E3 2013: Microsoft Turns On Its Customers and Sony's PS4 May Crash the Industry

There's an electricity in the air.

Yes, once again, it's time for the Electronics Entertainment Expo, otherwise known as E3, the big annual video game industry trade show in Los Angeles which we always hear is becoming more irrelevant. And granted, we seem to be seeing less games there every year - what with the ever-increasing industry woes I've chronicled my thoughts on here for years - but still, everyone goes and makes it out to be a big deal. There's always awkward technical glitches and nonsense video game system customers don't care about, like attempts to push Sony and Microsoft branded alternatives to streaming services like Netflix and apparently now convince us that we need to manage fantasy football leagues right there on our console dashboards while also watching more commercials. Everyone still goes - except Nintendo at least had the foresight to do a series of their usually excellent prerecorded Nintendo Direct internet broadcast conferences instead of their usual awkward stage show, just showing up to show off the games directly to the press and to attendees on the show floor - and it's generally kind of terrible and embarrassing every year.

And I still write about it. But this year, it's different.

Two Words on Bullying

Oh hey, it's 2013 now, isn't it? And I haven't posted anything here for you guys since last November. Obama was rightly reelected, of course, but predictably, we've only seen the usual disappointment from the government since. That's a matter for another irate ramble, however. Normally, as I've meant to for the past year or two and still haven't gotten to, I'd start out the new year with some big rambling post summarizing things as of late - personal, boring nonsense. There's not much to report as of late, though I'll probably babble enough about it at some point, from my having been freelancing for over a year and a half now to tentative efforts to escape the south that I've been focusing on to present ongoing health problems threatening to derail more than I care to think about.

At any rate, just over three and a half months into the year, I'm starting out 2013 with a couple of things I felt compelled to post.

Election 2012: The Wealthy are Not Entitled to Their Delusions

Here we are at last, Election Day 2012. Four years ago today, we made history by electing Barack Obama to the office of president of the United States. It's been a bumpy four years since. After all, on inauguration day that following January, the Republican party - led by Kentucky Senator Mitch McConnell - came together and swore to prevent this administration from enacting policy and prevent Obama's reelection. Right on day one. And they had the gall to spend this entire election season complaining that Obama wasn't 'bipartisan enough.'

The Cruelest Holiday Season

Oh hey, it's already December. And not only December, but Christmas Eve. An exciting time of the year, if there ever was one. But arguably, all times in any and all years are both exciting and unexciting at once. Depends on where you are, who you're with, and countless other variables. Predicable opening paragraph, predictable opening paragraph filler. The opposite of exciting.

And I haven't even remarked yet about how I still need to write here on a more regular basis. Good thing I just got that out of the way. 2011 is a year I've spent mentally congested. Exceedingly so. This was my most inactive year yet writing here on Spiral Reverie. One of my 2012 goals is to change that. This inactivity on my part certainly hasn't been for a lack of trying. I have piles of blog posts sitting here unfinished - many things I wanted to say, or to finish saying, but then that mental congestion struck. Not that it's much of an excuse.

I'll be getting a few more of these things out of the way over the course of the remaining week of the year, at any rate. With any luck, perhaps I'll be a more exciting writer worth your following in 2012. Should I fail at that, in the least, there'll be more juicy little morsels entailing various strings of words that may or may not form thoughts that make some kind of sense for you to sink your mind-fangs into in the next year

All that yammering aside, I'll catch the few of you passing internet tumbleweeds up on all things interesting and uninteresting in a post I'll end the year with in another week or so, the salvaging of a post I intended to complete about four months ago. Funny, that. (And there will be a funnier Xmas story later tonight. I promise. I won't break this one.)

On to the purpose of this post. These prior paragraphs? An appetizer - probably some bread you've filled up on enough as so to lose interest in what lies ahead - before the mass of somber that follows as the substance of this post. You guys like somber, right? Statistically, a lot of you aren't feeling too wonderful at this purportedly festive time of year, after all. I've actually got some legitimate excuses for my latest bout of lethargy and malaise.

This one's for you, sad people. Relatively raw, just the way you like it. Always gluttons for punishment.

A Funny Story About 9 and 11

Hey! This is a no smoking city!

Happy Terror Day, everybody! Now that we've hit the ten-year mark, I'd say it's about time we started commercializing this bad boy. Wouldn't you agree? This is America, there's MONEY TO BE MADE! We can turn this tragedy into treasure - and failing that, cold hard cash - or my name isn't Otis Bunkport Jr.! Which it isn't, mind you. But it might be someday, depending on the degree of violence with which people react to my completely tasteful picture caption over there.

You see it? Are you laughing? You're not laughing. Why aren't you laughing?

Let's be honest. It's the tenth anniversary of the September 11th attacks. Many people are going to be sentimental and weepy. Others are going to be distasteful and balance that out with some appropriately inappropriate jokes. And others yet are going to make everybody uncomfortable by being angry. Very angry. Blindingly, seethingly, I-spit-fire-and-you-will-be-incinerated angry. And no, not necessarily at nebulous foreign forces perceived to be eternal enemies of 'our freedom,' or 'threats from within,' entailing non-white, non-Christian, non-conservative persons within the United States. 'Are Country' nonsense. Rage that will set your house on fire and possibly neuter your dog. Painlessly, mind you. You should have had that done already, anyway. What are you? Some kind of irresponsible dog owner?

Guess what kind of content is in this post below! You've been warned.

Process Talk: Shoegaze Fantasy

In recent posts, I've shared some of the music and imagery that inspires me just for a bit of a glimpse into my process - what gets the old neurons firing - when I'm writing. In fact, some of you may be sick of that by now. And if that's the case, you'll just have to hang on for another post - this is one that's been bubbling in the back of my head since back in early October last year. Again, my thinking is that if I continue to find things to post - and go back to and finish posts intended to be finished and posted months ago - I will eventually finish clearing out the remaining mental cobwebs.

The big twist, of course, is that behind the cobwebs lies nothing.

More Like Osama Bin Awkward Joke About Somebody Dying

So, as you've all heard by now, Osama Bin Laden has kicked the proverbial bucket, bitten the proverbial dust, and tripped over the only-halfway-metaphorical toad. Not at all shockingly, theories that he had died years ago were proven untrue. Not quite ten years after the September 11th attacks, the big bad al-Qaeda head honcho we've devoted so much time, so many resources, and so many lives - not only our own, but the countless civilian lives lost in our not-wars-but-great-ways-for-contractors-to-make-money in Iraq and Afghanistan. Should we take to the streets and start singing 'War is Over,' as out of season as that would be? Break out the giant foam hands and wave them while chanting that America is number one until our voices give out and we tire of the redundancy?

A Few Words: Blathering Anew

Wait, wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.

That's too many waits. Still, in usual form, I know what you, my phantom-like readers are thinking. You may be sick of the shtick, but as you know, we aren't all born clairvoyant - it'd be a shame to waste this talent. Especially considering how many seconds of your valuable time I've already wasted with my inane prattling. For every second of your life I steal, I only become stronger.

Obviously, my brain has been far too congested this year for my own good, let alone the good of any of you. Thus, this is me continuing to turn over that new writing leaf with as many harpoons and pitchforks as it takes.

Hope Estranged

Oh hey, I do have a blog, don't I?

I've been much quieter than usual this year. I keep promising more content 'soon,' but then not delivering. It's surprising that all two and one-sixteenth of you checking this blog with any kind of regularity have yet to gang up on me in a very small mob and threaten me with a crowbar. Still, there's a reason for my near-silence since early last November. There's a lot to be less than happy about these days - frustration with ongoing publishing efforts, struggles to get a paid writing job, the end of a very disappointing winter, fading hope of escaping the south this year already, my dog's declining health, the shocking earthquakes and tsunami that just hit Japan hours ago, and the state of both the country and the world. All of these things are weighing heavily on me at the moment, but the last one in particular has essentially clogged my resolve in recent months. I've had all these thoughts - intensely negative ones on the whole - stuck in my head for months now, interfering with my sleep, souring the enjoyment of my hobbies, disrupting my daily life, and keeping my stress levels high. I need to wake up earlier. I need badly to get out of this house. And I need to clear this blockage - this post is months coming, but hopefully it'll help.

This post is intended to be something cathartic. It is rambling and unpleasant, but if you feel like proceeding, go ahead and click the title to proceed. You've been warned. I have to admit, though, in finishing this post, I feel it's one of the better things I've written in a while - hopefully a testament to why maybe, just maybe, I should someday be able to make a living on my writing - and I'm sacrificing sleep for it, of course. Maybe I'll sleep better with all this off my chest. I hope to.

Pocket Warfare: 2011's New Generation of Portables

Oh, hello there, internet! I almost didn't notice you there after spending too much staring at screens caused my eyes to atrophy and fall out. You know that thing they say about all your other senses strengthening in response to the loss of any individual one? Apparently that's not always true.

Anyway, half-hearted fabricated blog post openings aside, I'm sure you're all thinking the same thing: "Hey, what the hell man? You said you were going to start posting more often and now January's almost over and you've only got one post up. What's up with that?" But more importantly, you're also thinking, "WHY ISN'T HE GUSHING ABOUT VIDEO GAMES YET THIS YEAR?! THERE'S MORE NEWS OUT AND I WANT IT HERE AND ONLY HERE." Okay, I get it, my blog is the singularly greatest blog that has ever existed on the face of the internet. Calm down - breathe into this paper bag. I'm here. You should really consider getting some counseling - this half-baked blog hasn't even gotten a single decent redesign since it awkwardly gray conception over four years ago now. It's like the internet equivalent of a frozen dinner you left in the back of your freezer and only remember to poke at every now and then - it's not like you're ever going to eat it, or like it's even still edible.

Now what we've established in the introduction to the second post of 2011 that Spiral Reverie has severe freezer burn, it's time for you to hit the title link jump below the cut to the meat and potatoes of this post - a discussion of the new portable war to ensue on the market this year between Nintendo's 3DS and Sony's newly unveiled "PSP2," currently codenamed the NGP. (And for those not interested, more non-video-game content is coming very soon! Sit tight.)

Years Like Avalanches

New Year's Day, 2011. The day that in a silent clamor, new words fell across the untrodden internet gravel of Spiral Reverie. For the first time in almost but not quite two months.

Excuses were offered, manly tears left unshed. Minds like fuses were blown, their boxes unplugged and shipped first-class to deep space. The nebulae were unappreciative, as they usually are. And then the aforementioned excuses were packed up into additional crates and fired off into the future - to be included in an incoming jumble of overdue blog posts delayed for various reasons over the time period not quite known and not quite named "The Missing Months."

So yeah, none of the usual holiday season or new year's fanfare here. "A curious silence," you guys undoubtedly thought - when I say "you guys," I mean the theoretical three or four of you who might accidentally stumble across this blog on Google at some indeterminate point in the past and/or future. This past holiday season was probably the first in which you could say I wasn't "feeling it." However much time I spent trying to get into the "holiday spirit," "cheer," and whatnot, I didn't feel like any of it. The whole season felt like a very sudden and rushed week - a busy and somewhat stressful time, pleasant though it otherwise was. A brief little typhoon, but for the most part, I felt like an outside observer, even inside my own body. And now, just like that, the year's over.

It doesn't really feel like a year's passed. I still feel like I just got over being ill in the late spring/early summer a mere few days ago, though it's January. A January starting with a 62-degree high, following lightning striking thrice in December, in snow falling here several times when it usually never does in December. And this year, it even fell on Xmas night, for the first time in over 60 years. Ups and downs. Pleasant, surreal, and at the moment, a warmer day than I'm fond of seeing in January lies ahead. Looking back, it's the aforementioned illness and its aftermath that defined 2010 for me - not exactly the sort of thing you want defining a year. It's as though a car of some kind just plowed through me when I fell ill back in May last year. I struggled with eating comfortably afterward, and I still feel like I'm not eating entirely normally or comfortably like before now either. I began to starve in the earlier half of summer for how I was feeling, and that's not a problem now, and I've grappled on and off with issues of discomfort with leaving the house and traveling in moving vehicles. At least some of this is probably due to ongoing problems with allergies that I'm to blame for anyway, with a lot of cleaning and dusting to do that's needed doing for months. Congestion can be a real killer. But still, I've felt "off" for over half a year now, and that uncomfortable feeling has yet to cease. It's definitely brought out the hypochondriac in me, and it's hardly a positive - the stress brought on from constantly thinking a million different things could be wrong with you.

These feelings acted as a continual source of distraction for me over the latter half of 2010. They distracted me from keeping focused on my writing - which amounted to attempting to juggle a dozen things at once, from writing contest entries to query letters to writing job applications to regular blogging to novel work; when you chase two hares, you will catch neither - and led me to often seek distraction in my hobbies or the internet. Anything to take my mind off my feeling stressed out, off-kilter, and as though there was something wrong with me in terms of health that I couldn't quite pinpoint, which it could very well just be a mere matter of months of crushing congestion taking a heavy toll. Unfortunately, my talent for adapting to discomfort has its limits.

I have other excuses for not posting here recently, but as alluded to in previous paragraphs, you'll see those excuses in the openings to upcoming posts as I work on catching up on my blogging backlog. I still owe you guys several months' monthly stories and half-cogent babbling on some other topics. (How do you feel about sustainable agriculture?) What better time for this blog to resume a somewhat more reliable update schedule than the new year?

Yes, it's horribly contrived - we begin every new year with the empty tradition of pretending we're going to resolve to accomplish something or some things that year. The older we get, the more mockingly we treat the idea as we realize how self-defeating it is - people rarely change, and even more rarely achieve their ambitions. We'd all be internet superstars if it happened for just anybody, and the very notion of drawing notice would lose all its appeal. We'd have to go counter-culture again, rebelling against the accepted and lauded norms before eventually coming full circle and having to find a new way to reject everything we'd achieved and stood for. Kind of like that recent controversial Patton Oswalt article about nerd culture needing to die in Wired that's prompted a collective temper tantrum from the internet's dominant nerd populace.

Still, as much as I dislike the tradition of "New Year's Resolutions," knowing as much as any other adult that they're wishful thinking that I'm no more likely to achieve than anyone else, I feel that same cringingly unoriginal urge to look forward to the new year ahead and think wishfully of the coming days. Let's organize these thoughts into bullet points - everyone loves bullet points!

- Publishing. Over the course of 2010, I only ended up sending out 8 queries total, falling far short of the number I wanted to send out. Out of those 8, only 2 got replies - both of which were rejection. In perspective, getting responses, even just for rejections, from a quarter of the agents queried isn't bad at all. But I'm still nowhere near the aspiring writer norm yet - I haven't hit the double or triple digits in queries sent, and I'll definitely hit the former this year, though it's hard to say in regard to the latter. You haven't really had the full aspiring writer experience until you've been literally buried if not flat out drowned in rejection letters. You have to be so accustomed to "No! GO AWAY!" that a positive response is nothing short of paralyzing.

I'm planning on finally getting another batch of letters out this month, and more in the spring - the real challenge is narrowing down just whom to query. Agent research continues, at any rate. I just need to find some more agents whose interests include the sort of strange literary fiction I produce.

- Finances. I'm only just over four and a half months from entering my late twenties, those last few years spent teetering on the terrifying brink of one's thirties. A time spent trying not to fall into an abyss constructed by a culture terrified of aging gracefully - or aging at all. You've gotta enjoy those shining years of your youth, 'seishun,' as they say in Japan. After all, once you get into your late twenties, early thirties, and beyond, that's when you get caught in the "real world" bear trap.

Get up, go to work, come home, relax briefly, go to sleep, repeat. Make money, spend money, pay rent and utilities, pay for things you don't have the time to enjoy anymore but are fun to think about. Find someone just as stressed out in their trapped, structured existence, bond, blow off some steam by sleeping together, do that a few more times, then make some mistakes like getting married and having kids. Grow older, realize you were never really in love with anything more than the concept, and that you were both afraid of being alone. Get a divorce, try to live vicariously through your kids, watch as the retirement age is raised every so often in the name of punishing the average person for the mistakes of the wealthy and corrupt. Eventually retire, stress out over reduced medical benefits and the inability to afford to enjoy retired life, get cancer, look back on a life spent working just to get by, die full of regrets.

This structure, when laid out and described in this manner, fits millions - if not billions - of lives across the globe. The magnificent insignificance and quietly tragic mundanity of our existence. So many lead this life or some slight variation of it - I'm ridiculous in that I want to avoid much of it. There's no satisfaction in a traditional life for me, just suffocation in an iron house lined with sleepers; some peaceful, some fretful.

I have yet to make a cent on my writing, though I'm staggering toward hopefully securing some freelance work I'd be suited to. Enough in time, ideally, to be able to make enough of a living to get by on my own. Nearly went with a job I was probably a bit overqualified for last autumn, but as the site's launch neared, I got the sense that it would be better to back out. So far, it's looking like I made the correct choice. I won't name said site, however - considering that this could be seen as a bit of a jab - out of both an interest in professionalism and personal respect for those involved with the site. I just need to keep looking for some kind of freelance writing work I'd be well-suited to while I continue to work on getting my first novel published. It would probably be ideal to find a steady paying writing gig for a longer period in the future too, if even possible, considering how hard it is to make a living on published novels - and writing in general - these days. Print and publishing have been dying for years now - it kind of only figures that my skill set is dependent on these fields. On people actually being willing to pay for my writing, and to pay to read it.

- Relocation. Moving didn't happen last year, but it's definitely on the table for this year. I need to get out on my own and 'begin' my life at last. San Francisco's still the primary destination I'm looking at, but things've only gotten more complicated. I need to work on arranging a trip out there for probably a week or so sometime this year - and to arrange it months in advance to minimize costs, as travel's hardly cheap - to get a feel for the place. One of my best friends and I were planning on splitting rent on an apartment when I moved there sometime later this year - he's kind of pushed that aside without warning now in lieu of now planning to get a place with a friend from his grad school instead, so I'm getting more into high-and-dry territory here, with costs of living now significantly increasing again. Lovely. This aspect of my plans for the year just got a lot more complicated, so it'll be interesting to see just what happens.

- Redesign. Still need to work on redesigning Spiral Reverie. Meant to last year, but never got much work done on that front. I still like the shades of gray-themed visual color scheme the blog's always had, but I know that it can be altered to work better overall. And frankly, the blog could stand to be more visually appealing - I'm sure its current look has driven off plenty of potential readers. I'm still just not sure where to begin - I'm disinclined to use the new Blogger template designer, since that's entirely geared toward using others' template designs, color schemes, photography, and other visual elements. Rather than looking like any other number of blogs out there, I want Spiral Reverie to be unique. The problem is, I lack the skill and visual design talent it would take to remake this blog into something more ideal. Still as much of a problem this year as it was last year.

- Novel Numero Dos. I didn't make nearly as much progress on Project Princess as I would have liked last year. I need to find the time to pick up the pace again this year and ideally get most of it finished within the year while balancing more regular blogging again.

- Those Crazy Electronic Thingamajigs. On a leisure note, Nintendo's launching their new 3DS portable in North America in March. A deluge of new information and game media will be coming out starting just a few days from now up through the Japanese launch next month and into the near-spring as the North American launch date nears. It has one of the most exciting game lineups - if not the most exciting - a new platform has ever had announced before launch. So as a video game nerd, it's a damn exciting year for the hobby, considering how the platform practically makes a good case for console obsolescence with all of its features and technical strengths. This is the first new platform launch since Spiral Reverie's birth on the internet four years ago today, so I'll undoubtedly be writing up some more nerdy commentary on it in the comings weeks and months. Look forward to that! (Or beware, depending on your interests as a reader of my blog.)

As of this coming June, it will have been four years since I moved home after finishing college. These years are passing far too quickly, and far too much of my youth seems to be quietly evaporating before my eyes, forming regret-condensation on my windows as the months wheel by and my precious cold months inevitably return to the heat that consumes more of each passing year. I have a lot that I need to get done this year. I've got to get better at juggling - I've got to stop feeling off-kilter and feel healthier again. I've got to get my life on track, my writing out there, before it stalls any further or worse yet derails. With each passing year, I carry only more pressure on my shoulders, only more stress, but there are things I need to do, that I need to accomplish like anyone else. Assuming it isn't a complete disaster, 2011 will be a big year. And I suspect that like the last, it too may tumble by like an avalanche.

Until everything ends, the future is always oncoming. It's hazy and often imperceptible, and never guaranteed to be bright and shiny - neither for individuals nor nations. All anyone can do is grit their teeth and continue marching forward. We have to try not to trip.

Midterm Madness: Pragmatic Progress versus Regressive Racket

Yet another blog post from me. Either I'm on fire or there's been a lot worth actually blogging about - even with shorter posts - within a limited time frame as of late. At any rate, it's Election Day today! Always a worthwhile subject, especially in light of the tense, polarized state of political discourse in this nation pretty much ever since Barack Obama was elected president. After being rejected by the voters for two major elections, the lesson the GOP took from it was not that they were too extreme in their politics - after they'd wreaked havoc on the nation for six years with the Bush administration, and the Democratic Congress for Bush's final two years still didn't check his administration's power and abuses nearly enough - but that they weren't extreme enough.

We made history by electing our first black president back in 2008 - his technically being racially mixed doesn't diminish the momentousness of this achievement, considering the incredible barrier broken: our first president who isn't just another white man. And of course, race has been the big topic ever since his election - not so much the achievement itself as the explosion to new levels of Republicans insisting that American white people are somehow being victimized. Ever since his rise as a presidential candidate in 2008, the discourse has flooded with all kinds of popular fiction about who he is and what he stands for - myths about his ethnic background, religion, and politics like no president has seen before. It's not all racism, but it's not just racism either - ignorance, xenophobia, and the usual overzealousness seen from those living in an alternate reality of their own construction whenever the Republicans aren't completely dominating every branch of government have pervaded and twisted the narrative at every turn for years now.

(Post continued when you hit the title to jump in)

Go Ahead and Try Not to Drown

Hey, what is this? Is it - is it a post of some kind? (Come on, man. What are you thinking?)

Mid-September's kind of crashed down on us, hasn't it? Crashed down like what, you ask? Silly readers, now that I've returned from my unannounced furlough, it's time for you to sing and dance - perhaps not too quickly, excessive exuberance can be a killer - but the time for metaphor is later. Perhaps. Yes, later. Let's say that.

So, where the hell have I been? Here, there, everywhere, nowhere. A good armload of meaningless, question-dodging answers - that is to say, I've been struggling with inspiration. It's been a messy summer and I still don't feel like I've fully normalized healthwise yet - now thanks in part to some worries about potential hypertension problems (Methinks it's time to get stricter about exercising more often again now. Let's hope I'm just faltering in the face of hypochondriac tendencies here.) - and otherwise, much of this week and past weekend were consumed by downward plodding toward the end of summer. This plodding entails the dropping of the temperature just enough to ensure the air conditioning isn't on much, which leads to my room - which has poor ventilation and circulation - becoming exceedingly hot, uncomfortable, and all around ovenlike, which can be a real sleep-killer. And of course, with the new TV season starting very soon (It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia season six premieres on Thursday! Also, the new season means more of the usual blog fodder, of course.), I need to push myself to start normalizing my sleep cycle a bit more after how much of a mess it's been all summer. (None of this has helped my health, of course. So maybe that should be my primary reason for normalizing my sleep - at least compared to my currently wrecked cycle - as opposed to OH BOY TELEVISION.) Without those little slices of death, the big sleep comes much sooner than later, they say - I've got too much I still need to accomplish before I can let myself get that tired.

At any rate, there's been plenty this summer to write about that I haven't exactly taken advantage of. There was the Gulf of Mexico oil spill back in April, for one, which should have served as more of a wake-up call to the nation to begin reducing fossil fuel consumption and shift our focus to green energy sources. Then there was rampant anti-Mexican bigotry in Arizona, the manufactured Shirley Sherrod scandal thanks to professional liar Andrew Breitbart, and a visible explosion of Islamophobia centered around a proposed Islamic community center in lower Manhattan - just a couple of blocks from ground zero. ("Hallowed ground" in the sense that strip clubs, fast food joints, and the like are A-OK, but a community center is not because after years of implying it now, now many Republicans are openly conflating all Muslims with terrorists.) The usual September 11th (Celebrate Terrormas by buying gifts for your whole family and burning down the household World Trade Center replica TOGETHER! NEVER FORGET.) memorial was marred by open displays of bigotry, and a fixation on Florida pastor Terry Jones's trolling for media attention by planning a Quran burning just to be incendiary and lower the discourse even further. And of course, just yesterday the Democrats in congress folded on repealing Don't Ask, Don't Tell in the face of a John McCain-led Republican party line filibuster. So much has happened in the past few months that's really filled me with overflowing faith in humanity. So, so much. (Ow.)

All that mind-numbing positivity aside, it's time for something different! Sort of. It's September 22nd now. Summer's about to end, and autumn's about to begin. All of you have been beating the war drums for weeks, demanding to know: WHERE THE HELL IS THAT AUGUST SHORT STORY!? There were reminders that I had pledged to post a short story a month on here - even if these short stories have often been delayed into early in the following month - back in February, and I've largely kept to my word. There were also some obscenities in there, but I chose to omit those because this is a fucking family-oriented blog. (You've got a foul mouth.) At any rate, just short of the end of summer, it's finally - finally! - finally time for the long-awaited end of summer ultra-late August short story.

Of course, after this long wait, you're undoubtedly expecting something simultaneously mindblowing, touching, and potentially deeply corrosive - if nothing else, you've always been able to count on my writing to be at least a little corrosive, if only in intent. What are you getting this time? Something even better - I ran out of ideas as we got into late summer, though I wanted to do another somewhat seasonal story as I largely have been all year long, at least in my mind. But after ending spring with death, hitting you with heat with the late-June story in early July, and hitting you with post-apocalyptic firefly sci-fi in early August for the late-July short story, I basically had nothing.

So now you're thinking, "If you've got nothing, why are you even writing this? Why are you wasting my time?" Reasonable questions. Reasonable questions deserve honest answers - they deserve accountability. And I've been predictably irresponsible in following through with achieving my own goals. I'd say addiction to underachieving is some kind of illness, but it's more of a personality thing bundled with excuses. And if I weren't good at making excuses - especially in hopefully becoming a regularly working writer within the next year or two with deadlines and the whole shebang - what kind of writer would I be?

Enough with the digressions. To end summer, you need an appropriately summery theme. What says "summer" more than the beach? Who spends more time on the beach than lifeguards? (Ignore the usual beachgoers, hermit crabs, certain jellyfish, etc.) Wouldn't a semi-allegorical internal monologue by a disgruntled lifeguard suffering some kind of PTSD be the greatest story ever conceived? Of course it would. (If nothing else, it might be kinda original. Kinda.) That's why I wrote this. I wrote it for you. All of you out there looking to bake your brains on itchy, sandy, summer-ending storytelling. You're welcome.

Consider this to be my sort of beginning the "fall season" of Spiral Reverie updates, in a manner of speaking. More productivity, more writing, hopefully some publishing, and continued agent query work lie ahead. Maybe I'll finally get out of here and make it someplace more interesting and inspiring within the next year, too. I'm pretty well past feeling like I could drop dead at this point, so with the autumnal equinox coming up in these next twenty-four hours, I hereby proclaim The Summer of (Anything terrible that starts with the letter S) at a close!

Now click the post title and jump down to the story itself. With all this other rambling as a preface, this one's pretty short - some concepts can only go so far before they risk transforming into something else entirely. This is just another experiment.

Onward to Fossilization!

So, I'm behind on blogging again with a few more posts in the pipeline on top of still brainstorming for my April short story on here. In the least, it's time for my usual yearly musings on aging. I was 22 when Spiral Reverie first launched, and today, I'm 26. Already old with more old piled on top. (Old!) Yes.

 Aging is always a time for reflection. The past two years, I've done a fair amount of reflection here around my birthday. I turned the spotlight in a rare moment of uber-narcissism. (As opposed to the regular kind I exhibit around here.) I turned discussion of my life into a manipulative Nike commercial using out-of-context audio to try to sell Tiger Woods as a brand - and in turn, Nike products.

Wait, maybe that's not it.

Regardless, another year has passed. I haven't accomplished anywhere near what I wanted to in the past year. A reoccurring theme: the annual disappointment. I'm keeping my sights to the clouds - there's nowhere else to be - while my body's still dragging on the ground like a sack of rocks and imagined orbital debris. If I flap my arms hard enough, I will fly someday. Metaphor works like that. (Who needs concrete reality?)

Still, I've done some things. I finished my first novel and am making decent progress on my second already, and I've at least done my homework and started the agent querying process off on the right foot. At least, on the right foot in the sense that while no one has responded to my queries yet, I actually made a point of educating myself so that I actually know what I'm doing here. A tremendous number of aspiring authors apparently don't bother doing their homework, figuring they've got such a work of staggering genius on their hands that chucking the manuscript at everybody they possibly can with a poorly thought out letter and tacked on ego would give them a sea of agents begging to represent them and millions in publishing deals in no time. I may live with my head in the clouds, but even I know better than this, actively trying to avoid ending up on one of those query fail blogs or tweets out there. I'd like to think that this gives me a bit of a leg up on a fair number of others seeking representation, at least.

And hey, if I'm lucky, I'll find the means to escape North Carolina sometime within the next couple of years. I'd rather not be stuck here into my thirties. We're obviously just a a few attempted militia uprisings and violent riots led by teabaggers from the collapse of civil society as is. (I really hope that there's no truth to this statement.) On which note, it wasn't until this year, in the face of all these conservative dissidents screeching out in the name of further squashing of the majority by the minority with the nation's wealth and power that I became really conscious of the fact that the Oklahoma City Bombing happened on my birthday back in 1995. It's the fifteenth anniversary of this ultra-conservative militant terrorist attack that claimed the lives of 168 people, including 19 children. Some on the absolute fringe see this as a day to be celebrated for the tragic anti-government violence carried out that day. The extreme of the "the government should cease to exist but somehow still provide me with everything that maintains civil society while corporate interests and oppression reign!" segment of society, of which the teabaggers largely just represent the old, overweight, white, wealthy, confused, angry, and racist. Whipped up by none other than Fox News, which should have seen a serious FCC crackdown some time ago that it has yet to - they've been cashing in on shouting fire in a crowded theater disguised as news and "opinion journalism" for well over a year now, completely violating their free speech rights. There's a limit to what's protected under free speech, and as things stand, the first amendment's being beaten to a bloody pulp by America's worst.

I guess, when you get down to it, the theme of my little aging-blurb this year is this: Hey, crazy people who don't understand how society works and somehow think the ultra-wealthy are victims of oppression by the lower classes. We're sliding into collective poverty as a nation while you guys scream about "socialism," ignoring decades of active redistribution of the nation's wealth upward to a tiny minority. Greed, selfishness, ignorance, and hate are cancers that threaten to take America to pieces from the inside and strike the rest of the globe with a serious crisis as a result. Let's use our hearts and minds and beat this, shall we? It's probably a hopeless plea, but one that should be made to the very end. In the least, let's not have any conservative terrorist commemorative violence on my birthday, shall we? Someday, a few people might know who I am and possibly even enjoy my characters and what I have to say through my writing. They might not be too happy if you ruined my birthday by killing people. And I wouldn't be too happy with that, either. There isn't a single one of us who can't do better than violence. Let's make my birthday a day to celebrate impermanence. (There's that narcissism.)

Publishing Chronicles: Let's Try This Again

I don't even know what that potato thing was the other week. At any rate, I'm conveniently back now.

Time for a query process update. The agencies I queried back at the beginning of February asked those who submitted to them to wait 6-8 weeks for response, and the 8th week concluded just last week.

I wish I had news to cheerily report - even news of so much as acknowledgment through rejection, but alas, I do not. It could be that my letter needs some more work - I'm not even sure how I'd revise it at this point, but I may give that a shot if I don't get any response from this next set. It could be that the premise itself didn't sound interesting enough or particularly appeal to the two agents I started with. It could be that the first ten pages weren't enough to hook them. It could even be that they never finished the letter and tossed it quickly, or that they haven't even gotten to it yet. There's really any number of possible reasons, but the fact remains that the first query set's response waiting period is over.

It's disappointing that my first query efforts turned out this way, but then, being completely new to this part of the process and only having queried two agents to start with, going without response is probably to be expected. It would've been unrealistic to expect anything more. And it's probably unrealistic for me to expect anything out of these next four queries that I just sent out. But it's all part of the process. Going ignored, getting silently rejected, continuing to wait - these are undoubtedly important experiences to have as a writer.

No part of this process is easy, and it probably wouldn't be rewarding if any part was. It's time to press onward and now begin the waiting period for the second query set. After consulting a calendar, going by a regular 8-week or so waiting period, I should be able to get five or so sets of queries out this year. It'd be amazing to find representation within the year, but to assume I'll achieve that would be overconfident if not borderline hubristic. At this point, so much as a rejection response, some comments, or any kind of acknowledgment from an individual agent would be a victory of sorts. So in the least, while I wait, babble here, write short stories, work on my second novel, and enter more contests over the course of the year, I'll be keeping my fingers crossed on that much.

Before my third query set goes out in early June, I'm going to need to do some more research and find some more agents taking unsolicited queries who might be interested in the sort of thing I write. It can be hard to know who would give your work a shot, as a literary fiction writer. Crossing genres while not becoming genre fiction is a literary fiction staple, but it's hard to know what to think when agents express an interest in literary fiction and perhaps one or two of the following genres - fantasy, science fiction, and mysteries - but aren't interested in one or two of the others. Any kind of issues of preference could get something as complex and comparatively off the pigeonholed, beaten-path territory of genre fiction could sink a literary novel pitch. Literary fiction driven by some surrealistic elements of the fantastic is pretty much my thing, after all, with some mystery and science fiction elements in past and future projects. All of them are character-driven, however, keeping well within the realm of literary fiction at heart. I'm not exactly writing mainstream fiction, and I'm continuously trying to challenge myself to write stories that feel unusual and fresh - at least to me.

While my second novel that I'm currently working on - Project Princess - is probably more marketable than Project 27 Days, I have some concerns with how it would be received as well. Particularly over whether my eventual agent or a publisher might mistake it for fantasy genre fiction despite its focus being squarely on the characters rather than "the quest," a key divide between literary and fantasy genre fiction. In that way, it's not unlike how the Battlestar Galactica reimagining was written and largely treated as a character drama that happened to be set in space, and purposefully avoided numerous sci-fi cliches to be an edgy, fresh space opera that drew a lot of viewers who normally wouldn't go near a show like that.

I'm sure that narrative structure can be an alienating factor as well. Project 27 Days plays out as sort of a slice of life, taking the reader through the protagonist's thoughts, conversations, and experiences each day from dreaming to waking and struggling to sleep each night. I feel that it works well, as it was an important part of the novel's conception - that the reader have these full, day-to-day experiences with the protagonist. And I'm sure there's an audience out there that would appreciate it. Finding an agent willing to represent it - and me - and a publisher willing to back it, however, could possibly end up being a challenge. Project Princess has a somewhat more traditional structure as a novel, but "present action" chapters are also intercut by chapters of somewhat shorter length in which the protagonist discusses bits of the fantasy world's history, mythology, and the clash between history records and myths that makes it very difficult to determine which parts of their celebrated history are real and which are fiction. Though it's just conjecture on my part, I'm concerned that this could drive off as many people as it might draw in. It's part of my continued exploration of the concept of setting as character, which plays a major role in Project 27 Days through its surreal, small scale train setting. There's going to be at least some of that in my third novel down the line too - which is going to be much more of a comedy. (By which readers will continue to glean just how weird I am - as though everything else I write doesn't express that enough - and that I'm also a Judd Apatow fan.) Something to have some light, albeit crude fun with - still backed by my usual focus on strong literary character writing - as a bit of a mental and emotional palate cleanser. Project Princess is easily my darkest work to date with only a little humor here and there, so by the time I'm done with it, I'm going to need to write a comedy, and I've been working on this particular comedy novel conceptually since all the way back in autumn of 2004.

Getting back to the aforementioned note of contests, I also entered one of NPR's three-minute fiction contests back at the end of February. Competition's much stiffer when organizations like NPR are involved, and as you can imagine, I didn't win and probably didn't even come close to having my story deemed one of the notable entries. But as you know by now, dear readers, I'm kind of an eccentric writer to begin with. I may have gotten disqualified early on for some mild drug references, too - the protagonist of the story was a bit of a junkie, and there were a few references to his dealing. I can't say I'd be surprised if they were very sensitive about potentially broadcasting that sort of content, even if it was as mild as it was. You had to look at the picture they provided and write what came to you - the protagonist of this story just happened to be a junkie leading a fairly sad existence. It can't be helped if that's what sometimes comes out.

Dreaming in Split Realities: Zen-like Difference Games

Casual computer gaming has come a long way in the past decade. Back in the early 2000s, there wasn't a whole lot to note. Most browser games were simple little distractions that you'd load up and play once, and Flash-based gaming wasn't much different. In a lot of ways, the Brothers Chaps' old Homestar Runner games represent a creative variety of the types of Flash games you'd see on sites like Newgrounds - which is still a huge place to go for the latest in Flash animated movies and games, its offerings running the gambit from many of the best to worst out there on the internet.

Gaming has transformed significantly over the past several decades. We've gone from Pong and Space Invaders with Atari and Coleco to Mario and Sonic with Nintendo and Sega, and then to Sony and Microsoft pushing shooting, conceptual gameplay rehashes, and design pretension to ridiculous levels while trying hard to appeal to the testosterone-driven crowd that would've pushed previous generations of nerdy gamers into lockers high school. Shallow, image-driven game concepts and marketing became popular - though Sega did beat Sony and Microsoft to the punch on that, but their rivalry with Nintendo was frankly friendly compared to the smug hubris regularly displayed by Sony and Microsoft's executives and the worst of their audience - much to gaming's detriment. Normal people don't care about video games making you look "cool," and they don't care about hyperkinetic violence or running around online "fragging" and "pwning" each other while shouting epithets at each other on headset voice chat.

This is where a new significant transformation for gaming has come to light: comfortable, casual pick-up-and-play gaming that anyone can understand, get into, and have a tremendous amount of fun with. Nintendo made their explosive comeback by creating platforms designed to be accessible and to appeal equally to both the usual gaming demographics and entirely new ones - particularly women and actual adults, as opposed to the insecure teenagers and mental-teenagers that Sony and Microsoft have chosen to drive their video game lines into the ground over. We got motion controls - gaming like we'd imagined in futuristic, science fiction settings at last! - and games like Wii Sports, as well as lifestyle software for daily physical and mental health-related use like Wii Fit, Brain Age, Big Brain Academy, EA Sports Fitness, Walk It Out, and more. Exercise and video gaming joined at last, and edutainment aimed at adults. Fantastic ideas, bringing all sorts of outside daily life concepts together with gaming software in ways that we'd never seen - or at least never seen done well - before, evolving video game software as a concept and taking that next step forward as a medium. All this in stark contrast to Sony and Microsoft's focus on graphics, online shooters, and trying to turn games into "movies" without any of the writing or directorial talent that draws us to film as a complete separate medium in the first place. On top of this evolution of how we look at video games as a concept, Nintendo also provided platforms in the Wii and DS where any kind of game from previous - and current - generations could be made, but also made better through the addition of motion controls. And all kinds of gameplay that most people found inaccessible due to the confounding complexity of standard video game controllers suddenly became much more appealing and accessible, the Wii's basic controller undergoing an ambitious redesign to transform how we view standard gaming controls into something much more familiar - a remote control - and comfortable. Even the DS's controls are right at home for most, acting as a SNES controller with an touchscreen screen.

Likewise, where Nintendo's new boom began, we continued to see the mainstream emergence of a previously largely niche - and still mostly niche even now - independent computer game design scene, which I myself was in and out of for a good part of my adolescence, and am I only just returning to this year with an iPhone/iPod Touch game I'm working on with my older brother. Companies like PopCap saw a lot of success with PC games like Bejeweled and Peggle, online digital download stores like Steam began to pop up, the Homestar Runner guys started making even more ambitious games with a taste for the retro (Nostalgia has become a driving and wonderful force with many independent game designers, recalling all the kinds of ideas that made older PC and console video games so much fun in the '90s and '80s that have been lost in modern gaming's fixation on pushing graphical horsepower and ditching gameplay to make godawful CGI movies that take themselves too seriously and fail to understand why video games and movies are entirely separate mediums.), and major search engine homepages like Microsoft's and Yahoo's began hosting a variety of simple Flash games with social elements to entertain people. And, of course, I would be remiss to discuss the current explosion of simple, accessible social titles with their own depth on major social networks like Facebook over the past year. Virtually everybody knows at least one person - if not many - hooked on addictive social games like Farmville or Mafia Wars these days. Now sites like Facebook are being looked at as platforms for serious game development by many companies, hoping to turn a profit off easy accessible titles that are free to play, and thus very inviting. Flash gaming portal Kongregate is a personal favorite time-killer in this vein, a Flash gaming-centric social networking site where you can submit titles and play hundreds to thousands of games of all sorts, catalogued in a way to make it easy to sift out the undesirable titles, with contests to enter and all sorts of little collectibles to get hooked on picking up for your profile, such as little achievement-style badges for numerous games. And on the most eccentric side of things, we have The Kingdom of Loathing, an easily accessible point and click stickman art and comedy writing based browser role-playing game - one of the deepest and funniest games on the internet, which anyone can get into easily, and like Flash gaming and the freeware put out by the indie gaming scene, it too is free to play. There's no shortage of wonderful and worthwhile options for people looking for games to play without spending a cent.

These days, you'd be hard pressed to find mainstream video gaming websites and blogs that aren't centered on the question of whether or not video games are art. And on both the mainstream and niche sides of the industry, you'll find developers - whether teams or a single person - determined to produce meaningful art games. On one hand, you get smaller names like Jason Rohrer, whose games tend to receive a fairly mixed reception and are hard to frame as something "fun" to play. For many art games, the gap between something meaningful by design and an actual entertaining experience is difficult to bridge. On the ultra-mainstream site of the spectrum, we have Sony's Heavy Rain, recently released on the Playstation 3 last week to a ridiculous amount of raving despite its severe deficiencies as a game. The title is literally little more than walking from place to place, watching FMV cutscenes (The game's design focus was centered on producing and pushing some of the most expensive graphics a video game has ever seen. Not exactly a focus that has a history of yielding anything resembling fun gameplay.) and occasionally pushing a random button on the controller for a quicktime event. The game proposes to be a thrilling (minimally) "interactive" film noir, written by people who aren't professional writers or filmmakers, and then raved about by a media largely comprised of people unfamiliar with good literature or filmmaking. Glaring problems with the largely offensive charge into "cinematic" gaming that Sony has been trying to lead with their Playstation brand for over a decade now - pushing focus on graphics and serious narratives (The more seriously a game takes itself, the worse it is, pretty much as a rule.) while pushing further and further away from the very thing that makes gaming what it is: the gameplay. Unfortunately, growing sentiment at Sony and amongst the worst of their fans is that games need to "evolve" out of existence and merge with the film industry - except that it should also be judged separately, and as superior, because these are movies being made by programmers, not screenwriters, directors, or anybody who frankly has any business attempting to make movies, let alone serious ones.

As for whether games are art, it's all a matter of individual perception. For what video games are as a medium, it doesn't matter if they're art or not - that's not the point. They're meant to be interactive entertainment - something you play, not watch. Something you have fun with, not something set on making you cry. An active experience, as opposed to the passive experience that experiencing art is in itself - whether cinema, other forms of visual art, or music. And many types of cinema and television are by no means art in any way worth recognizing as such.

I wanted to do this particular blog post to look at four games in particular, which you can read about and find links to after the jump. All four are Flash games hosted on Kongregate that work well as both artsy titles that draw you in through beautiful, mesmerizing visual design and music, but also as entertaining titles, engaging you through their central gameplay experience: observation. We all grew up playing all sorts of little games in kids' coloring books and the like, from word searches to simple crossword puzzles and more. These particular titles - difference games - are an artsy Flash gaming evolution of those simple children's puzzles where you'd look at two side-by-side images on a page and attempt to pick out or circle the differences between each. In its accessible simplicity and childhood nostalgia, the two developers behind these four games have shown how much can be done with that concept from a more intellectual perspective without losing their fun. So after this long, rambling introduction and discussion of gaming and its movement into the lifestyle, social, and casual arenas for everybody, check out the rest for links to and discussions of the games you're here to see.

Martin Luther King Jr.'s Triple Evils

I've made no secret of that a recent blogging trend for me has been to start a post on one subject or another, and then lose track of time or get distracted by or preoccupied with something else and I end up putting off finishing the post for weeks. This one was originally started back on Martin Luther King Jr. Day, January 18th. Obviously, more than a month has passed since then. But, while we're in the last week of February now, it is still Black History Month, so hey, it's a relevant time for the subject in question.

I was reading an interview with Martin Luther King III last month that made me aware for the first time of the "Triple Evils" that Martin Luther King Jr. railed against. While we learned about him as a great civil rights crusader - and one of the most important historical figures in the American 20th century - the focus in public schools was largely placed on his fight for racial equality. This is all well and good, of course, but at the same time, one has to wonder why we didn't go over the other issues he focused on in addition to racism. Placing these issues under the microscope, it's hard not to feel there's some political motivation behind avoiding discussion of the other two of the Triple Evils.

Oh Seriously, You're Gonna Make Mistakes, You're Young

What's that, I finally realized  there was a new post editor I could upgrade to on blogger? Why did it take me this long Astonishing!

From this post onward, I'll be using more of the features more easily accessible through the new post editor for some pretty sweet new formatting elements. Plus, I'm planning on renovating and overhauling this blog this year. It's 2010. I think it's time. You may have noticed the slight change to the main title - though I don't have a novel on shelves yet, I am technically published; a step beyond merely 'aspiring.'

And look at this, easy jump breaks! Now I can post without clogging the entire front page of the blog up with massive text-walls! (You have to click the post to get to the rest of the wall.)

Now, let's take a look at a variety of goals I'm setting in 2010 for this blog, for myself professionally, and personally. I've been saying "This is gonna be a big year!" every year since I launched Spiral Reverie back in 2007. Granted, each of these years have had their own "big" moments to qualify them as such. But as a professional writer, I'm especially set on 2010 being a big step forward into that "real world" I always hear people talking about. (That doesn't really exist, you know - it's just how people rationalize their misery in adulthood.)

On the Shoulders of One Election: Healthcare Reform and Filibuster Abuse

So, as I've reminded repeatedly in recent posts here, we're facing a lot of problems in American politics as of late. This problem is systemic. The government's circulatory system is presently suffering from a debilitating blood clot. The clot's location? The Senate, comprised entirely of its most obstinate members.

Majority Rules... Right?

Let's start by talking supermajority. When America's founding fathers detailed the process and function of the senate, they concluded that a supermajority should be required for very little: to move through a cloture motion, to amend the Constitution, to override a presidential veto, and to end a filibuster. Otherwise, legislation is supposed to be comfortably passed by a majority of at least 51 votes. (In cases of votes where all 100 senators are present - which is by no means all.) It's a simple premise: majority rule. The Republicans never had a supermajority through George W. Bush's eight years of increasing instability and still had no problem achieving their agenda, Bush's agenda very rarely checked by the legislative branch as should have happened, had we a healthy, fully functioning government. Whenever the pressure was on, Democrats buckled and compromised. Some far more easily than others, given that there are many conservative Democrats who are more or less Republicans with a different letter by their name, only slightly deviating from the largely united Republican agenda. While political diversity itself is a positive, this has only helped to undermine efforts to legislate toward progress and cleanup from the massive mess the Bush years left behind for Democrats to deal with. For a very brief period, the Democrats had one in the Senate last year - after Al Franken was finally seated leading up to Ted Kennedy's untimely death. Numerically speaking, we're talking a 60-to-40 divide that should, in a functioning and effective government, allow the majority party to move forward with their legislation. Barack Obama has been in office for just short of a full year now, and despite the strong Democratic majority in the senate, this has not been the case.

Lacking the diversity of the Democrats, Republicans have found it very easy to unite as a political mass in recent decades. It doesn't take much - if the Democrats are fighting for it, these days especially, it doesn't take much to get every Republican in the senate to oppose them for the sake of doing so. In terms of political discourse and interest in actual service to the people, our freefall has reached preschool level. Obstruction is the name of the game for the proudly self-proclaimed "Party of No."

We, the American people, are paying the salaries of people refusing to do their jobs - to actually govern - not serving the people, but instead a twisted, regressive corporate anti-humanistic agenda and attempting to shut down the government (Many Americans not quite getting why it's not a good idea to vote for people who insist we shouldn't have any kind of central government structure in society at all and campaign on anti-government policies, completely ignoring and denying just how much of what we take for granted stems from the essential central structure of government.) from properly functioning at all. They owe us what they aren't doing, and their behavior is disgraceful to the very concept of public service. Public servants with no interest in serving the public.

Hey, This Government Racket's Pretty Lucrative!

We got these sorts of corporate servants through the advent of career politicians - politicians who make their political position their source of income, immediately swinging the focus from serving the people to serving themselves. Daily Show host Jon Stewart discussed this problem - amongst the many other obstacles the Obama administration are currently facing - last night with Comptroller General and head of the Government Accountability Office David M. Walker. The minute a politician allows their own financial gain to stand between them and serving the people to their very best, they have failed in their job. In a healthy democracy, these people would see their poll numbers plummet and inevitably end up losing a reelection bid, shamed into leaving office, or impeached by a local, state, or national legislative body. This does not happen. Incumbents almost always win reelection bids in Congress, regardless of performance, in part due to widespread voter apathy. Another key element in the inherent dysfunctionality of American democracy.

Career politicians fear "rocking the boat," and are unwilling to make difficult decisions, as breaking with the status quo - even it for the best - can potentially lose a career politician their job. They tend to sink into a happy little corrupt crevasse where they receive large campaign finance donations from various corporations and special interest groups - looking at our current government, very typically with a strong conservative slant - and enjoy a comfortable life detached from the reality the American people face, voting instead for the agendas of these corporations and special interest groups. Agendas typically in direct conflict with the best interests of the people. As it stands, the Senate is absolutely full of these people - twisting the lofty ideals of representative democracy the country was founded on into fascist corporatocracy. Nothing is being done to reverse this. We don't even have term limits in the Senate - if you can get reelected every 6 years for the rest of your life, you can stay in politics until you're ready to retire. And so the stagnation and ongoing collapse of American governance.

So from here, you'd think, "Sure, the Republicans unite as one big wall of anti-government rhetoric and refuse to serve the people or actually govern without one of their guys in the White House, but the Democrats have this locked up even just short of a supermajority, right? Even if it means making a few pork barrel project concessions to their state to get a few conservative Democrats on board, they should be comfortably getting their way at every turn, right?" Wrong.

Either We Rule or Nobody Does

Let's talk filibuster - the political tactic used to kill legislation by prolonging debate indefinitely. The go-to technique to obstruct government. You need a 60 vote supermajority in order to end a filibuster by invoking cloture - simply threatening to filibuster is all it takes to kill legislation if a bill doesn't have a guaranteed 60 votes ready to back it. Therein lies the next part of the problem - the Republicans have united against the Democrats, wanting to stop them from accomplishing anything. The threat of filibuster has become their most powerful tool and a major threat to functioning government, let alone even beginning to clean up the mess Bush brought us to. They want the narrative to be changed to that Obama caused the trouble he came into after the Bush years, positing that if he can't fix the decades' worth of damage Bush caused in a scant few months, he and the Democrats have failed and the only solution is to vote more of the Republicans who played a key role in thse problems back into power. All while acting like their refusal to participate in government - solely obstructing - has nothing to do with any legislative failures on the part of this administration. A faulty argument derived from outright lies - nothing new there.

In these past two decades, filibuster abuse has been at its worst in American history, to the point at which even Obama addressed the problem last month. This is not a new political strategy, as Republicans used it to force the Democrats out after Bill Clinton was elected president in 1992, stopping them from legislating and freezing government function, then blaming Democratic incompetence for Republican abuse of senate rules. The filibuster was strengthened further with the addition of Senate Standing Rule XXII, removing the requirement for a filibuster to entail continuous speeches to obstruct Senate floor discussion.

While the filibuster was conceived as a means to putting down toxic legislation and motions, to allow a minority to stand up for the best interests of the American people, the Republican party - with their interests vested very much elsewhere than the people - have turned it into a dangerous political weapon, showing a tremendous amount of disdain for the foundation and function of the senate, the people, and the legacy of the government itself. They have no respect for their once-esteemed office and job. Now more than ever, we need to end filibuster abuse by invoking the "nuclear option" and moving to deem filibuster abuse unconstitutional by a simple majority. The filibuster itself was never established in the constitution and is in no way enshrined - or even mentioned - in America's foundational documents. At this point, it's little more than an affront to government function and progress, threats being invoked whenever meaningful progress or legislation for the people are brought up these days. The filibuster only serves its purpose when used cautiously - to obstruct and terminate legislation and political nominations against the best interests of the people. Now it's nothing more than a wall to ensure that even as a minority no longer in power, Republicans and continue to force America down their self-destructive path and stop Democrats from cleaning up their mess. In their eyes, either they run the government, or it doesn't run. For all they talk about the 'oppression' of freedom and liberty from 'socialists' when we don't have anything resembling a real left-wing presence anywhere in our legislative bodies, they're doing a much better job attacking our democracy and oppressing government function by anybody else themselves.

Martha Coakley vs. Scott Brown: On the Shoulders of One Election

All that said, we face a critical election in Massachusetts right this second as I type. Today's the special election in Massachusetts to replace Ted Kennedy following his passing last fall. He died fighting for healthcare reform, making it his life's goal: to see to it that every American has healthcare access. When he passed, Republicans feigned respect for the "lion" of the Senate, while not so secretly cheering the death of one of their fiercest, most hated enemies - the rare Democrat willing to stand up and stand strong for the right thing, even when most others in his party buckle to pressure from the right. That's one of the biggest problems with the Democrats - a severe lack of strong, gutsy leadership willing to fight and fight hard for their ideals and to stomp down the opposition when it's right to do so. And healthcare reform was one of the times to do that.

That didn't happen. The right - between Republican obstructionists and conservative "blue dog" Democrats that had to get pork barrel projects and some awful concessions to get on board - has gutted healthcare reform. In its current form, it can still at least potentially extend healthcare access to another 30 million Americans, and as obviously angry as I am to see the reform we've needed - even the great bill Kennedy drafted himself, which was laughed at and tossed out quickly - I'm not going to stand against 30 million in need. Though if the Stupak-Pitts Amendment makes it in after reconciliation of the House and Senate bills is completed, I may just find myself doing that. That would be the final line - essentially obliterating women's right of choice in exchange for giving insurance companies millions of new customers.

So now the people of Massachusetts are determining today whether or not the Democrats will be recovering their supermajority or if Republicans will gain the final bullet in their gun to ensure they can completely shut down government function through filibuster abuse. It's a very important, potentially very dangerous day for this country. We had a great deal of prosperity and stability to tide us over during the early Clinton years as the Republicans made a mockery of the legislative branch. We're very much in the opposition situation now, the Republicans offering no working solutions to any of the problems we face - just additional means to deepening them, having played the role they have in their causation.

On the Democratic ticket, we have Massachusetts State Attorney General Martha Coakley. She's received endorsements from Ted Kennedy's widow - Victoria Reggie Kennedy - and family, as well as the Clintons and President Obama. Of the two candidates, Coakley is the only qualified one, actually tapped into political realities here and abroad, and set on seeing to it that healthcare reform will be passed in Kennedy's name. She'd make for a historic victory as well, becoming Massachusetts' first female Senator. (I didn't think we'd beat Massachusetts on that here in North Carolina, but we actually did. Thankfully, Democrat Kay Hagan - who replaced lockstep Republican Elizabeth Dole after winning the 2008 election here - has done mostly well so far, and is standing for healthcare progress, whatever little we can hope to achieve now.) She's the respectable successor for Ted Kennedy that Massachusetts needs - and the Democrat the American people are in dire need of, given the devastated state of our legislative processes. And her biggest scandal? A bad joke referring to a Red Sox pitcher being "A Yankees fan."

From the Republicans, we've got State Senator Scott Brown. In 1982, he was named Cosmopolitan Magazine's "Sexiest Man Alive" at age 22. (What is it with Republicans thrusting people who've gotten ahead in life on their looks to the forefront lately?) If you watch his campaign ads, you'll learn that he owns a truck. Which can only mean that he's a down home American everyman just right for the people of Massachusetts and not at all treating the voters like morons. Yes, he's a handsome "good old boy" with a truck - running mostly on that he wants to kill healthcare reform. That's pretty much it. Another case of not being interested in the best interests of the people of Massachusetts or the nation as a whole - he just wants to join the Republican "NO!" wall and become another part of the lockstep obstruction actively working against the people and any efforts to solve the problems we all face. There's also some accusations that there will be voter fraud from the Democrats - which we seem to hear over every election now despite that that hasn't been happening at all - and general aggressive mudslinging. Classy. Would you be surprised to hear he's also aligned himself with the "teabaggers?" I didn't think so.

In our first president, George Washington's 1796 farewell address, he warned the nation of the perils of a two-party political systems. Of geographic factionalism, and of two competing factions to inevitably seek to wreak vengeance upon one another at the expense of the people. All it takes is for one party to lose respect for this nation, its people, and its foundation. To reject their rejection when rejected by the American people. They lost the 2006 and 2008 elections. Their vegeance? Cheering on our problems and saying they hope the Democrats fail, and doing everything they can to make that end a reality. The fact that these people are still remotely politically viable - let alone considered electable - speaks much of how dwindling this nation's future has become.

One party spent the past decade running this country and the global economy headfirst into the ground in the interests of the rich and corrupt, screwing everybody else. The American people elected the other party - which promised real change. A soon as they lost, the right decided to dig their heels in and make their focus obstructing government function entirely while announcing that the president "isn't accomplishing anything," as though it has something to do with incompetence as opposed to half our more powerful legislative house being deadset on stopping him from fixing any of the problems they created. (All while insisting that the Bush era problems should have been cleared up in no time, as if by some great, magical force that doesn't exist. George W. Bush left us with more problems than even decades of Democratic rule with no Republican obstruction could fix at this point. And that's not even getting into what cannot be fixed - the incredible number of civilian deaths in the Middle East and the casualties in our own armed forces as a result of ill-advised invasions and occupations.)

Hateful radio gasbag Rush Limbaugh openly announced last year that he wanted Obama to fail, knowing full well that his failure would mean far worse and far more problems for the American people. There's no regard for the needs of the American people or what America's many dire problems (Especially from the economic side of things) mean for the rest of the globe. It comes down to putting as much money in corrupt industry and banking execs' pockets as possible while wrecking the nation for the rest of us and defunding as many public programs as possible, treating the people as nothing more than cattle for the corporate slaughter instead of actually serving them as is the government's foundational purpose. The political right is hellbent on keeping us on this deeply self-destructive traack they've been focusing the country on since the Reagan years. They'll do everything they can - including shutting down government function - to keep us on the Reagan/Bush track for as long as possible until this entire country is derailed by it and collapses into chaos.

These same people are making gains on the idea that Obama is "failing," and that as such, the only other place to turn for answers is the same party that ran this nation into the ground to begin with - their "solution" being to keep on that same self-destructive track. We're at a deepening hate-and-ignorance-fueled low for this nation politically, and now more than ever, we need a strong, populist progressive party to storm the political scene, win elections left and right, and take power. This isn't going to happen.

America is in deep, deep trouble - far deeper than most are willing to comment on, and certainly not in our corporate-controlled mainstream media. The best we've got for honesty lies in Jon Stewart and Stephen Colbert, and it says a lot when our best newsmen are comedians. And just as one of our most impressive new senators to come out of the 2008 election - after a long-fought post-election battle - ended up being Al Franken, himself a comedian who saw a strong Republican opposition to legislation last year extending rights to rape victims after a young woman working for a contractor in Iraq was raped and not allowed to sue the company for allowing it to happen. Yes, the same political side where you've got the gasbag decrying aid and relief for Haiti and the majority of their Senators voted against legislation to help rape victims get justice is the one trying to shut government down and dangerously close to succeeding.

In 2008, the American people voted for a promised major policy change from the Bush years. For a new government administration that would address and solve the numerous problems we face. Obama promised these things, and he's trying to follow through. What did we get? An opposition trying to shut the government down that wants to see Obama fail - for us all to fail and suffer. And that thinks we're stupid enough to believe Obama's failures on account of Republican filibuster abuse are solely his and the Democrats' faults and signs that the Republicans need to be voted back into power. The sad thing is, this works on the uninformed - they cash in on ignorance in the Republican party, as they do hate. They've established just how broken the Senate is this past year.

It's hard to be optimistic about the future. All it takes is one election in Massachusetts - that should be an easy win, no less - to take us to a new low.

Game Change: Reid's Can of Worms and the GOP's Disrespect for Democracy

Recently, the media's been feasting on the recent release of the controversial Game Change: Obama and the Clintons, McCain and Palin, and the Race of a Lifetime by John Heilemann and Mark Halperin. (Released in the UK as Race of a Lifetime: How Obama Won the White House.) Based on interviews with over 300 people involved in 2008's political campaigning, it's full of behind the scenes insights and dirt on both sides. Most of the dirt, however, was nothing we weren't either aware or otherwise convinced of by now. Two particular stories have stood out from the book's revelations.

The right latched onto comments made by Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid in private conversation during the campaign, and scandalized them. The objectionable comments in question were made to the effect of that Obama's "light-skinned" appearance and speaking patterns "with no Negro dialect, unless he wanted to have one," would help him find success as a candidate. Yes, there are so many ways Reid could have articulated these thoughts far more gracefully, but the right attempted to latch onto these statements as outright racist, taking the use of the term out of context. The statements Reid made were not racist so much as an observation of that sadly, racism is very much alive and well in America. Racist sentiments have boiled under the surface like a festering sore and since Obama's rise to political prominence on the national level, American racism has very much exploded back into the cultural mainstream. (Lots of people also lack the cognitive faculties to realize that saying you're not a racist does not strip any racism from your beliefs or any statement prefaced by, "I'm not racist, but...")

Were Obama completely of black genetic descent (Though he does identify as black despite his mixed ethnic background - which itself represents American diversity more than any white president ever has.) and were his skin tone darker, given the amount of racism we're seeing now, it's certainly possible that that could have had an impact on some of the people who did ultimately vote for him. I can't make any definite statements here, but I wouldn't count out the possibility of lighter and darker skin tones potentially making an additional impact - it's purely speculative to discuss it either way.

As for speaking in a more "urban" vernacular, as Reid was alluding to, we can all be honest - that would have sunk Obama early in the primaries. (And Republican National Chairman Michael Steele has embarrassed himself on numerous occasions now, having talked about wanting to put a "hip hop" spin on the party and worked in references to such slang as "bling-bling" that would make anyone of any age cringe. A great example of how utterly out of touch both he and the Republican party are with youth culture - there's a reason why Gen Y is predominantly Democratic and actually further-left progressive-leaning. We've seen what the Republicans have done to the country these past few decades, and they've screwed us directly in many ways.) Older voters certainly wouldn't vote for anyone who spoke that way. We may respond to "dumb redneck," but the American people wouldn't give any serious consideration to someone speaking as though they're from the streets of Harlem. (Regardless of whether they actually were.) It is funny how we'd take the former seriously, though, and how most of the country would write off the latter as not taking the office remotely seriously. (Look at Sarah Palin! And she didn't know anything.)

Ultimately, Harry Reid did nothing with his comments but show his age and that he's not completely politically correct at all times as Democrats are often stereotyped as a negative. There was no bigotry or malice in his comments, "negro" having been the standard appellation during the Civil Rights Movement in the '60s, when Reid himself was young. Reid called Obama and apologized as soon as these comments became public, only to come under predictable fire from the Republicans, desperate to destroy their opponents' image. Obama accepted Reid's apology and told him that the issue was closed as far as he was concerned. Likewise, Reid has received support from other Democratic leaders in the party, as well as key African American leaders in Congress and the Civil Rights community. Even Daily Show correspondent Wyatt Cenac did a remote in Nevada the other night to find that the black community there was fully backing Reid, having been a good, supportive leader concerned with their interests.

In addition to the double standard over conservatives who come off as inarticulate hillbillies vs. anyone who might affect a more ebonics-oriented manner of speech (Yes, I'm showing my whiteness with even this articulation.), conservatives showed again that they don't seem to quite understand the whole "racism" thing here. A problem that goes to the roots of many of their supporters, along with the constant accusation of "playing the race card." This is a party full of people claiming that we're living in a "post-racial" society where racism is now nonexistent. These claims amount to political posturing aligning themselves against ethnic minorities in the American population and denying the existence of a very serious problem that anyone with basic observational skills cannot miss in our culture. They're more than happy to welcome all kinds of racists into their "big tent," and their propaganda arm, Fox News, works very hard to avoid showing much of the discussion going on at the teabagger movement's demonstrations - the very racism internet bloggers have had no problem exposing by quietly infiltrating these meetings as supposed normal attendees. (The demographic makeup? Overweight, unhealthy middle and lower class white people who don't actually understand what they're protesting beyond that there's a black man in the white house and they're mad. These people will deny being racist if accused as well, and claim you're just trying to slander them, of course, like any other casual racist who doesn't think they believe anything wrong. A very saddening lack of self-awareness.) Likewise, they'd defend the famous racists in their party and stand by anyone who made a comment like Reid's if they were Republican - and if they were Republican, there's a good chance we'd be looking at a very different statement. (And one in no way defensible. I don't even want to know what people have undoubtedly said about Steele. His own incompetence makes it pretty clear that his being made RNC Chairman was a stunt not unlike Sarah Palin's VP nomination - an attempt to change the party's image while leaving their core substance as rotten as ever.) "Negro" is itself often taken as a slur today, but it has a somewhat more complex history than other, more open slurs that couldn't be mistakenly used as anything but. Harry Reid isn't a young man, and the divide over public reaction to his statements? It's a matter of context - of who is actually paying attention to the substance if what he said and the context of the words he used, as opposed to who is simply picking a loaded word not commonly or appropriately used today and using it to blindly cast aspersions of racism. But then, a large number of Republicans seem to look at racism as someone "playing the race card" - in their eyes, unjustly attacking someone who leans to the right. (And who's inevitably white.) They want to play up a narrative of the wealthy and white as "victims," while insisting that racial and ethnic victimization and negative slants against the African American community (Amongst others, Muslims and Mexicans being major targets too.) no longer exist. It's dishonest in an incredibly absurd way. Another out-and-out case of conservatives trying to dumb down a very complex issue - one that isn't being approached with anywhere near enough maturity in this country - to something black and white that portrays them as battered victims of some progressive minority conspiracy. Rhetoric like that only contributes to America's tendency to run in circles in terms of progress and lack thereof. This is only part of why the rest of the world doesn't share in our self-aggrandizing delusion that we're "the greatest nation on Earth."

Going back to Palin, here's where things get especially interesting. Longer term Spiral Reverie readers may recall that back in August of 2008, I observed that Sarah Palin was obviously picked as John McCain's running mate solely because the Republicans were banking on her as a gimmick candidate. She was an insult to the American people as a whole because they didn't consider her - let alone choose her - based on any of her qualifications. She was an especially sharp insult to women as an open anti-feminist figure who'd openly used her appearance to get ahead in life and stood for basically turning the women's rights movement back a good 50+ years in her own politics. I stated that she was chosen because after the anger over Hillary Clinton's dropping out of the race and conceding the final candidacy to Obama, Republicans assumed that America's women were so stupid that they would vote for McCain solely because Palin was a woman, regardless of how strongly she stood against progressive women's politics. It was a cynical, misogynistic decision banking on massive ignorance in the American populace - which the Republicans often rely on quite openly and gain from it far more often than they should. As I also called, the McCain campaign was dead wrong, Palin ultimately playing a major part in the sinking of the presidential bid.

Senior McCain Strategist Steve Schmidt recently appeared on a 60 Minutes special where Anderson Cooper interviewed him about the book and campaign, and bombshells were dropped. Joe Lieberman was - as everyone already knew - McCain's personal choice for his running mate. You can easily see what a match they would've made when you consider how many times Lieberman's turned on the best interests of the American people - even just in the past couple of months - but it would have been campaign suicide to pick a Democrat running mate thanks to today's extremely polarized political environment, the right largely squabbling like children and insisting they have to have things their way and no one else can have anything. (See: Their entire voting philosophy since Obama and the Democratic majority House and Senate took office.) Palin was clearly a desperate attempt to cash in on women, and Schmidt admitted that they were specifically looking for a woman - confirming everything I said back in 2008. What's worse? McCain Campaign Manager Rick Davis conducted his last minute search on - wait for it - YouTube and Google. This is how far they've fallen, and how little they considered the best interests of the American people. It wasn't about finding the best possible running mate, as Schmidt admitted, and it wasn't about qualifications or vetting - as they certainly didn't do that with Palin either, and it showed. It was all about finding a last minute trigger that'd get every woman in America to vote for them. They thought so little of the entire process that they'd just hit a search engine and everyone's favorite corporate-meathook-laden viral video site and find a magic bullet. What they got was someone astonishingly ignorant and proud of her ignorance. Someone who would be legitimately dangerous in a position of real power. Someone happy to lie at every turn, who couldn't even get her opponent's last name right during the Vice Presidential Debate that fall, accidentally referring to him as "O'Biden" once on air, notoriously only calling him that when out of the press's view.

This is what the Republican leadership thinks of America.