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pafib #5

Tadhg — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 02:43:53 +0000

I lose myself and it all goes away. All of the innumerable questions, all of the striving, all the wondering, the floundering, doubt. As I lose identity it takes those and other anchors with it. Spinning through experience, cut free, matter and concepts are indistinguishable and enveloping. They blend, cocoon-like, and soon the only distinction is between all and time.

All swirls and shifts as what had before been separate becomes one, and relinquishes shape, color and texture, draining off markers of distinction. Those markers fade, and all goes still. Remains still. Is still. Within this stillness, the absence of movement or action expands. Spreads past, outside, all, taking in the final piece. All, one, time, also, one. Only. All.

Nothing. A flicker. A flicker of awareness of difference, the possibility of difference, alien difference, difference implying, necessitating conceptually, a state that could encompass difference where before or after there had been no difference a state of either past or future and time broke back into itself can only pass with an observer and that meant required an aware I.

With I, all shattered into fragments, disconnected entities that make up the world. With each fragment, a name. With each name, a thought. With each thought, associations. Memories. Experiences. Personality. A whirling maze of infinite shifting connections, but a maze with a perceiving center in which I found myself. I was myself and in the world and surrounded by things.

I stagger. I look around and see them, these things, glaring in their concreteness. I cannot feel them, and then realize I can no longer feel the self that did feel them, or the self from before that, or the self at the start of this thought. I have myself, this disjointed mass of pathways, but I cannot feel it.

Tags: fiction, microfiction, pafib, writing

What the Hell is Fantasy Bedtime Hour?

Tadhg — Sun, 18 Aug 2002 08:00:18 +0000

Fantasy Bedtime Hour is a public-access cable TV show made by my friends Juliana and Heatherly. It revolves around the two of them reading selections from the Stephen R. Donaldson fantasy novel Lord Foul’s Bane, four pages at a time, and then discussing the section they read. They invite ‘experts’ on the book to discuss it with them on the show, and they also direct Fantasy Action Sequences, in which the selected portion of the book (or rather, their interpretation of that section) is acted out.

Everything in the show, except the Fantasy Action Sequence, takes place in bed.

Here’s my understanding of how this show came to be: Juliana was working for a startup a couple of years back, and had very little free time. A friend of hers recommended Lord Foul’s Bane, and she started reading it at night, which was the only time she to read. Working ten- and twelve-hour days didn’t leave much concentration for reading, and she would read about four pages a night before falling asleep. Lord Foul’s Bane is a somewhat portentous, involved novel, heavy in both style and subject matter, not really suited to being dipped into and digested in small chunks. So each night Juliana would read four pages, and the next night remember just enough of what was going on to continue.

After about eight or ten months of this, another friend of Juliana’s asked her what she was reading. Juliana said “Lord Foul’s Bane”, and the friend asked what it was about—a question to which Juliana, thinking about it, realized she had no answer…

And from that, somehow, Juliana and Heatherly came up with the idea for a TV show based on the two of them playing ditzy girls who trying to figure out the novel, in bed. They went through with this plan, resulting in the very weird public-access spectacle that startles the unwary every first and third Thursday of the month (and at other unscheduled times) at midnight on SF (AT&T Cable) Channel 29. (To be precise, that’s really midnight every first and third Friday, but everybody thinks of it as part of Thursday night, and that’s how they schedule it. So it airs a few minutes after 23:59, PST, every first and third Thursday of the month.)

It’s difficult to describe how bizarre the whole thing really is… if you’ve read Lord Foul’s Bane, you might understand how it’s really odd to see that book dealt with this way. And you’ll find it truly bizarre how completely off-base their understanding of the book is (as one viewer sent via email: “what are you doing to this great work?”) . On the other hand, if you’ve read the book, you’ll also appreciate how some of their (mis)interpretations border on comic genius. Really. Yes, it’s no-budget, digital-video, friends-as-actors, edited-at-home stuff, but it just rocks.

My involvement began relatively early, as Juliana found out in early 2001 that I’d read the novel a number of times, and insisted that I be an expert on it. When they filmed in August/September they wanted me as the first expert, and so I appear in that role on in the opening show. The brown jacket was something they insisted upon, I must point out.

I had a lot of fun doing it, but it was also tough because I had no idea whatsoever what kind of thing they’d ask me. I didn’t know, at that point, what the atmosphere of the show would be like, or that the two of them would be going for the ditzy approach. I really expected questions more concerned with the plot points of the book…

They brought me back for the fifth, compilation (or prevent-the-victory-of-Skynet), episode. That was a lot easier, because I knew what to expect (although you never really know what to expect from them), and was even more fun to do.

They plan to bring me back again, I hope that works out, I certainly had a good time playing the role of expert.

The official website is www.fantasybedtimehour.com. There are stills from the show there that should help get across some inkling of what it’s like. I hope to have downloadable clips of it (probably just the episodes I’m in) available on this site, but it could be a while before that’s ready to go.

Tags: article, fantasy-bedtime-hour, oldmisc, writing

Why I Use Free Software

Tadhg — Tue, 13 Aug 2002 08:00:30 +0000

Free software is important. As more and more individuals, services, businesses and governments turn to computers and the Internet, the role of software becomes increasingly critical in defining how our world works. The software used, and crucially the ways in which software can be used, have effects and implications that should not be ignored.

What do I mean by “free software”? I’m not referring to price, but to the freedoms possessed by users of the software. I mean software without restrictions that constrain my use of it. I mean “free as in speech” as opposed to “free as in beer”.

The opposite of “free software” is “proprietary software”.

The freedoms required to match this definition of “free” are those defined by the Free Software Foundation.

I’ll paraphrase those requirements:

The freedom to use the software however I like. This includes using it on many computers and/or platforms, using it for any purpose that I wish, using it wherever and whenever I wish without restriction, using it to interact with as many other people or programs as I wish, etc. Typical proprietary software licenses tend to restrict some or all of these examples.
The freedom to examine how the softare works, and to alter it as I wish. This must include access to the sofware’s source code. (An explanation of “source code” will follow.) This includes everything from changing the software’s default colors to reworking it entirely.
The freedom to share the software. This includes the source code. Helping others is a good thing, and I want to share my software without worrying about legal issues (which are becoming more serious and more common).
The freedom to modify the software and share those modifications. If I decide that I want to alter something in the software, I should be able to share any such alteration in the same way that I can share the program itself. This is beneficial for all concerned, since anyone else desiring a similar improvement to mine can use mine or modify mine for their own purposes.

There are other points, primarily concerned with closing loopholes in the above definitions, but the general idea should be clear, or clear except for an explanation of “source code”.

Software is often “compiled”, which essentially means translated from a form designed to be human-readable to a form designed to be machine-readable. The former is “source code” and the latter is “executable code”. Executable code is usually tailored to a specific hardware environment (like the Mac architecture, for example). It is possible, with a lot of effort, for some people to read some executable code, but for meaningful access to the workings of the software, source code is required.

The most common analogies for this are the recipe and the car. The source code is the recipe, and the finished meal is the executable code. This gets the general idea across, and perhaps the inherent meanness of someone refusing to share a recipe underscores the point. The only problem is that a recipe is intangible and the finished meal is not, whereas both the source code and the executable are intangible (i.e. recipe, source code and executable code can all be perfectly represented as pure information, whereas the meal cannot).

The other common analogy is the car: free software is a car that you can repair yourself; proprietary software is a car that has had its hood welded shut and that can only be repaired by the manufacturer. This works well as long as you consider that unlike cars, software can be distributed, and redistributed, at no cost.

So, the source code is what you need so that you can figure out how the software works, so that you can alter the software (or have someone else alter it) to suit your needs (or to fix bugs in the software). Without the source code, you are entirely dependent on the software’s author(s) to make the alterations you desire.

I use free software because its benefits are far greater than those of proprietary software. The first reason for this is duplication of effort. If all software were free, then coders would rarely have to reinvent something already made by another coder. This is obviously beneficial to the community at large, since efforts could be redirected to improving available software or writing entirely new software.

The second reason is that free software is more compatible with a philosophy of helping others, of sharing with the community, and of contributing to the general good.

The third reason is that proprietary software manufacturers, in seeking to maximize profits, use the fact that their software is proprietary to lock users and vendors into even less free relationships.

The fourth reason is that I want my data to be freely available to me, forever. Proprietary software tends to use proprietary (i.e. secret) data formats, and also to degrade compatibility between different versions of these formats, in order to push users to buy the latest versions of their packages. Free formats, in contrast, tend to be very well supported, very well documented, and long-lived. In addition, using free software means that if absolutely necessary I can always in the future either write or hire someone to write a module that would interpret the free data format my data is stored in—a far more difficult proposition when using proprietary software and proprietary formats.

Free software is a more participatory model, is better for software development in general, better for communities in general, promotes sharing, and often produces better software.

Relevant Links

The Free Software Definition—the FSF’s definition.

Why Software Should Not Have Owners—some of the reasoning behind the free software model.

Peruvian Congressman’s letter on why the Peruvian government should use free software—long but very very good, outlines many of the reasons why governments should not be using proprietary software.

Tags: article, politics, tech, writing

pafib #4

Tadhg — Fri, 09 Aug 2002 08:00:59 +0000

I am lost, my head whirls, I know not where I am. The music crashes all around me. Notes are coming and going, eluding my grasp and my sight as I try to catch or follow them. Even this I only try sporadically, when I can wrest my mind from the glory of it all. A labyrinth of beautiful sound.

There must be a way out. But oh that beautiful melody! But ah that sublime harmony! The divinity of genius! The, the, the ways words fail, words cannot describe the music, the music is not for words or describing, and that is the key, to concentrate on the words, the inadequacy of the words reminds me that I am trapped.

I know that I must get out. Music cannot sustain the body. My body does not appear to be suffering, but I do not know how long I have been here. Can I measure time in sonatas and symphonies? No. They all blend in to each other, and some period passes before I realize that there has been any transition.

Can music sustain the soul? I do not know. Perhaps the soul needs words. Words. I will translate the music into words, even if this is impossible. The attempt itself will ground me, bring me closer to some exit, the futility-ee of struu-uugle dum de da da dum trails trails trails trills la laaaa didididi dum la da

Tags: fiction, microfiction, pafib, writing

MTGO Needs Replays

Tadhg — Thu, 08 Aug 2002 08:00:07 +0000

First of all, this is not a criticism of Leaping Lizards. The features I discuss below are certainly important, but they’re more important in terms of the overall health of MTG than to the narrower concern of making MTGO work (which is what LL, presumably, are responsible for). If the features don’t appear, it is a failing on the part of WotC much more than LL, and while I hope that the LL team will see the benefits and include them, I suspect that pressure needs to be brought to bear on WotC to pay for what I suggest.

My concern is with replays. Specifically, the ability (currently lacking) to share replays. Sharing replays would immeasurably increase our understanding of the game, a goal which hopefully needs no explanation.

Currently, describing games of MTG is laborious and clumsy. Match reports give overviews and then some detail on what the reporters see as critical points, but they are sketches at best. It’s difficult to accurately report on every event in a game. That’s a major obstacle in our attempts to understand the game better. It should be evident that being able to study games in depth is critical to increased comprehension of how to play well, and that detailed accounts of past games are critical to said deep study.

MTG Online offers us a chance to get past that. Everything that happens in the game is noted by the program itself. And we each have the ability to study our own games. However, the feature as it stands now is completely inadequate, for one main reason: we cannot share our replays with other players. We can’t send them to other players with notes about specific turns and what they think we should have done. We can’t examine other players’ games to see how we should improve our play.

A clear demonstration of how this constraint imposes a low ceiling on dialog about the game is found in Andrew Johnson’s Concepts of Magic: Case Study article. No criticism of Andrew is intended, but the format is awkward, and it’s not easy to follow what’s going on in detail. We get the basic gist of the games, but that’s not really enough for the kind of analysis that Andrew is attempting. Obviously, the fact the that games were played in MTGO help a lot, because he is able to replay them, take notes, take screenshots etc., but it’s still a convoluted process.

How much easier would it be if he could just point to a link and tell the readers to grab that file, open it in MTGO, and then refer to specific turns or events?

How much better would our understanding of the game be if we could all do that, and also see the games that the top players play? A lot better. The leap would be comparable to the leap in deck construction made by the ability to share decks on the Net… although without the issue of people simply copying outright.

The point of all this is that WotC should make the ability to share replays a priority for MTGO. I say this knowing what the other issues (Judgment, bugs, the "13 states", etc.) are, but I still think that in the long run, for MTG as a whole (rather than just MTGO), the replay-sharing is more important. MTGO needs to provide two main things (the others are just frosting) in order to take advantage of this opportunity to increase understanding of the game immeasurably:

Replay sharing. Ideally, this should be in the form of downloadable files that players can share, but if game identification numbers that have to be referenced in the game is the only way it can be done, well, that’s not a huge loss.
LL apparently want to implement this feature at some point, and the following are links to the relevant entries in Bugzilla:
http://www.lplizard.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=16703
http://www.lplizard.com/bugzilla/show_bug.cgi?id=2628
This one isn’t a simple bug, and I doubt that there’s any way this could happen without serious pressure (and money) from WotC: the ability to use the MTGO client as a game notation program for offline matches. That might not sound too exciting, but it would completely revolutionize match coverage, and again reap rewards in terms of being able to analyze high-level play. Essentially, what’s needed is a graphical client that match reporters could use during Top Eight and Featured matches. This eliminates the need for either clumsy notation or extremely high detail when recording the match, and the need to wade through that when reading about it. Instead of that, just download a file from (for example) the SideBoard’s coverage, then play it in MTGO, and that’s it, see the match in full. Really, this would be an amazing, amazing feature.
This Buzilla entry indicates that the backend ability to script games is already present in the system, as that’s how the tutorial games were created. That functionality is restricted to administrators, and sounds as if the process of creating a game involves scripting. So what would be needed is a simple, drag-and-drop frontend for match reporting. I don’t think that’s an easy thing to just whip together, and I strongly urge WotC to do whatever is necessary to get it into MTGO. The infrastructure is already there, it just needs that last piece. (And as a real pipe-dream thought, how about hooking it up to voice-recognition functionality and being able to notate live games by speaking? It’s not beyond the bounds of possiblity…)
Moving backwards and moving to specific points in replays. This would just make everything a lot easier. If you’re trying to analyze a specific situation, it really helps to be able to go back and forth over it, and to be able to step directly to specific point. This Bugzilla entry, and this one, suggest that rewind would be very difficult to implement, which makes the ability to go to a specific point even more important (because people are likely to fast forward to something, and then miss it, and then be unable to rewind). I’m hoping that the MTGO replay code already tags events in some way, in which case it should be relatively simple to tell the program to keep fast-forwarding until a specific event occurs. If not, that’s something that they should really think about putting in…
Adding notes to games. Commentary, especially commentary that could be tied to specific events, would be an excellent addition. The Bugzilla comments referenced in point 2 suggest that this is possible on the backend already, but ideally the system would allow anyone to modify a replay file and add commentary.
Some people have suggested audio commentary, but I don’t think there’s a need to tie that into the client itself; it seems rather easy to synch up an audio player and start a recorded track of commentary at the same time as the replay.
Viewing and creating replays offline. This comment from LL indicates that playing replays offline won’t be possible, which is a shame; it’d be great to analyze games on a laptop on your way somewhere. However, that’s a pretty minor need, and the need to be able to record replays (i.e. create replays from live games as per point 2) while offline is much greater. Some Premier Events occasionally have Net access problems, and it would be bad to miss recording a final because of line noise…
Playing from the middle of replays. Now, this is something that I can’t see happening, since it seems really difficult to do, even without considering card-ownership issues. I list it here purely because it would be nice to take situations in games and play on from them to see what approaches might work better.

So those are the things MTGO needs. The first two are critical, the others are bonuses. Sharing replays is absolutely crucial to the evolution of the game, and being able to turn offline games into replays as per point two would make that even more useful. For comparison, consider chess and Quake, both games that have benefitted hugely from players being able to examine matches in full detail. Bringing that to MTG would be tremendous for the game. How about it, WotC?

Tadhg (Erisian on MTGO)

(Another version of this article appeared on Star City Games, with alterations by that site’s editor.)

Tags: article, essays, games, MTG, writing

pafib #3

Tadhg — Tue, 19 Mar 2002 08:00:24 +0000

Seized with the deepest sadness, I know not why. The beach is beautiful, the sea an expanse of calm gem-like blue. Waves lap against the shore, whispering tales of the faraway. The sadness confuses me; I do not know where it came from or how. No event that I could discern preceded its arrival. Perhaps I had missed something.

I ponder the meaning of it. What is its meaning if other events occur? As it is the deepest sadness, it leaves me unable to adequately respond to further developments. If there were some calamity, if The Day were to come, the rumblings beneath the ocean and the collection of our souls and minds, could I feel any more sad?

Perhaps the point is not allowing our emotions to seize us, but for us to seize them. I consider this as I walk, then surprise my sadness with a sudden move, throwing it off briefly and allowing me to grip its throat. We wrestle in the sand, cheek to cheek, as the wind rises and the waves begin to crash.

Tags: fiction, microfiction, pafib, writing

pafib #2

Tadhg — Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:00:34 +0000

“What does it mean?” “I don’t know, I’m not sure it means anything.” We stared down at it. It didn’t appear to be moving, although the night was dark and I wasn’t certain. Most likely it was just shadows playing as the clouds moved across the moon. The slight noises were probably the wind, but… it was hard to say.

I thought it might mean that the West would fall, only to rise again. My friend dismissed this, saying that if it had any meaning at all it was connected with the discovery of new physical laws at the quantum level. We kept staring but no answers came, even after the sun rose and set and rose and set again.

Tags: fiction, microfiction, pafib, writing

pafib #1

Tadhg — Mon, 18 Mar 2002 08:00:10 +0000

I don’t know what’s happening to me but I think it’s bad. My emotions are squirming through the carapace, now cracked, that kept them in. I don’t think other people can see them. They leave tendrils in me as they emerge, so that I feel an echo when my heartbreak or a small happiness wriggles out and envelops somebody else.

Tags: fiction, microfiction, pafib, writing

A Review of Haiku Tunnel

Tadhg — Fri, 08 Mar 2002 08:00:23 +0000

Haiku Tunnel begins with a disclaimer to ward off litigation, but this common conceit is still freshly amusing because of Josh Kornbluth’s excellent delivery and material. This film has very little plot, just a basic framework around which to hang comedy: Kornbluth is an archetypal loser-temp who is asked to ‘go perm’ on his first day at a law firm. The stock characters one might expect (a hellish Head Secretary, for example) are in evidence, but played so well that they seem new. The film has very clever touches, such as the sound effects that precede said Head Secretary, and excellent comic timing throughout.

Kornbluth himself is absolutely excellent as the protagonist, completely believable in his earnestness and inability to stick to the job at hand. His delivery of the tale at the center of the film, concerning the Haiku Tunnel, is extremely convincing and gives the sense that there may be a deeper message despite the consistently light touch.

The most important thing, however, is that it made me laugh. A lot. I laughed steadily through the whole movie, and didn’t notice any missteps along the way. It’s set in San Francisco, incidentally, and anyone who has lived here, has experience with law firms, or has been a temp should see it. Haiku Tunnel reminded me of a slightly lighter Living in Oblivion, and if you haven’t seen both those movies, I highly recommend that you rectify this as soon as possible.

Tags: criticism, film, reviews, writing

A Dream

Tadhg — Mon, 04 Mar 2002 06:26:41 +0000

I had this dream when I was about eleven or twelve.

I am with a friend, at the top of a cliff on the Irish east coast. We’re on the side of a road, and on the other side is some yellowing grass, and then the clifftop. The road is probably modeled on Vico Road in Dalkey, but without any of the easy paths down to the beach. The only way to the sea is to climb down the cliff. My friend doesn’t want to climb, but I decide to go ahead anyway. It takes effort but doesn’t seem particularly dangerous, and in short order I have clambered to the bottom.

I stand on the sandy beach looking out at the sea. It’s a sunny day, and the sky is a light blue with some wispy white cloud in the distance. The sea is a deep, dark blue, and quite calm. There are no waves breaking on the beach, but rather the water is gently lapping at the shore. I feel a sudden pang of fear, and turn around.

The cliff is gone, as is the beach. I am standing on a sandbar. There is no coastline anywhere in sight, and the ocean stretches endlessly around me.

Tags: dreams, oldmisc, personal, writing

www.mame.dk Closes

Tadhg — Mon, 25 Feb 2002 08:00:21 +0000

www.mame.dk has stopped allowing downloads from its collection of MAME ROMs, the most complete resource of them on the Web, in response to legal threats from a “copyright holder”.

This pisses me off. MAME is a fantastic, Free program that emulates arcade games, allowing them to be played on a variety of platforms. Since many of these games are no longer available, and since they comprise a very important part of gaming history, MAME is critical to gaming culture. The way it works is that MAME allows the games to be played if the user has the correct ROMs for them; these ROMs have to be extracted from the original boards that were inside the arcade machines. It is these ROMs that mame.dk archived and made available for download.

Of course, most of these ROMs were protected by copyright. In many cases copyright holders no longer exist; in others they have no interest in games that no-one has played in decades. On the other hand, some of them have a financial interest in suppressing the spread of the ROMs because they wish to re-release the games, or they feel that thes older games compete with their current products.

This is a clear case of copyright law at its worst, where almost no-one is accruing any revenue from selling these ROMs (indeed, they are almost impossible to buy, and few if any of the companies holding the rights to them are interested in selling them) and yet companies seek to suppress their dissemination to protect their current offerings. In actual fact, many of the attempts at suppression come from umbrella organizations like the IDSA, who inflate the “damages” done by the availability of ROMs in order to make their own activities seem more important. In general, they exaggerate the effect of copyright infringement for the same reason, and they seek to establish an equivalency between unlicensed copying of currently available programs and unlicensed copying of programs that have not been on sale for more than twenty years.

Legally, these are the same. Since copyright law is primarily designed for books and music, neither of which tend to become obsolete in three to five years, no provision is made for this kind of software-specific situation. Nor, of course, is any provision made for concerns like the preservation of cultural artefacts. Because of the relative newness of videa games to the culture, libraries do not archive them; no institutions make sure that they are preserved. On the other hand, because the video game industry is so fast-moving, games become old within a few years, and the financial incentive for preserving them disappears. Nevertheless, some (albeit extremely minor) financial incentive exists to suppress their preservation. For groups like the IDSA, the incentive is more significant and tied up with their larger agenda, which is not necessarily in keeping with the interests of all their member companies.

In the case of www.mame.dk, a number of things stand out. First is the the “copyright holder” is unnamed. It seems likely that this is the result of legal threat. That’s sheer speculation of course, but it is still the most likely explanation. In addition, the people running the site chose to shut down all the ROM downloads instead of only those in which this “copyright holder” had an interest. Was this also the result of a legal threat? Or did the site maintainers decide that once they started getting legal threats, enough was enough? I’d like to know; I also think that they should have a look at www.chillingeffects.org, a recently-opened site designed to help small sites withstand legal pressure.

Unfortunately, I suspect that www.mame.dk are gone for good. This is a shame, and represents the loss of a good service, and is yet another way in which copyright laws that are a) weighted towards the interest of the copyright owners instead of the public interest, and b) not tailored to specific technologies, serve to do damage to our culture.

Tags: copyright, politics, writing

Ashes I

Tadhg — Fri, 22 Feb 2002 08:00:00 +0000

Ashes
Ashes on a window, smearing in the rain.

The ashes are what’s left of love,
What’s left of desire,
What’s left of belief.

The window is my eyes,
Which once let the sun onto my soul
Which once let my sun shine out.

The rain is time,
The movement of moments
Away from happiness.

Tags: poetry, writing

Super Bowl XXXVI

Tadhg — Sat, 02 Feb 2002 08:00:36 +0000

I didn’t enjoy it at all. A game where one team doesn’t show up until the fourth quarter isn’t my idea of fun. Sure, it was a close game, and sure, it defied the odds and so on, but the game itself was poor. I wanted the offensive fireworks. I wanted Marshall Faulk to break 200 yards total. I wanted Warner to Bruce for 50+ yard gains. I wanted the beauty and excitement of the ball travelling sixty yards to be plucked from the air with perfect timing and precision—and not on punts. I wanted to see all the rhythm and speed of The Greatest Show on Turf, and not stop-start drives that made me wonder who stole the Rams’ groove. I wanted grace and co-ordination on offense, not a defensive struggle that took the sublime out of the game for 45 minutes.

And I didn’t want the Patriots to win. The Patriots. The name alone, especially in these times, with Fox cramming military pomp down our throats even in introducing the players, is enough to make me gag. It has to be bad when I don’t root for the underdog even a little. And their route to the game… a bad call, fortuitous weather, inches on several plays, a mere foot (if that) over the crossbar, and luck on the coin toss—and that’s just against the Raiders. The Patriots. Dink football, and not even with the style of last year’s Ravens. One offensive touchdown from them in the whole game… that’s not supposed to be enough to win Super Bowls. Especially not against the Rams. The better team didn’t win this game, because the better team wasn’t bothered to show up until about 48:01 into it. And while the military bullshit would have been bad either way, it’s worse because it’s the Patriots, and I’ve already heard one commentator talk about how they came into the matchup “outgunned, outnumbered, unable to compete against the weaponry of their opponents” or some such horseshit. And now we get to hear about them being a Team of Destiny. Pah. Who spiked the Rams’ drinks before the game?

Tags: football, oldmisc, sports, writing

Credibility and authorial strategies in “The Tell-Tale Heart” and “The Yellow Wallpaper”

Tadhg — Wed, 10 Oct 2001 08:00:19 +0000

The Gilman and Poe stories discussed in this essay deal with bizarre events that are made plausible to readers in ways that I will examine.

The concept of credibility as it applies to these stores is divisible as follows: whether we believe that the events occurred as reported by the narrators; that the narrators are telling the truth as they know it; that the narrators (and other characters) are real; and that the ‘realistic’ events in them happened. The last question is the most interesting, as it is layered beneath the text itself. Both stories deal with apparent madness, and in both of them we find it difficult to tease out ‘actual events’ from those that occur only in the wild imaginings of the narrators. The concept of ‘actual events’ is critical because none of the events are actual, but rather all are fictional. The fact that readers will be driven to distinguish between different levels of ‘reality’ is very important to both stories, in particular as a method of making the overall story more plausible.

Of the two, “The Tell-Tale Heart” is more straightforward. It leans heavily towards a reading that the narrator is mad, underscored by his frequent early denials.

How, then, am I mad? Hearken! And observe how healthily—how calmly I can tell you the whole story
(Poe, p92)

Most revealing are his claims of universality.

If you still think me mad, you will think so no longer when I describe the wise precautions I took â€¦ I cut off the head and the arms and the legs
(Poe, p95) .

These demonstrations of what he thinks is reasonable show clearly that he is mad. Nevertheless, the story makes you wonder. The character of the narrator is so believable, and his tale so compelling , that the reader is caught up in the telling. At least at first, we believe that he believes, even if the tale itself is dubious, and we then begin to separate his delusions from what ‘really’ occurred.

“The Yellow Wallpaper” takes the form of journal entries rather than an oral tale, and this alters its credibility. In “The Tell-Tale Hear” we are given only hints of how the narrator’s madness came to be, and he is too far gone by then to believe that his feelings are other than reasonable.

One of his eyes resembled that of a vulture—a pale blue eye, with a film over it. Whenever it fell upon me, my blood ran cold;
(Poe, p92)

Gilman slowly develops the obsession of the narrator, beginning with suppressed resentment of her husband.

… I don’t care—there is something strange about the house—I can feel it.
I even said so to John one moonlight evening, but he said that what I felt was a draught, and shut the window.
…
He is very careful and loving, and hardly lets me stir without special direction.
(Gilman, p155)

Gilman weaves this in closely with examination of her surroundings, which always end up focusing on the wallpaper. The first section ends with a six-paragraph long description of it, including this particularly telling passage:

It is dull enough to confuse the eye in following, pronounced enough constantly to irritate and provoke study, and when you follow the lame uncertain curves for a little distance they suddenly commit suicide—plunge off at outrageous angles, destroy themselves in unheard of (sic) contradictions.
(Gilman, p156)

This establishes her fixation early on and effectively foreshadows the course the narrator herself will take.

Both authors concentrate on making plausible the obsessions of the protagonists. Poe, in a much shorter work, succeeds primarily with voice and style.

You should have seen how wisely I proceeded—with what caution—with what foresight—with what dissimulation.
…
And then, when my head was well in the room, I undid the lantern cautiously—oh, so cautiously—cautiously (for the hinges creaked)—I undid it just so much that a single ray fell upon the vulture eye.
(Poe, p92)

Gilman builds her narrator’s disintegration more slowly, showing the obvious sublimation of her frustrations into her unhealthy fascination with the wallpaper.

There’s one comfort, the baby is well and happy, and does not have to occupy this nursery with the horrid wallpaper.
â€¦
I never thought of it before, but it is lucky that John kept me here after all, I can stand it so much easier than a baby, you see.
â€¦
There are things in that paper than nobody knows but me, or ever will.
(Gilman, p161)

Both stories involve sublimation/repression heavily, with Poe’s narrator breaking down and confessing under the weight of suppressed guilt.

The sublimation is in each case critical to the story, and could be argued to be the crux of the story. The authors have taken pains to make it credible that suppression of feeling could have the results described. This enhances plausibility overall, but also creates tension between different aspects of the stories—tension that ultimately reinforces that plausibility.

In both stories, the narrator’s obsession serves to render their subjective credibility (i.e. the degree to which it is credible that they believe what they are saying) more effective while undermining their objective credibility. In addition, they enhance the credibility of the characters’ madness. This disjunction is significant because it is what pushes us to divide the stories into different levels of reality. Convinced by the stories that the narrators are mad, we analyze them to distinguish the imagined from the real. Once we do that, we privilege the parts that we decide are real, and we readily believe that certain of the events in the story really happened—the murder of the old man and the spontaneous confession in Poe, the naked creeping and tearing at the wallpaper in Gilman.

These events are in themselves rather bizarre. By focusing our disbelief on the fact that the narrators cannot be trusted to fully know reality, the authors consolidate our belief in two other pillars of the stories: that the narrators are believable as characters, and that the events which are not clearly madness really did happen. In other words, our dismissal of the beating heart and of the creeping ladies in the wallpaper serve to heighten our credulity regarding the murder and, in both cases, the catastrophic breakdown of the narrators. Similarly, our drive to discern what events are ‘real’, as opposed to entirely in the minds of the narrators, cause us to accept the rest of the story as real. This is no small effect. A man murdering a housemate because of his eye and confessing because he heard the still-beating heart, or a perfectly respectable middle-class woman (married and sister to doctors, no less) going entirely mad because of wallpaper are not particularly believable events in themselves. Convincing readers of the plausibility of these events is a feat in itself, and accomplished so effectively in both of these stories that we take it for granted.

(1158 words)

Gilman, Charlotte Perkins. “The Yellow Wallpaper.” The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Poe, Edgar Allan. “The Tell-Tale Heart.” The Oxford Book of American Short Stories. Ed. Joyce Carol Oates. New York: Oxford University Press, 1994.

Tags: article, criticism, essays, gilman, poe, short-story, writing

Everything is fine and then

Tadhg — Thu, 20 Sep 2001 08:00:39 +0000

A hollow sea
Coming in with the tide
Washing over my mood
Trickling into the rock of my self
Seeping through to my soul
Filling me until I
Too
Am hollow

Tags: article, poetry, writing

Untitled

Tadhg — Wed, 19 Sep 2001 08:00:00 +0000

Again
Again
Again
Fire trapped beneath

Blood
The blood flows through my veins
It wants expression
It wants a voice
It wants to be heard
It wants to be fire

I ignore it
I bury it under conformity
I muzzle it
I maintain an icy grip
I cut off its flow
I am slowly and deliberately killing myself

Tags: article, poetry, writing

For Juliana/Sex, Skating and Nanobots in 300 Words

Tadhg — Sun, 09 Sep 2001 08:00:31 +0000

As she stood at the top of the hill, Jackie was unaware her survival depended on something that began with sex.

After mechanical devices, humans tried electrical stimulation—externally, then hooked into the brain. Effective but crude. After weaning-off, volunteers still sane claimed that, although very good, the pleasure was monotonous.

The lights seemed right. Jackie leaned forward on the board, beginning her descent. Traffic was heavy, and gravity brought her past it swiftly. That was easy. Going through reds was not. Three intersections down, a red. Traffic from both sides. So soon—a bad omen?

They tried fluctuating the current, introducing randomness, but could not alter the strange blandness. The technology remained popular, lethally irresistible.

Flashes, decals, in focus so briefly, a realtime montage. Lean left, back very slightly, imperceptibly, then touch one sneaker off the ground, in the blink of an eye. Those precisely timed acts brought Jackie through the cross-flow, untouched by the cars.

They examined direct stimulation of the brain more closely—if they could master the nuances, react to changes at a neural level… Nanotechnology was the key. Indescribably tiny robots, stimulating the brain’s pleasure centers.

Insanely fast now. Everything a blur but sense of self, sense of board, sense of balance. This core of Jackie amongst the blurred world, held together by skill. And danger, any miscalculation meaning death.

They cracked the code for human pleasure, propelling nanobots into the big time. All kinds of neurological changes were demanded and provided, beginning a lasting symbiosis. The human nervous system became shared biological/technological space.

Jackie took this for granted, but only it got her through. Eight reds run, and through each nanobots massaged neurons, amplified signals, helped calculations.

At the bottom, Jackie looked back up, shaking, and knew she had to do it again.

(300 words)

Tags: fiction, microfiction, writing

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