampaging figure outside the vent where he hugs his toy robot figure. When a gate appears next to him, he flees out into a city/playground of magical child chalk drawings, buildings that grow legs and move, and no adults anywhere.  He finds, shortly, that his compadré is a huge monster, which sleeps, eats, and grumps, and for which Quico has to take care of.  Monster also has a thing for poisonous frogs, which turn him into a violent, fiery beast who hurts Quico, sending the boy flying into the air screaming in pain.  The game is currently $14.95 and is only available on the PS3, and is a short game, played easily in a couple of sittings, but well worth it.  It is the start of the "maturing" of video gaming into a visual medium that can harness the emotional power of movies or books.  

{I want to interpret the game more completely, but to do that, I must put this WARNING here.  The folowing contains COMPLETE SPOILERS for the game. Do not read if you plan on playing the game.  I will continue after the trailer.  







If you watched those three trailers, there really is no need to continue this blog, as you'll have to play it. So I won't write my in-depth look at what goes on in the game.  What I think happens is immaterial, unless you want to compare notes, which, I will be glad to do.  In the end, the most important part of the game is what you, as the player, bring with you into the world in which Quico plays, and further, what you take out of it.