Issue 1:
Don't Bother Me, I'm Thinking
By
Medulla Vesuvius
“Rock over London. Rock on, Chicago. Choosey moms choose JIF.”There are literally hundreds, maybe thousands of lines I could have chosen from the catalog of songs by Wesley Willis to start this little missive. But why not choose to begin with a typical Willis-ian ending?
Why not choose the unconventional route?
That question has been rattling around inside my cranium the last couple days as I’ve listened to Rush Hour, an album by Wesley Willis. For you see, the crux of the matter is as follows: Wesley’s music was anything but conventional.
Now, some of you might say, “Not so, Miguel. Wesley was nothing short of formulaic in his methods: ’start the keyboard accompaniment with the Intro button pushed, do a few lines of spoken-word verse and howl out the title of the song as the chorus, repeat as desired and leave room for an “instrumental” break.’”
But Darling, you forget this formula only makes sense once you’ve heard Willis before. Let’s look at the bigger picture, shall we? In relation to all music that came before and has since come along, Wesley’s still defies comparison. (I would go so far as to say that his music even frustrates those who would attempt any kind of theoretical criticism, but more on that later.)
Can you think of any other recording artists who so obviously couldn’t sing a melody and whose literary level was just above that of a fourth grader? Can you think of any other creative minds that couldn’t be bothered with the task of making their own musical lines, so instead they entrusted the task to the auto accompaniment feature of a chintzy keyboard? Of course not. Mind you, none of the previous has been a value judgment; rather it has been an intentional statement of facts, more or less. I feel that Wesley’s music transcends questions of “well, is it good music or bad music?”
I’m still not sure to what extent Willis’ schizophrenia affected his ability to analyze his creative output. Obviously it did affect his creative voice, but I can’t help but wonder what went through his head as he performed his music in front of small crowds of people in little dives across the country. Was he aware of the ironic response of some people? Did he notice the sly, smug smiles on some of the faces in his hipster audiences? I’m not sure how cognizant he was of the various appreciative schemes that people brought to his music.
And that’s exactly what fascinates me about the phenomenon of Wesley Willis- the depth of the gulf between artist and his audience. There is no such thing as technique or subtlety in his artistic world. There is mere expression, pure and simple. There is no attempt to speak for a generation like a folk artist. There is no attempt to tell the truth with three chords like a punk artist. There is no attempt to capture the common heartbeat of humanity like a pop musician. There are simply the creator’s thoughts and their release into the wild.
So, while many people approach music so that it will “speak to them,” or help them organize their own experience, they’ll find no such comfort with a song that says, “The vultures, the vultures ate my dead ass up.”
But in Wesley Willis’ music is one of the last vestiges of the individual artist who creates, consequences be damned. His life seems far removed from that of the monstrous music business. I doubt he ever had record companies pressuring him to write a hit single to sell albums. And I don’t imagine he ever felt the pressure to give audiences what they want.
Life did not smile upon Wesley, suffering from schizophrenia and finally dying of leukemia in 2003. He’s kind of like Job in the Bible. It’s ironic that his act of creation, using the little resources he had been given-a keyboard and no specified singing ability or musical knowledge- said a lot about the human condition and the lonely, self-directed search for the sublime.
In the music of Wesley Willis is one man’s attempt to transform the unsilence-able voices in his head into homemade grasps at speaking the unspeakable.
Issue 1:
Life in Space
By
Mr. Atoz, The Librarian
This being my first review of an episode of Star Trek: The Original Series, I thought that I should lay out some ground rules. First of all, just to make things interesting, I’ve decided to review episodes going back to front. It’s heresy to say so in Trekkie circles, but there are several early episodes of TOS that I struggle to get through. Eventually, I will have to review them, but I thought this was a more fun starting point.
Next, I will give you my ratings system. A rating of “Jim!!” is the highest rating I can give to an episode. It not only means that it is objectively great, but that I enjoyed it and it finds itself in my DVD player many times. In fact, it’s so good that I may forget myself and all the imperfections in my character because I am so carried away in bliss over how much I enjoy the episode. The next rating is “Fascinating“, which means that it’s a good to very good episode, I enjoy it, and I’ll watch it if I am in the mood. But it is ultimately not one of my favorites. The third rating on the scale is “Indeed, Captain“, which means that the episode is decent or ok, but is flawed and I cannot find it in my heart to watch it much. The next rating is “Curious“, which means that I find the episode to be bland, lifeless, embarrassing, or just plain bad. Finally, the lowest possible rating an episode can receive from me is “I………am……a……Vulcan.” What this rating suggests is that I find the episode so offensive and deplorable that I have to lock myself in a room and remind myself of what I am and what my purpose in this world is, and I have to use all disciplines of self-denial and control to not “let the bad man in.” Now, on to the show………………..
Turnabout Intruder
Rating: “Jim!!“
Synopsis: The Enterprise crew receives a distress call from the science team on Camus 2. They discover Dr. Janice Lester and her associate, Dr. Coleman. Dr. Lester appears to be gravely ill. It is also noted here that Captain Kirk and Dr. Lester have a romantic past. Dr. Lester proceeds to stun Captain Kirk into some sort of body transformation device, which causes her to be impersonated in the body of Captain Kirk, and vice versa. “Kirk” attempts to kill “Lester”, but is stopped by McCoy returning with Dr. Coleman after having discovered the rest of the team dead.
The crew returns to the Enterprise along with Dr. Coleman, “Kirk”, and a barely conscious “Lester.” “Kirk” makes his way to the bridge and orders the heading for the Benecia Colony. Spock, of course, notes that that will delay their rendezvous with the Starship Potemkin. “Kirk” says that at Benecia, they can give “Lester” the medical treatment she should get. Spock notes that Starbase 2, however, is on the way and “Lester” could receive the proper medical care there. Oh, it’s sooooo on……
“Lester” then wakes up to find “her”self in a different body. “She” attempts escape, but is stopped by the real Lester’s lover, Dr. Coleman, who has been put in charge of “Lester’s” medical care by “Kirk”, to Dr. McCoy’s objections. “Lester” is then confined by Dr. Coleman in sickbay. “Lester” eventually escapes, but is met by Spock, McCoy, and “Kirk”, who proceeds to karate chop “Lester”, to the horror of McCoy and Spock, who have already begun to be suspicious of their captain’s strange behavior. “Kirk” has “Lester” reconfined, and McCoy demands a mental and physical exam of “Kirk.” Spock then goes in and speaks with “Lester”, who reveals what has happened. Spock then mind-melds with “Lester” to discover that “she” is telling the truth. Spock breaks “Lester” out of sickbay, but is met by “Kirk” and a security team, who charges Spock with mutiny.
There is a court martial, where Spock reveals who “Kirk” really is, but no one yet believes him because there is no evidence. “Lester” is brought in to testify, and says the same thing. During a recess, Scotty meets with McCoy to convince him that “Kirk” is not really the captain because he’s never seen the captain in a state of “hysteria.” McCoy is still unsure, but as he and Scotty return to the court martial, “Kirk” reveals that he has been listening to Scotty and McCoy’s conversation, and has them both arrested with charges of conspiracy and mutiny, which enrages “Kirk” enough to sentence the two of them along with Spock and “Lester” with the death penalty. The crew is enraged by this, and refuses to cooperate with “Kirk’s” order to proceed to the Benecia Colony. At this point, the impersonation begins to wear off (somehow), and “Kirk” freaks out and seeks out Dr. Coleman. A reluctant Dr. Coleman agrees to “Kirk’s” decision to kill the four prisoners, but as “Kirk” deactivates the brig, “Lester” charges after Dr. Coleman, and in the struggle, the phasers are dropped to the floor and the transformation wears off permanently. “Kirk” becomes Lester, and “Lester” goes back to being Kirk. Defeated and hysterical, Janice Lester breaks down in the arms of Dr. Coleman, who asks Captain Kirk to allow him to oversee Dr. Lester’s psychiatric treatment because he loves her.
I think this episode is a hoot. Rumor has it that Shatner knew this was the last episode of Trek, and decided to ham it up. Make no mistake; the Shat is the star of this show. You knew when he found out he was playing a woman, the wheels began to turn in that Canadian-Cool mind of his. Just watch how he walks and how he yells. He’s awesome! He’s the Shat!!I’m also a huge fan of the plot device of the hero being impersonated by the villain. It’s fun to see the actor get to play a different role. I don’t want to get into all the history and debate among the Trek Nation about the issues of chauvinism this episode addresses, because in my mind, that’s like debating that more flour should have been used in the cake when the icing is just so tasty. This isn’t a serious, groundbreaking Trek episode. This isn’t
Balance of Terror or
The Doomsday Machine (two historic Trek Nation favorites that I find to be very snooze-worthy). But it does have some significance in the fact that it’s the only time Captain Kirk is played by another actor.
One of the most interesting things here is how the story deals with Kirk’s interpersonal relationships. We really don’t learn anything about Janice Lester other than that she once was romantically involved with Captain Kirk, their relationship was volatile, and that she is a psychopath. We don’t know if she truly had feelings for Jim Kirk, if her vengeance was motivated by her hatred or possible rejection by Jim Kirk, or if she was using Jim Kirk to lash out at a male-dominated world. We can infer that she hates being a woman, but why is that? Is it because she is consumed by ambition to be a Starfleet Captain, or is it because at one time she was a stable woman who truly loved Jim Kirk, but had both her dreams of love and professional success taken away from her because her dual ambitions could not co-exist? It raises the question: how fine is that line between love and hate? Can we love someone so much that if we feel that they have hurt us, we will go to great lengths to hurt them back? The argument can be made that true love would never seek revenge on the object of one’s love and love is unconditional (I believe that), but are emotions so strong that something so beautiful can be turned into something so ugly by the circumstances of life?
There are other things about this episode that I like, from Spock’s abrasive attitude towards a clearly illogical “Kirk”, the fact that we are seeing this story through the eyes of Dr. McCoy, and the fact that this episode is in a small way your traditional Paranoid Captain story. It’s obvious that McCoy is so distraught over having to choose between his duty or loyalty to his friend. This episode is a great demonstration of why Dr. McCoy is my second favorite character in the series. It’s cliché to point this out perhaps, but he’s just so……human. Ultimately, the decision is made for Dr. McCoy, but up to the point where he actually sees the transformation reversed, he is conflicted.Love this episode.Next time: All Our Yesterdays.
Issue 1:
Escaping Life
By
Rascal Stallion
Today, I am a gladiator.I roam my homeland, traveling from arena to arena. Accompanied by my band of fellow warriors, I will whip any man, woman or creature who dares to face me. My blades are swift and my vengeance is furious and I will not be deterred as I lead my school to a championship in the high tournaments.
What is it?
Gladius is a turn-based rpg that went mostly overlooked on the deluged XBOX market. It follows young warriors Valens’ and Ursula’s quest to lead a school of gladiators to glory. The path to the emperor’s High Tournaments is not a straight one and with every turn a new series of adventures awaits. Gladius features a very expansive group of recruitable characters as well as a seemingly limitless supply of gear with which to outfit them. Particularly enticing are the mystical affinity weapons that allow you to rain down devastating levels of destruction on your opponents. With every battle you gain experience points, which when enough have been accrued, you level up and gain (guess what?) level points that can be used to purchase superior fighting moves and abilities. Level up enough and you’ll feel like you could take on a T-1000 all by yourself.
Gladius features four distinctly flavored lands that must be conquered before you can advance to the next, each one home to its’ own indigenous creatures and fighting styles. Imperia is the center of the civilized world and is home to many warriors who bring to mind the gladiators of Rome’s past. Barbarians inhabit the Sloan Forest region while archers dominate the plains of the Windward Steppes. The harsh desert terrain of the Southern Expanse is home to Whirling Dervishes (and also some big-ass scorpions.) Additionally, each land offers its’ own unique arenas, challenges and quests, some of which are obvious and others that are quite well hidden.
What sets it apart?
With quality voice work led by Smallville’s Lex Luthor, Michael Rosenbaum and Freaks and Geek’s Lindsay Weir, Linda Cardellini, the movies and cut scenes are at least passable. The storyline is a bit convoluted but not so much that it can’t be followed easily enough. Who really cares about the plot, anyway? Not me, I just want to bash an Amazon with my Minotaur.
Will I ever want to play it again after I conquer it?
A myriad of hidden quests and goals give the game a surprisingly high level of replayability and the multitude of characters you can add to your school allows you to add a level of freshness to each new game.
If you really want to exhaust all this game has to offer, set aside at least 80 hours. Gladius isn’t Morrowind deep but it’s still got quite a bit of content hidden away for the tenacious gamer to discover (or the googler who’s content to just look up all the hidden stuff.)
Final thoughts
Gladius came out in 2003 so you can find it pretty cheap. The price, coupled with the fun, expansive game play makes it a no-brainer purchase. Sure, some folks are turned off by the slower nature of a turn-based fighting system but let’s face it, those people are idiots.
Look, if you’re anything like me, you’ve whittled away countless hours daydreaming and debating with your friends about what would happen if a club-wielding Sasquatch fought a bear and an ogre inside of a volcano. Well my friends, put those arguments away and pick up your XBOX controller to settle the debate once and for all…inside the world of Gladius.
Issue 1:
Spotlight on Technology
By
Dr. Roger Korby
I recently splurged and bought a Mac Mini. I had been thinking about “making the switch” for about a year and when an Apple store opened up here in town late last year I knew it was only a matter of time before I would give in.
The Mac Mini has a lot going for it:
-It’s tiny (about the size of 5 CD cases)
-It’s quiet (it does have a fan but most of the time you can’t even hear it)
-It comes with OS X (see more about this below)
-It looks cool
The real star of the show is the OS X operating system (pronounced “Oh Es Ten”). Here are a few things I love about it.
- Expose – It’s like the Alt-Tab windows switcher in Windows but a lot cooler. It shrinks all your open windows down to where they all fit on the screen at once. Then you just click on the window you want to bring focus to.
- Dock – a bar at the bottom of the screen that contains all your running applications and shortcuts to applications.
- Hot corners - You can program it to do things like show the desktop when you move your mouse over the corner of the screen
- Quicksilver – This is probably the slickest application I’ve ever used and it is only made for OS X. It is basically an application that makes launching other applications beautifully simple. You press Control-Spacebar and Quicksilver pops up, then you just start typing the name of the application, file, song or what ever you are looking for and it brings up the item so that you can open it.
- The operation system feels much more responsive than Windows XP, especially when you give it a lot of RAM. Applications do hang up occasionally on OS X, but when they do, you can kill them much more easily and quickly than you can in Windows XP.
- Installing applications is really simple. For the most part it consists of dragging an icon of the application you are installing into your application folder. To uninstall, you just drag the icon from the application folder into your trashcan.
Apples have changed a lot over the years and some of the reasons people have hesitated to switch really no longer apply. Here are some of the most common Mac Myths:
1) You can’t open Microsoft Office files.
Microsoft makes a version of Office for the Mac. Office 2004 for OS X is completely compatible with the Windows version of Office.
Another solution is Open Office (available for free at OpenOffice.org). Open Office occasionally has trouble opening complex Word files (they will open, but they may not look exactly right). If the Word documents you work with are primarily just text, Open Office should work just fine
2) You can only use one-button mice.
With OS X, Apple introduced support for two button mice. So far I haven’t had anything to complain about regarding mouse support in OS X.
3) Macs are expensive:
With the introduction of the Mac Mini last year, you can now get an Apple desktop for around $500-600. While you could get a relatively more powerful PC from someone like Dell for this amount, it would be running Windows XP and it would look and sound like a full-size desktop.
4) Macs don’t work with Windows computers.
In some ways it is easier to share files between an Apple and a Windows PC than it is to share files between two Windows PCs. OS X finds and can communicate with all the workgroups on a network, whereas in Windows you have to specify one and only one workgroup.
However, there have been a few things in OS X that I have not liked so much.
1) The Home and End buttons do not work the way they do in Windows.
Instead you press the Command key and Left or Right, which takes two hands. If you’re used to just hitting the Home key, this can be irritating.
2) OS X doesn’t handle menu shortcuts the same way Windows does. In XP most menu items have an underlined character that you can jump to by pressing Alt and then that key. This isn’t an option in OS X and I miss it.
3) OS X’s antialiasing (the way it smoothes out the edges of fonts) just flat out sucks. You’ll probably hear a different story from a long time Apple user, but if you are used to Windows XP’s antialiasing, you are going to be disappointed. I’m hoping Apple tweaks this in a later version of the operating system, because it is really bad.
Apart from these complaints, I have been really happy with OS X. If you have been reluctant to switch from Windows to Apple, I can say from experience, it is an easier transition than I expected it to be. As far as a recommendation, I am actually kind of torn. Apple offers a great operating system and some beautiful hardware to run it, but OS X is a different experience from Windows. Long time PC users may find themselves missing Windows. Of course, for these PC-using hesitators, fear not. Microsoft’s new version of Windows (called Vista) should come out this year and will have many of OS X’s best features.
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