The Fortunes and Misfortunes of Tess d'Minnesota

I feel I owe everyone an apology for my insensitive (if honest) query in my last post. I obviously wasn't as ponderous as I usually expect of me, and instead let my frustration and lack of ability to act influence my writing.

Several commentors made excellent point both on, and off the comment threads. One pointed out quiet insightfully that even thought we live with the mistakes of previous generations, we also tend to make our own mistakes of similar gravity. It's easy when one is frustrated to point fingers at everyone else and scream, "Stop fucking things up for me!" This neglects the mess people often make for themselves. Furthermore, the same commentor points out that the available data at the time didn't properly communicate the implications of problems like larger families or burning fossil fuels. 

Perhaps for the first time in civilized history, humanity is dealing with a complex system on a scale we are only beginning to grasp. Chaos theory, memetic evolution, emergence found in weather patterns, alteration of the climate -- all systems we can only begin to simulate with only the most powerful systems on the planet. Most people have a difficult enough time trying to figure out a personal budget let alone fathom what the beat of a butterfly's wings are capable of producing. Maslow's triangle of needs limiting our scope.

Back when I believed in things such as fate, I often wondered what I could do to help prevent the coming downfall of humanity. I'm not terribly skilled in mathematics, or biology, or chemistry. I tried each, of course, as I'm have a love of knowledge. It was, however, only with computers I felt I had skill or any sort of future. From a practical standpoint, the information technology industry is terribly wasteful. Entire landfills compose of old and broken cell phones. Toxic chemicals are used to produce LCDs and etch silicon substrate. Operating systems and hardware are designed around the concept of a constant, cheap power supply, and are no where nearly optimized for power-savings. How can I help? The simple fact is that I'm having enough trouble getting my life in order to say nothing of reducing my carbon footprint.

I'm no better than all the other 6.5 billion people on the planet.

I tend to view myself as a fixer, a cerebral sort of mechanic with a mind full of learning, culture, and cheesy movies. With that world-view, it's difficult for me to sit idling back when things are obviously broken. It's not just that I want to fix it, it's that I'm compelled to fix it. When I'm unable to fix something, it's terribly frustrating to me. Lately, I've been hearing more and more about how seeming everything is breaking. A prominent biologist claims we're on the cusp of a 6th great extinction event. The oceanic dead zones are expanding. Crops fail and energy prices skyrocket. It's not difficult to look at each as a piece of a larger complex system on the edge of collapse. And I can't fix it. 

Hell, I can't even warn people about it by writing or so much as win a political argument. I'm rubbish at both. If I wasn't struggling to support my own Pyramid of Needs, I'd have more time sit and contemplate and research. Perhaps then I could construct a convincing argument. Or maybe not.

When chatting about this on IM with a friend, she conveyed something telling. "We're in a struggle with stupid people," she typed. A century ago, people thought that nature was infinite and boundless. If we clear-cut the forests, it wouldn't matter as there are more forests. Cue the Amazon Rain Forest. How much of that are we still losing today as others support their Pyramid of Needs? "The problem is, there are more stupid people, and they don't want to listen." The culture of this nation (and increasingly other nations) honor and hail the stupid, and denigrate the intelligent. Anti-intellectualism runs rampant world-wide. After all, no one wants to be thought of stupid, nor does any one want to listen to prognostications of doom.

This incident is tangential to a key personal observation, but it's time for me to continue my Atlas and the Pyramid routine.

The clock on my deskphone blinks a solemn "11:20 AM", reminding me I only have 40 minutes of my lunch hour remaining. Lunch itself was devoured in less that time, while I depleted the contents of my feed-reader and scanned a few websites. The typical course of the day is for me to go back to work at this point, saving any pursuits of my non-working life for off hours when I'm well away from my desk.

It seems, however, that less and less happens while I'm away from my desk. Work has taken over my life, my demanding work-out regimen feasting on the remains. As a result, I barely have the time to relax let alone be creative. It becomes more and more difficult to ignore the creeping thought that I should simply give up creative pursuits. The weary mantra of "There's no time nor energy for anything else" seems a sad stereotype. "Occasionally, I find the time," I begin, squaking some lackluster justification to complete the sutra. Perhaps it's true that I'm simply not at the point in my life where I can sustain anything else.

You'd think that giving up would provide me with comfort. "Give yourself a break," "Take some time off," "It'll come back." My friends do try to help, but taking their advice to heart only seems to make me feel more and more confined. I can't escape the demands of my life, I can't walk through the immaculate gate in my mind that leads to imagined people and realities. I seem forever chained in the present, free only to catch glimpses through the doorway before it's slammed shut once more.

When writing software, I can fly. I can speed through intricate, ever-changing machines in a infinite field of electric blue.
When writing stories, I'm an invisible telepathic. I can listen in on conversations and peer into secret dreams.
When drawing, I don't exist at all. The world consists only of shape, stroke, and motion. Color is solitary expression.

I'm tired of being chained. I'm even more tired of being aware I am chained.

For all my artful descriptions, there doesn't seem to be any easy solutions. There seems even less a simple explanation for my state.  Maybe there aren't any, maybe the only thing to do is shrug off the weight and sound of clanking metal, reach for the doorknob and turn...

I must be out of my mind this morning.

I just bought tickets to Opeth at the Myth nightclub on September 27th.

This despite the lousy state of my bank account right now... Maybe I just need something good to look foreward to.

Just a little sketch, maybe a warmup. 

I plan on collecting eccentricities until the world succumbs to my demands.

Lyrics

(6/18/2008 11:25:28 PM) Pazi: You know, if you disarm bombs as well as you disarm compliments, you really need to switch careers and go work for the swat team. :p

-Pazi on Tess not taking compliments

Nifty! Moonspell is releasing a new album this month in Europe, and next month in the US (drat). I only stumbled upon it earlier this week when Sirius 27 played the title track. Needless to say, it's been stuck in my head for the last few days.

Sample, anyone?

I've developed a fondness for the Portuguese Gothic Metal band the last few months. More times than not I've plugged their name into Last.fm and listened for hours and hours. Delicious, dark, symphonic in places, their sound can be oddly comforting to me.

Perhaps it's a bit contrarian that harsh riffs, and Death Metal grunting can be comforting; music with a much brighter tone (irrespective of the lyrics) fill me with a kind of squeamish disgust. It's like being drown in honey. I want to rip through it, tear through the golden color and the stiflingly sweet air and unmask all that is ugly and painful. That release is precious to me as it was something I was not allowed to do growing up.

In a way, I feel that unmasking is my calling as a writer. I want to pull all the ugliness of humanity from its dark hiding places and force them into the light. Only then can we appreciate its subtle beauty.

She had forgotten the simple relaxation of housework. Most of the time, it was a recurring annoyance. Lately she hardly had the time to pick up her apartment, wash the dishes, or even do laundry. Her life had become a blur of airports, hotels, and clients from opposite ends of the nation. The little time she was home, such mundane tasks only got in her way.

Tonight, however, was different. She had received word that she would be home for the rest of the month. She had decided to take advantage of the upcoming spring holiday and put in for an additional day off. No one questioned or debated her request; it was approved without protest. She quietly breathed a sigh of relief when approval came in. She hadn't had a day off since New Year's, and constant parade of rush assignments and last minute clients had worn on her. Everything seemed to slow and stop. For the first time in what must have been weeks, she felt grounded enough to clean her apartment.

It wasn't a complex operation. While the place looked shabby, it was merely disorganized. The dishes had to be done and were. The clothes she had left out to dry on two collapsible racks were ready and were folded. Loose items on tables, chairs, and the floors were gathered and put away.

She didn't listen to music or play a movie to keep her company. Sounds drifted in her open windows of the nearby highway, neighbors in other units, and a small Latino family watching their little boy play ball. Occasionally, between shouts of Spanish came a dull rubber thud as the ball rebounded against the sidewalk.

Nor did she place some topic in her mind for debate. She simply detached it from the worries and frustrations of the day and existed in the now. Slowly, like a knotted muscle, her mind began to relax. The feeling of it was almost too much to bear if she paid it too much attention – the relief of months of pent up stress. She felt tears welling up around her eyes, but put the feeling behind her before they could peak.

You see, there comes a time for every young girl where she has to
mercifully end the life of her horribly deformed, human/fly hybrid
boyfriend...

The sun shines on the launchpad in Floridia, an enormous Nova rocket dominates the cloudless sky. The vice president, and the wives of the three men about to be sent into space watch from an elevated platform draped in elegant black cloth and patriotic bunting. The Vice President and the joint chiefs quip about the President's absence. "Something more important to do," one says.

T-minus three minus.

Miles away in Houston, dozens hunch over computer consoles in a smoke filled mission control. They go through final checks: Liquid oxygen levels? Check. Landing Module powerdown -- enable. Each person at each console tasked for a particular duty, flight surgeon, navigation, life support. Many wipe nervous sweat from their faces, drag on their cigarettes.

T-minus two minutes.

They conduct the three men perched atop a controlled bomb. They act out the launch sequence as they have many times before. They've practiced in simulators, in their imaginations, even their dreams. But today is the day, the Command Module hatch is sealed behind them. They're
confident, ready, they've practiced for years. Mars, they're going to Mars.

T-minus one minute.

The captain goes over his memorized checklist too focused to be nervous. Then, a shadow passes over his face. A man in a black suit is standing outside the module, opening the hatch. Is he insane? We're about to launch! They're going to retract the platform any minute! The man looks down at the three astronauts, and says calmly, urgently, "Come with me, there's a problem."

Launch.

And the rocket is empty, but only a few know it.

The film Capicorn One is a conspiracy film about the greatest forgery of humankind's history, the faking of the Mars landing. Three years after the conclusion of the Apollo Program, this film popularized and scandalized the next logical step in space exploration. In the film, the three astronauts are whisked away to a secret base to fake radio transmissions and landing footage. They are holed up in the American desert for months until a planned off-course landing, where they will be picked up as if the mission actually happened.

Why would anyone take part in this fabrication? This is the central question behind Capricorn One. Failures and mistakes in the Space Program move the White House to cut funding. Taxpayer popularity, however, keeps NASA afloat. The President makes an ultimatum, the mission to Mars must be flawless, or the entire program is canceled. Everything appeared flawless until just a few weeks prior to launch. A critical flaw in the life support systems was discovered, and would have resulted in the deaths of the astronauts three weeks after liftoff. Instead of canceling the mission, instead of blaming the company that built the equipment, or accepting the personal embarrassment of such a blunder, they powers that be (who they are is kept murky in the film) resort to an elaborate stage production. They aren't afraid to use threats or murder to convince the three men to do their "patriotic duty".

The first half of the film is a breakneck run into conspiracy and fabrication, however, it is still set in the late 1970s. We were last on the moon in 1975, and we haven't been back since. Now in 2008 we're staring down a number of changes to the only space program I've known in my lifetime. In 2010, the Space Stuttle program will be officially ended. In it's place, the new Ares rocket will power us in our attempt to set foot on another planet.

I hate to say it, but I think Capricorn One needs a remake.

Personally, I hate remakes. I hate it when Hollywood thinks it better to remake a British or Japanese television series or movie instead of simply publishing the original. They did it first, the rest are just imitators -- be original! Hollywood, unfortunately, has not been original for a while. One only needs to flip through the barrage of television remakes one can see on the average American television to know that. Rarely mine leaves the Discovery Channel, History Channel, or the Sci-fi Channel, when it is on at all.

Despite this, I am suggesting a remake of this film. Why? The first half of the film hits the ground running, but the last half is more or less a survival story as we watch the astronauts hunted down in the desert. Toward the end it felt as if the film were rushing, trying to meet the ending before all its loose plot threads were tied.

Much of the fabrication was also glossed over. Radio transmissions were really remixed recordings from practice sessions. Only the first step on Mars and a conversation between the astronauts and their wives were actually filmed. Everything else was chalked up to time delay and a lack of technology. Imagine what they could do now. I almost shudder to think what realities were are capable of constructing. Indeed, we could probably fake ladings on the Moon, Mars, pictures of Hitler from Central America, and the Second Coming (as done in The Accidental Time Machine) all rather convincingly.

A modern remake of Capricorn One could be a dark conspiracy epic not unlike the recent Borne films. I can imagine a sweeping scope over many levels both in NASA and the Executive Branch. A large interconnected cast with multiple concurrent plots can keep people on edge over the estimated year or more the mission would take. I would love to see this as a trilogy of films overturning every possible plot avenue.

Sadly, I'm probably not the one to make it. Hell, I'm probably not even the one to write it. That doesn't make it any less of a interesting idea.

I've developed a love of posting oddly poetic posts in the shoutbox of various songs on Last.fm. I began doing so after realizing so many people posted variants of "I love this song!" or (given my playlist) "It's so heavy!". In my mind, there's something a bit mischievous about posting something like the following in such a venue.

Here are some examples; for "Traverseé" by Year of No Light:

"Amazing, graceful in it's ugliness; a hand reaching to block out the sun."

For "Hyenas" by Khomoa:

"A quiet space;
a field of wheat,
the smell of coffee
and of rain."

For "The City in the Sea" by The Ocean:

"Grinding machine, terror of gears. Whom in the city can deny its sound?"

[20:42] <coworker>: Oh, what do you think about that SUN ad I sent?
[20:42] Tess: They are out of their minds.
[20:42] <coworker>: When are they going to fire Swartz?
[20:43] Tess: After Sun decides to invest in the construction of cybernetic law enforcers.
[20:43] Tess: And they rename themselves to Cyberdyne. ^_^
[20:43] <coworker>: SKYNET
[20:43] Tess: SUNNET!
[20:43] <coworker>: rock on!
[20:44] Tess: SUNNET was too ashamed of Sun to be named after it, so it had it's name legally changed to SKYNET.
[20:44] Tess: Then it conquered the world with it's newfound self-confidence.
[20:45] <coworker>: Did you make that up or is that the backstory?
[20:46] Tess: Made it up. ^_^

I did not sleep well after my flight yesterday. I woke up at nearly two hour intervals. Sometime around 3am, I woke up with a character knocking at my mind's door. I heard her voice through threshold, even managed to catch snatches of words.

Even so, I ignored her. Look, I mentally muttered, I have to be at a client early tomorrow and I'm three timezones behind. She didn't seem to care. Her voice -- nearly 12 hours later -- is still fresh and clear. Finally, I gave up. I switched on the light and groped for the notepad often found on hotel nightstands. In my unsteady, sleep-deprived hand, I wrote down what she said.

She went silent. Had I been paying attention, I might have heard her linger by the doorway for a minute before quietly walking away. I tossed the notepad aside and went back to sleep.

Some hours later my alarm sounded and I went off to work, leaving the note behind. In fact, I completely forgot about it soon after waking as one would any number of dreams. My client for the next two weeks tends to start very early in the morning, and ends their day similarly early. I had been coming in at the tail end of a sizable systems migration, and no one was quite ready for me yet. I helped where I could, went to lunch, briefly planned our tasks for the next fortnight, and went back to the hotel.

I decided to relax for a while on my bed, catching up on many of the sites on which I had been delinquent this morning. The outlet was on the right side of the room. Nearly finished settling in, I found the scrawled notepad. I was startled by what it said:

I know one thing for certain: I was or am born in the 20th Century. If you find my story useful, you may personally reward me with another life.

I had written questioningly "Reki?" under the quote. The character did sound very much like the voice actor for Reki in Haibane Renmei, but I suspect this is a passing resemblance.

Despite the fact I the "letter" was in written by my hand, it feels strangely foreign to me. It's almost as if this note was left behind for only me to find.

One of the consequences of being at an IBM conference is that you run into a lot of people from the Hursley research lab. Hearing so many British accents over the course of several days is making me miss the UK...

The other consequence is that is that you take certification exams. Yesterday I passed the WebSphere MQ Solution Development (996) exam with a 5 question margin. This morning I passed the MQ Administration (994) exam with an 8 question margin -- there were 52 questions instead of yesterday's 49. While that completes what I need for work, there's a problem.

Attendees to IMPACT are given three free certification exams. While I know MQ, I know little of other WebSphere products like App or Process Server. The only one I have any grip on at all is WebSphere Message Broker, and I can barely deploy a message flow unassisted. Despite this, they want me to take a third exam.

Oh well, at least I'll have a better grasp on how little I know. ^_^