Sunday, July 3, 2011

Welcome Back True Believers!


Week two and I’m sitting at the New World Deli on Guadalupe and 41st. This place is mostly new to me, although not totally. I’ve been here once before to grab a coffee after dropping my car off at the Midas down the street and waiting for Chris and Ann to pick me up for the Google Places Austin “BBQ Bus” event a couple months ago. I’m not here to talk about the New World Deli though. If you want to read my thoughts on that then check out my Google Places review. No, it’s time for another blog entry, as promised and the subject this week is: comic books. Yeah, I’m saving the heavy stuff for later. Believe me, I’ve got blogs about my unique perspective on relationships at the moment, Socialism, hipsters, and the middling of America all in the wings waiting to be written, but right now we’re going to talk about comics. Why? Comics are awesome!

It was the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that first got me into comics. Sadly it wasn't the original  Eastman and Laird indie comics that I'm talking about. No, it was the Archie Comics version, initially based off the cartoon series, that I first started collecting back during the TMNT craze of the late 80’s/early 90’s. In its defense, the series (while originally just a panel by panel retelling of the cartoon series) quickly developed into something much more, to the point where the Turtles adventures were virtually indistinguishable from those of any other superhero group from the time, although maybe a little less gritty. TMNT were the gateway drug, but it was a combination of the X-Men cartoon and Hero Illustrated magazine (which I became aware of as the sister publication of Electronic Gaming Monthly) that sucked me into the world of comics beyond TMNT. I don’t recall all the comics I was reading back then, but I know that the series that I chose as my starting point was X-Men 2099. For those that don’t know or don’t remember, Marvel launched an ill-fated line of comics under the 2099 moniker in the early/mid 90’s that attempted to recreate characters such as the X-Men, Spiderman, Dr. Doom, and Ghost Rider 100+ years into the future. It certainly wasn’t their greatest moment, but I didn’t know any better and I wanted to get in on the ground floor of an X-Men book so I made 2099 my own. It wasn't a bad series, all things considered, but there was more to be had and I was eager to explore.

X-Men 2099 eventually led to other things, mainly more X-Men stuff specifically Jim Lee’s run on the title and eventually his inaugural Image title WildC.A.Ts. Image comics was a HUGE deal at the time. Marvel’s top talent, deciding that they were through with the work-for-hire model and not being able to own their own work, struck off on their own to start a creator owned imprint that ended up being wildly successful. For all that it did to change the industry and champion creator's rights, these days Image is just another publisher in a sea of assorted indies, but back then it was a revolution. I consumed a ton of Image books in the 90's, mainly the stuff coming out of Jim Lee’s Homage/Wildstorm studio, but a few other titles as well, chief among these other being Sam Kieth’s The Maxx.

Earlier this week I finished reading the novel Boneshaker by Cherie Priest, a book that I highly recommend if you’re even mildly into the steampunk genre. With book 5 of George R.R. Martin’s A Song of Ice and Fire saga coming out next week I didn’t want to start another novel in the interim, but having recently reorganized my comic book collection for the first time in 10+ years, I decided that I could probably get through the entirety of The Maxx’s 30+ issue run. I didn’t realize until I started rereading those comics just how much The Maxx inspired my own efforts at writing and drawing comics back in high school and early college. You might even say that my stuff was practically a blatant rip off.

I’ve never been the kind of person who stands idly by when he likes something; I like to get involved, to give back to the community that has entertained me. This is the reason why I own a guitar and a bass that I’m not very good at playing. It’s why I majored in film in college. It’s how I got into game development. And it’s why in high school I started drawing comics. Now make no mistake, my early stuff was very much X-Men/WildC.A.Ts inspired; Jim Lee figured very prominently in my personal pantheon of gods at the time and I still have folders of various superhero designs that are embarrassing if not ambitious . I never really did anything narrative with those superheroes though and by the time I had worked up the discipline to even attempt something sequential, I had moved on from X-Men, WildC.A.Ts and superheroes in general. It was titles like Sin City, Strangers in Paradise, Transmetropolitan, and of course The Maxx that had my rapt attention at that time and it was the influence of those books and my brooding, anti-authoritarian teenage mind that led to the development of my comic Shadow of the City

I “published” 3 issues of Shadow between the end of my junior year of high school and my freshman year of college. The story followed a homeless, amnesiac drifter named Robert Shadow who was befriended by a woman and given a second chance at life. Oh, he attempted to fight crime and he had developing telepathic powers as well. If the premise wasn’t an almost total rip off of The Maxx (albeit bereft of subtleties) my page work was very inspired by Sam Kieth. Even now, rereading The Maxx, I’m impressed by Kieth’s panel work and while I think he let his desire to design a beautiful page get in the way of storytelling sometimes, when it worked it was fantastic.

I eventually gave up on drawing comics when I started film in college, but I never stopped reading. There was Cerebus and Sandman, Preacher, and a bunch of others either monthly or collected in trades. I loved to support the indie comics: Brian Wood’s early work with Channel Zero, Drew Hayes’ Poison Elves, and others, many of which came and went in the blink of any eye. It was an easy habit to feed as living in Boston put me in close proximity to two of the best comic book stores in the country: Comicopia on Comm Ave, and The Million Year Picnic in Harvard Square. Eventually, as series’ ended or I just lost track of late books or those that I never really cared about much to begin with, I was reading fewer and fewer comics each month. I think for a period of time between the end of 2001 and sometime in 2006 or so, I was maybe maintaining fewer than 4 monthly books and that basically included whatever Warren Ellis or Brian Wood were working on at the moment, The Walking Dead, and random purchases here and there. When I moved to Virginia I started looking for new series’ to read again, thankfully stumbling on Unwritten (the new Sandman as far as I’m concerned), Chew, Rasl, and The Stuff of Legend … with a little help from BleedingCool.com. When I moved to Austin (just around the corner from the amazing Austin Books and Comics) this renaissance continued and has recently found me back where I started, with the X-Men.

The thing I’ve always loved about comics is that they really are one of the last narrative mediums left unspoiled by the masses. Sure, you’ve got big publishers like Marvel and DC where you’re likely to find the same stories you’ve read your entire life repackaged and put back on the shelves, but there are so many other books out there and the barrier for publication is tiny compared with other media. It’s no wonder you find so many mainstream writers either coming from or ending up in comics at some point. Guys like J. Michael Stracynski, Kevin Smith, and Joss Whedon all turned to comics at some point and wrote stories they would never get away with on the big or small screen. It’s really one of the few places where a creator can still reach an audience and maintain total creative control. That was always so much of the allure to me when I was younger. As an idealistic youth with a need to rebel against “The Man” and do my own thing and amidst the revolution of Image, comics were the ultimate medium. If you had the vision and a story to tell, you could get it out there in front of people and while there were maybe a couple dozen people who read my Shadow of the City and I never finished issue 4, let alone the series, I was a part of that world in some way and still am, if only as a spectator.

I still think about writing for comics every now and then, but along with everything else I have going with work and life in general I just don’t know where I’d find the time, let alone a genius artist. Maybe someday I’ll be struck with the perfect idea that can only be expressed via sequential art, but until then I’m content just to read others' works. There’s just an endless sea of story out there in comics, unhindered and unabridged from the author’s mind to your hands and there really is something for everyone. I feel bad for people who write off comics as being childish or unrefined; they really are missing out. As much as I read traditional prose and as much as I enjoy novels, some of the greatest stories I’ve ever read are in comics and I hope that never changes.

Sunday, June 26, 2011

Through the Wormhole


And so “to be continued” becomes a reality as I sit outside at Spiderhouse, half in the shade, with an Iced Toddy and a strong breeze. So what’s this summer blogging project about anyway? I forget when I came up with the idea, but it was sometime this week, very likely after Wednesday’s episode of “Through the Wormhole with Morgan Freeman”. If you didn’t watch last season or haven’t watched this season at all, you’re missing one of the most interesting programs about physics I’ve ever seen. The first season mainly dealt with the kinds of physics questions we’re generally used to hearing about: black holes, worm holes, time travel, quantum mechanics, etc. This season, having gotten the basics out of the way, is delving into areas one might more readily attribute to “meta” physics or even philosophy. We’ve already had an episode about the possibility of “life” after death and the nature of time. In fact it was the episode about the nature of time that was partially the impetus for this very project.

There’s an interesting thing I learned about people and the perception of the passage of time. The older we get, the quicker we perceive the passage of time. There’s some formula or other that describes it in detail, but the gist of it is that at 10 years of age you experience time precisely as we measure it, one second at a time. By your 60’s you perceive everything twice as fast. This is not to say that you see the world around you moving any faster, but at the end of any given day a 60 year old will “feel” as if the day went by twice as fast as the 10 year old. This sensation (it would seem) comes from the way the brain stores information. To boil it down to simple terms: when we do something new, the brain catalogues as much of that experience as possible, when we do something we’ve done before, it’s not a vigilant. This is why when people get into car crashes they remember the event as if it were in slow motion and in excruciating detail. As a new (and in this case traumatic) experience, the brain has taken detailed notes on everything going on. It’s like if you film a movie in 60 frames per second and play it back in 30. It runs slow because they was more information captured to begin with. When the brain receives sensory information based on things that are routine or that is has prior experience with, it doesn’t take as much note of what’s going on.

Now maybe I’m reading this all the wrong way, but that really struck me as “if you want to live longer (or at least feel like you are) then you need to constantly be doing new things”. Now since I’ve always had as a life goal to live forever, I figured it might be a good start to go out and do something new as a regular experience and while doing so, get some writing done. Now, I’ve done plenty of new things since coming to Austin nearly 2 years ago and there are always new places to go and things to do, but I am nothing if not a creature of habit and I tend to fall into routines very easily. My weekend mornings are a perfect example. On Saturdays I’m almost always at the Waterloo Icehouse for breakfast and on Sundays I’ll be at Epoch Coffee with a bagel and a double mocha, reading the Austin Chronicle. I don’t have any problem with this, in fact the routine exists primarily because I enjoy going to these places, but there’s more out there and in the interest of prolonging my life, I think I owe it to myself to get out there and experience it, which brings us to the summer project.

I’ve decided that every weekend this summer I’m going to try to find a new place to get a cup of coffee and write a blog post. It’s not incredibly ambitious, I know, but for me it means at least going to someplace new on a fairly regular basis and writing, which I don’t do nearly enough of. I have chosen to inaugurate this project here at Spiderhouse, technically not someplace new for me, but I haven’t been here in a while and certainly not since school let out, meaning it’s much less crowded. And did I mention the breeze? After yesterday’s weather nonsense, it’s nice to be out enjoying the heat without the exaggerated humidity. As a start to a project like this, it’s as good a place as any. And so it goes.

Saturday, June 25, 2011

Fuck This Weather!

Fuck this weather! Fuck it sideways with a rusty hook. There's nothing I hate more than humidity and living here in Austin I've mostly been able to avoid it, at least coupled with high temperatures anyway. Today is one of those lovely anomalies however where we started out with a large amount of cloud cover (the kind where you're like "just fucking rain already!") and progressed to a sort of 50/50 cover of giant fluffy clouds wafting by. It's nice to look at, but given that the starting point for this was +80% humidity this morning, it's made for a sticky unpleasant day.

You see usually what happens is that there's next to no clouds in the sky and whatever humidity has crept in overnight burns off by late morning, giving us 90+ temps with 40- humidity. When you get a situation like today, the humidity hardly burns off at all and you're left with 90+ temps and 60+ humidity.

Right now we're actually looking at 94 degrees and 49% humidity ... reaching the comfortable range, for me anyway. But at this point I'm already resigned to stay inside. I attempted to go out, find a cafe, grab an iced coffee, and do some writing, but fuck if it wasn't unbearable outside. So I did the next best thing. I grabbed a cookie over at Upper Crust (where I would have stayed, but it's really more of a bakery and not great for coffee ... also no wifi) and headed back home where I'm currently making my own iced coffee. Ideal? No, because I very much like not to be in my apartment for as much of the weekend as possible, but given that I'm going out later and the weather hates me, I think I can justify it. With any luck tomorrow will be better and I can get that cafe time I've been looking for and begin my summer blogging project.

PS. That last sentence there is sort of a hook ... a "to be continued" if you will.

PPS. That "to be continued" is (as always) using the Back to the Future font.

Friday, June 24, 2011

E3 2011 - Part 2

Rage
Wasn't this a driving game a few years back? Apparently Id has decided to go back to what they're best at and make an FPS. While I'm looking forward to this game, don't mind me if I'm a little underwhelmed. It's not that anything about it looks bad, it's just that conceptually and even technically there's nothing ground breaking from what I've seen of Rage. What I have seen looks like an incredibly tight FPS, very much in the style of play I expect from Id. What does that mean though "style of play"? For Id the style is a throwback to the genre they adopted as a zygote and raised to maturity, where variety of weapons, waves of baddies, and a bit of creeping horror were par for the course. From everything I've seen of Rage it seems to be progressing in this direction, which is a nice break from the quick time event laden cover shooters we're being exposed to non-stop from every other direction. I'm looking forward to a thoroughly modern experience that at it's core adheres to the gameplay tropes I've come to revere from Id games for the last 15 years.

Bastion
I'm not going to talk much about Bastion except to say that it looks like it's finally coming out. All told, the game that got everyone talking about the gimmick of the on-the-fly narrator seems to have become something more than just that and I'm looking forward to exploring what appears to be a visually interesting game world with enough unique narrative touches to create a compelling experience beyond graphics and gimmicks.

Batman: Arkham City
The first game (Batman: Arkham Asylum) was simply amazing, a 3rd person action adventure title with excellent, uncomplicated controls that had just enough arcade brawler and just enough Splinter Cell to leave me feeling like I was Batman after each session. Arkham City looks to continue in that vein with a host of improvements, a larger, more open world, and a playable Catwoman. These guys can do no wrong as far as I'm concerned, so they might as well already have my money.

Aliens: Colonial Marines
There hasn't been a really good Aliens game since Monolith's Aliens vs. Predator 2 in 2001. The one thing anyone who grew up watching and re-watching Aliens in the 90's has ever wanted to do is to simulate being a colonial space marine. James Cameron's sci-fi action film gave us just enough reference to feel what this would be like and subsequent games made it real, while sharing play time with Aliens and Predators of course. This time around we get to be the Marines 100% of the time and as a project that's been cooking for a while I can only hope it's been time well spent. This could be the game to revitalize a franchise from the slow, painful death brought upon it by progressively worse AvP films.

Sonic Generations
I haven't been a fan of Sonic since the game moved away from 2D as it's primary view and as most will tell you, there hasn't been much recently to be a fan of. With last years Sonic 4 however and the upcoming Sonic Generations it appears as if Sega is rebooting everyone's favorite speed demon in a way that everyone can enjoy. So far what I've seen of Sonic Generations is reassuring. There's no narrative fluff clogging up this game, no crazy powers, no dumb sidekicks, just Sonic in 2D and 3D doing what he does best: go fast!

Tomb Raider
Looks like they're rebooting Tomb Raider and I may actually be interested for the first time ever. I never got into the Tomb Raider games mainly because the thing I was best at in them was dying due to shitty controls. Add to that experience a save/continue system that made me want to throw controllers across the room, and I never did more than casually play a friend's copy here and there. This new game looks interesting though. At the very least, controls and save mechanics have evolved and standardized to a point where I'm less likely to be hindered by them. What I've seen so far has promise, but one thing needs to go ... Lara Croft needs to shut the hell up. The videos they showed at E3 were rife with unneeded gasps, grunts, and comments by the player character. This is all great for a demo video, but in a game where I may have to redo sections of a level, it's going to get old fast. Leave the gasps to the player and keep Lara's input to a minimum. Main characters in action games are better off seen than heard.

BioShock: Infinite
I remember distinctly playing the demo for the original BioShock. I did so on the Xbox 360 because there wasn't a PC demo (or the Xbox one was out first, I don't remember) and the combination of gameplay, art direction, and narrative sucked me in instantly. I remember posting some sort of amazing praise online immediately afterwards begging my other game dev friends to check it out and that this was what "good" looked like. The footage of Infinite brings back the same memories. I am simply blow away by the style of their game world and the pace of their game play. It is going to be a treat to delve into another BioShock world again for the first time. Columbia is the new Rapture.

Elder Scrolls VI: Skyrim
Just give me system requirements already. I built the PC previous to this one to meet the requirements of Elder Scrolls V: Oblivion and I'll alter this one for Skyrim most certainly. Something the crew at Bethesda has been fantastic at since Morrowind is simulating worlds and while one can certainly argue about the repetitive core game play of Oblivion and some "lifelike" systems that weren't quite there, you have to agree that there is something wonderful about an open world that's ripe to explore. I think they really got it right in Fallout 3, a game that I logged 60+ hours on and that had me scouring the wastes on and off for several years. Skyrim looks like it's seeking to combine the lessons learned from Oblivion and Fallout 3 and make a better game all around, at least that's what I hope.

Quick Shots:

Insanely Twisted Shadow Planet
I mentioned being interested in this one last year and it looks like it's finally on it's way out. For all intents and purposes this has all the earmarks of a fun, stylistic indie game and I'm always a fan of that.

Modern Warfare 3
At this point I may not even get MW3. Let's face facts. BF3 comes out a month earlier and gives me all features for free. Unless it turns out to be less than what it appears to be (which is "awesome") then I may not even consider picking up MW3, BF3 will be "the game".

Journey
There's nothing much to say about this game except it's curiously moving and I haven't even played it. There's just something about the presentation that evokes a sense of loss, but also a sense of wonder and adventure. Thatgamecompany has made a name for themselves by being atmospheric and Journey looks to be taking that a step further and I'm looking forward to seeing how it all plays out.

Mass Effect 3
I won't say much about Mass Effect 3 being that I work for BioWare and I'm not going to say anything bad. I've been a fan of the series since the start and I'm very much looking forward to how this space epic is going to end. I honestly don't know anymore than anyone else out there right now and I wouldn't want to. I'm very much looking forward to completing my Shepherd's adventure next year though.

Overstrike
Not having been a big console gamer for a long time I never developed the same affinity for developers like Insomniac that others have. I will say this though, I'm aware of Insomniac's resume and Overstrike looks like good fun. All I've seen so far is pre-rendered though, so time will tell how it all actually plays. I expect to be pleasantly surprised.

From Dust
It looked good last year and it looks even better this year. The "god" game has really been dormant for some time (Black and White aside) and this looks like the kind of resurrection that I can really get behind.

Sunday, June 12, 2011

E3 2011 - Part 1

The blog was prophesied and inevitable and so here I am writing about E3 2011. I haven't physically attended an E3 in roughly 9 years, but with the right internet resources it's possible to actually get more out of not being at the show than getting lost in the crazed cacophony of lights and sounds that is the floor at E3. This year as with last I relied heavily on E3feed.com as an aggregate for everything coming out of this years convention. The overall takeaway compared to last year is that this is the year that everyone is making good on the promises made last summer. The vast majority of games being spoken of were projects that I had seen revealed this time last year, so while there wasn't a lot of "new" this time around, it was nice to see so many projects coming to fruition and ultimately leading to what is going to be a very competitive holiday season across all platforms. But that's enough introduction, we're here to talk about games so let's get to it.

Battlefield 3
Going into this show there wasn't really much we knew about Battlefield 3 save that is was being developed by DICE and it looked as if EA wasn't going to be playing nice anymore when it came to the multiplayer military shooter genre. You see, Activision has owned this segment of the gaming population since the first Call of Duty: Modern Warfare game came out several years ago. Modern Warfare 2 and Black Ops only cemented this position. EA wants in on this territory though and while last year's Medal of Honor fell flat, DICE's Battlefield: Bad Company 2 showed promise. Indeed, the Battlefield franchise has always been a force to reckon with and despite some bumps along the road, DICE has been consistent in producing quality games. Having them helm an initiative to unseat Activision is a no-brainer, especially after Modern Warfare developer Infinity Ward more or less walked off the job en-masse after allegations of unpaid bonus dividends from the studio heads to Activision. If ever there were a time to strike it was now and strike EA did. We had seen a bunch of footage from Modern Warfare 3 leading up to E3, but nary a peep from Battlefield 3 except for the months old teaser. During the EA press conference, Battlefield 3 was revealed in all it's glory, garnering a much deserved outpouring of praise from the gaming press and fans. Planing to launch a full month before MW3, with an open beta a month before that, and completely free to play online (a shot across the bow to MW3's "elite" program") BF3 is poised to storm PC's and consoles this fall and take dominance over Modern Warfare. Is it a lock? It's still to early to tell. BF3 certainly looks like the better game, leveraging DICE's new frostbyte engine, but is the game play going to resonate with the players? Part of Modern Warfare's appeal is the easy of entry. It's a delicate formula that we've seen before with games like Unreal Tournament, Counter Strike, and the original Quake. In order to gain multiplayer dominance you have to look good, play good, and get people engrossed in the game experience from the word go, while still providing a incentives and challenge for the expert players. Battlefield: Bad Company 2 was a great game, but it wasn't approachable. Can DICE repeat history and make Battlefield 3 every bit the approachable game that Battlefield 1942 was? I guess we'll find out when the beta goes live in September.

Prey 2
When we first saw Prey 2 several months back, we were treated to a single image that looked nothing like what we had experienced from the series' progenitor. Prey's reluctant Native American hero had been replaced with someone who looked more like Sam Fischer from the Splinter Cell games. We were told that the game was still in the same overall universe as Prey 1, but that instead of being on Earth and dealing with the alien invasion, Prey 2 would take us to an alien world with a human protagonist only marginally related to the first game. Human Head released a proper trailer about a week out from the start of E3 that if anything, assuaged any fears about what Prey 2 may or may not be. Yes, the game is going to be different, but if that trailer is any proof of concept, they're barking up the right tree. Think Blade Runner meets Grand Theft Auto on an alien world. I don't know what they have in store and while it isn't Prey 1, it isn't Splinter Cell either. Whatever the case, I'm interested to see how it pans out.

The Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword
Anyone who knows me knows that while I love the Zelda games (the first installment is one of my two all-time favorites) I am not a huge fan of Ocarina of Time. Chalk it up to never having had an N64 and thus never having played the game until the Game Cube port, or the fact that Ocarina is the first Zelda game for an entire generation (the damn kids these days and their lack of historical context), but I just never got into the game. I appreciate a lot of the things it tried to do, but as the first 3D Zelda I feel it stumbles along the way. I am much more enamored of The Legend of Zelda: The Wind Waker. In fact, my love of Wind Waker makes me dislike Ocarina that much more due to the prejudice levied at the game by so-called fans wanting a more mature Zelda game. I'm sorry kids, but just because you were little when Ocarina came out and now you're an angst ridden youth, doesn't mean Link should be too. You know why? 2 reasons: a) There were 4 Zelda games before Ocarina (counting Link's Awakening) and b) every game retells the legend of the Hero of Hyrule, no matter what age he is. The other fact at play here is that Wind Waker was beautiful and I loved the game play. Personally I found the open world sailing to be an excellent spin on the type of open world game play we were already accustomed to in the Zelda series. Anyway, the short take away from all this is that I'm a Zelda fan, but at this point in time I'm a picky Zelda fan. Wind Waker showed me two things about my affection for the series that I hadn't before realized. The first is that I prefer I stylized rendition of Hyrule; for me it fits the tone and my own nostalgia of pixelized Links and the very cartoonish renderings in the game manuals. The second is that I really like when liberties are taken with Hyrule and the Zelda world itself. Ocarina was nothing but a bunch of locales I had been adventuring in for 20 years, but Wind Waker changed all that by flooding everything.

Now, take all this into consideration and then take a look at The Legend of Zelda: The Skyward Sword. That's right, they are making a Zelda game just for me. I honestly don't have anything to say after watching these videos. I think I've summed it up well enough above that anyone can plainly see this game has no weaknesses from my perspective. I never finished Ocarina, I probably won't finish Twilight Princess, but I am itching to get my hands on Skyward Sword as soon as humanly possible. 

Saturday, June 11, 2011

As Good As It Gets

I am not actively looking to date, but I peruse the dating sites from time to time to see what I may or may not be missing out on. Having done this in 3 different regions of the United States it's interesting the trends you find among people. New England for instance certainly lives up to it's reputation as a haven for liberals and beyond that it tends to simply be a melting pot. There's virtually no indigenous population in NE, there are so many people from somewhere else or just passing through. The DC area was full of women with jobs that had no possible description. Seriously, almost everyone I dated was a "consultant", a role that varied wildly depending on which political group or non-profit they were part of. Beyond that I found that everyone was just too damn motivated or self righteous. Still, there were a lot of transplants from other locales. Here in Austin I run across what I deem to be an inordinately large amount of women who are either from Austin or from Texas. I suppose when you take into account the fact that this state is so big and the places where I've lived before are very small, it kind of makes sense.

The thing I find concerning are the number of people who blatantly put in their profiles that they'd like to live somewhere else sometime soon. Number 1, I've always felt like shit dating people when I know I'm planning on moving sometime soon and I don't understand why anyone would advertise this. I'm a weird sort though. I like the illusion or promise of permanence even if you know it won't pan out. Number 2, why would you want to leave here? I really feel sorry for people who grow up with Austin as their baseline experience of the country. This really is as good as it gets. Ok, maybe it's as good as it gets "for me", but really there are very few places this cool in the country and most of those other places are much more expensive. I guess these people will have to learn on their own though. Maybe when you grow up with this as your baseline you can appreciate someplace like Fairfax Virginia. I certainly couldn't.

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

In the face of fear and adversity

50 years ago today, Yuri Gagarin slipped the surly bonds of Earth and became the first human being in space. On that day in 1961 it seemed like space was a future looming bright and mysterious ahead of us, now 5 decades later it's as if space is something we've left behind. With the future of manned space flight in doubt with the retirement of NASA's shuttle fleet and constant de-funding of the space program, it would seem that space has once again become an unattainable goal or at least for those holding the purse strings, an undesirable one. It's at times like this that I'm reminded of this excerpt from the foreword Warren Ellis wrote for his and Colleen Doran's graphic novel "Orbiter":

"This is a book about returning to space in the face of fear and adversity. It's a book about glory. About going back to space, because it's waiting for us and it's where we're meant to be. We can't allow human space exploration to become our history."