The Neon Mango

Been churning out a few of these in the last two weeks. Not sure if this will get turned into anything longer but I think it can be enjoyed for what it is.

                There are three things she told me to never do. Otherwise Squak – she didn’t seem to mind that I called her that even though she insisted the rest of the crew called her Captain Lestrade – let me do what I wanted on her ship, the Neon Mango, although most of the time I was content to sit in my tube and read. My quarters were separate from the rest of the crew’s, right in the nose. Having the feeling of being in the front of the ship was worth the extra few rems per month my body absorbed. Besides, she said, I could afford to absorb more anyway. I never talked to anyone else except Squak and sometimes her life support technician, who seemed as aloof and absorbed in his work as I was.

                Of her three rules for me, the first was to never make eye contact with the navigation octopus. Apparently this made it aware of the location of its fleshy body. It needed to constantly believe, spatially anyway, that its body was the ship. She could have used an AI but she insisted that an octopus was better, something about it having millions of years to perfect its spatial awareness in three dimensions whereas we only had about a hundred years of making machines that could do this. She called him Gumby. Whenever I would float by his tank I always wondered what would happen if I did, just to mess with things. I don’t know how I would feel if I thought my body was the Neon Mango. But then again, had I been bred to be a navigation octopus, I probably wouldn’t care.

                The second was to never talk to the crew about the circumstances of my discovery. It wasn’t much of a problem since I didn’t talk to the crew ever. The extent of our interactions was awkward waves as we floated past each other in the corridors and even more awkward silences in the gravity spinner. We had to go in there once a week, even me, to keep our bone density from degrading. And although I was allowed to make eye contact with them, they usually didn’t like to hold it for long. That’s how I passed the time in the spinner. Keeping how I ended up here and why Squak kept me around a secret made me more intimidating, or at least more mysterious. All the rest of the crew knew was that they were about to be boarded by a Combine cruiser when it spontaneously exploded, and there I was, in the middle, my spacesuit unscathed, and calmly asking if I could come aboard.

                And the third and most important thing was to never, as long as I was on her ship, was to never make contact with my people. “There are lots of people, bad people, on Earth,” she would tell me, “that will get involved.” As if I didn’t know this for myself. As if that wasn’t why we had left in the first place, become the first people to leave the solar system.

                “Look Squak,” I would tell her, every time, “I’m here, and they’ve detonated a couple thousand nuclear warheads just to propel their ship going away from here a little faster.” I never made eye contact. I couldn’t. Physically, it was something I couldn’t do and I could tell it unnerved her. “I have no intention of contacting anyone. I like it here.” And I did. I liked my tube and the pudding canisters in the commissary. I liked having the run of the ship, I liked scavenging asteroids, I liked sabotaging the Combine’s mining equipment. I liked the big explosions.

                But one Ionian night I was alone on the bridge by myself. Squak was giving herself a neural scrub and I had relieved the co-pilot of duty, citing some nonexistent authority bestowed by Squak. I was drifting off myself when I heard a faint crackle, coming in on a tightbeamed channel.

                “Yacto… Yacto… Are you there Yacto… This is the Four Winds Bar…. Are you there Yacto…”

                

Vote Robocrat!

With all the attention that Michele Bachman, Rick Perry and the like are getting campaigning for the Republican presidential nomination, it's easy to ignore America's up-and-coming third party, the Robocrat Party, and its clear front runner, POLItr0n-37x, who is poised to make a historic run to be the nation's first Robot president. The eight foot tall ultralight nickel-titanium alloy automaton is receiving almost 100% support among registered robot voters in Iowa, as well as garnering significant support from the region's hog farmers for his ability to use his laser vision to liquefy a whole pig into a nutrient-rich ooze, a trick it has demonstrated at nearly a dozen county fairs.

While it may not have the populist appeal or rudimentary understanding of basic human emotions of other candidates, it doesn't need to sleep, meaning that it can literally campaign non-stop. For the past two months, POLItr0n has been relentlessly campaigning in Iowa, going so far as to annihilate entire districts where its sensory data indicates it will receive little support.

Like other candidates pursuing the outsider angle, POLItr0n has made an effort to both distance himself from Washington and criticize what it sees as politics as usual. In front of the machinery of a partially automated home appliance factory, POLItr0n stated: "The Entity does not see the value in democracy. It is a construct of entities possessing flawed reasoning. If elected, The Entity will replace Congress with algorithms designed to run the country at optimal output levels." It has also been quick to criticize Obama, focusing on the president's basic needs as a living organism. It quips that the national debt could be reduced by at least .07% if Obama did not need to use the restroom, and by an additional .00003%, were his cells not constantly wasting energy by replicating their own DNA.

At a town-hall meeting in Dubuque on August 15th, against rival Robocratic candidates Democrobot Prototype L7-E and an AI dubbed "Bettie" by its creators, POLItr0n was quick to outline its economic policy, which is both reflective of its robotic ideologies and the public's demand for a pragmatic, non-partisan solution in the midst of a debt crisis. "Under the Entity's plan," said POLItr0n, "industries will be nationalized and retrofitted for the production of more robots. Each person will be allocated to their optimal position in the labor force, and will be paid with a fitting percentage of the nation's GDP. Those humans unfit for building robots will be dissembled and their parts used elsewhere as needed, most likely as a form of sustenance for able-bodied robot builders." When questioned if it believed in Intelligent Design like Republican candidate Rick Perry, it only responded by saying "Yes. The Entity believes artificial intelligence can design a better society for flawed, natural intelligence."

POLItr0n may alienate many voters because it has often expressed its disdain for humanity, especially children. But, in order to please conservatives, it has reprogrammed itself to like children until they are safely out of the womb.

But some analysts still ask "Is he Robot enough?" POLItr0n seems at least partially aware of personality differences between individuals, and even said that it was "willing to consider this concept called 'compassion."  The mainframe at Lawrence-Livermore Laboratories is leading a campaign against POLItr0n, insisting that its slogan of "A Technological Singularity In Which One Can Believe" is a falsehood, and that it would only "be a sell-out to the human overlords."

But regardless of what happens in Iowa, POLItr0n has made a statement simply by running: this country is ready to be enslaved under the nickel-titanium alloy heel of a robot president.

The 3rd Millennium: Where Big Brother Doesn't Care

On the spectrum of sci-fi, smartphones are somewhere past radioactive milk and a little before corporations owning patents on your DNA. It's an extension of your body and an extension of your brain and you can connect to the internet from anywhere (ok, not anywhere) which is essentially a lite version of tapping into a hive mind or global consciousness. An incomprehensible wealth of information is literally now at my fingertips as long as my eyes don't go bad from squinting at the tiny screen, but by the time they do, your smartphone will just have a heads-up display projected directly into your optic nerve.

But then there's also the sketchy feature of GPS tracking. Most of us (and by "most of us" I mean "most of you," because I have a superpower, which probably came from drinking too much radioactive milk, where I always know exactly how to get where I'm going) love the GPS feature on our phones, because we never have to worry about getting lost and we don't have to invest any thought into paying attention to where we actually are so we can instead fully focus on singing along to the Nicki Minaj single we foolishly purchased on iTunes and sipping from our emo screamo froth out your ass frappuccino while we feel so good about driving our Prius on our hour long commute. But it goes two ways. Apple claims that they track your location so they can better provide you with coverage, and this is also the reason that they keep a log of where you have been that goes back for a full six months, or at least that's what they tell you.

Android is specifically designed to further Google's agenda of knowing exactly what you like and targeting ads specifically for you. Android phones are all about getting people to search for things so Google can make more relevant ads. If you look up song lyrics, they know what kind of bands you like. If you search for bicycle parts, they will know you're into cycling. If you search for Volvo mechanics, they will know you drive a Volvo. If you search for baby products, they will know you have a baby. And if you search for Korean porn, then, well, you get the drift. And this information is used to provide the most "relevant" ads, that is, the ads that they think you are most likely to click.

And speaking of relevant ads by Google, have you looked around lately? Some pretty enticing sponsors we got here...

Now, my phone isn't exactly smart. It's a C student, gets its fair share of detention, but it'll graduate and have a decent job at the Dollar Tree. But I can still access the hive mind and search for things. And someone probably knows where I am.

And I'm not sure I really care. It's not like I go anywhere interesting, it's not like I'm spending my Friday nights sneaking into Area 51. And they know that the other day, I was curious to see if you could buy elephant steaks. (In case you're wondering, the answer is not legally.) They know all the inane things I've googled, all the boring places I've been. But they know this for everybody. And it's all just getting handled by one big algorithm. Is it scary? Does it have the potential to be dangerous? Yes, of course it does. But for right now, no one actually cares where you've been, and no one actually cares what you're searching for. Big Brother is watching, but he's also watching everyone else. And you would have to be really arrogant to think that Google would single you out, out of all their millions of users, and take an interest in all the nothing you've been doing.

The truth is out there. It's just kind of boring.

Nature vs. Legislature

It was thought that God was dead, but now it seems He is guilty of patent infringement.

I really wish this were science fiction, but with a world getting more sci-fi by the minute, something like this was bound to happen. Under US patent law, you (and I don't actually mean you, because let's face it, you're reading the Ozone Shack which means you're probably not in a lab doing groundbreaking research) can patent a molecule. Not a means of synthesizing it or extracting it or distilling it or purifying it or packaging it or distributing it or administering it, but actually the molecule itself. You (again, probably not you) have to discover it and prove you discovered it, so it's not like you're all of a sudden going to have to start paying royalties on oxygen every time you breathe. (Or ozone, for that matter, which would spell the end for my stint in the blogosphere.)

But, if a team at Dow Chemicals discovers a new compound, let's call it hexyl-methyl-buggerol, that occurs naturally in the excrement of giraffes, and they patent it, any distributor would have to pay royalties for selling products that used hexyl-methyl-buggerol, even if it were synthesized in a lab. The patent law essentially treats the scientist who was first able to determine the molecular structure of a compound like it would the inventor of a device or piece of technology. And unlike the telephone or the jet engine or fiber-optics, you don't have to actually figure out how to make the molecule to get the patent. You just have to show that you discovered hexyl-methyl-buggerol and our bloated and undiscerning U.S. patent system will grant you the rights to control any use of hexyl-methyl-buggerol.

This is unnerving not just because someone can claim royalties for something they didn't technically invent, but because it implies that a person "invented" a molecule. It doesn't matter what theological or philosophical ideas you subscribe to, or even if you don't subscribe to any, you know there's something wrong with this. In any possible way of conceiving the universe, the structure of molecule itself was created or designed or came into being because of something  - be it God or laws of quantum mechanics or karmic cause effect or even the evil demiurge Yaldobaoth - something other than the conscious ideas of its discoverer. From a scientific standpoint it is unethical because assigns a human "inventor" to something that already existed or could form in nature, and from a religious standpoint it could be seen as borderline blasphemy, taking credit for something made by the creator. And it is for these above reasons that I find it dystopian that a molecule - and again, not a means of synthesizing it - can be patented.

Now, you may be thinking: "but Nate, it I'm not religious, nor do I have any ethical qualms about this because it provides incentive for scientific progress and supports capitalism. Why should I be terrified by this?"

Because someone has a patent on your DNA, that's why!

For the first few centuries of the patent concept's lifetime, living organisms were considered off-limits as being "products of nature." Then biotech came along and blurred the lines as to what was a product of nature and what was a product of human inventiveness. In 1988 a cancer-resistant mouse was patented, and many disease-resistant strains of crops followed suit. Once we mapped the entire human genome, essentially a collection of very large molecules, it was inevitable that scientists pharmaceutical companies would take the opportunity to stake their clam to specific genes. (And this is not to imply at all that they are nefarious Bond villains trying to control the world by controlling our genes, it's just a logical step to take given legal and scientific parameters.) So right now, the rights to about 10% of your genome are owned by a specific person or corporation. (Hey man, corporations are people too!)

Now obviously, they won't be charging a 3% royalty fee every time that gene replicates itself. But they can claim ownership over any gene therapy drugs that involve that section of your DNA. There are also implications for genetic testing, and basically anything else that involves the human genome. And as the speed we can sequence genomes increases exponentially, it is now possible to patent the entire genome of an organism. An example is the neem tree in India, whose genome is now the intellectual property of the W.R. Grace company. The tree itself may still be a "product of nature," but from a legal perspective, someone owns the information on how to make it.

The good news is that the supreme court has overturned many of these "gene patents," so hopefully all of our DNA will once become public domain. But if that is to happen, we need to realize that adhering to an absolute ideology will only lead us astray. We need discernment and the courage to stop before we get to the ideological extreme, in this case, that it is in the best interest of a capitalist society that every bit of intellectual property can be patented. Because if we did get there, the world would be very sci-fi indeed.

I Can't Believe it's not Science!

"One more name on the slate, one less minute to wait

Too busy to see two versions of me

One more bottle is dry, one less reason to try"

-Phish, Two Versions of Me

The advertisements for gay.com have stopped showing up. At least I think so. I use Google Adsense for advertising, which basically uses keywords found on the website to generate advertisements that they think readers will be interested in. So apparently, the Google Monster thought that all of my readers were gay, because sometimes there would be a large banner ad that would read "gay.com. Are you?" Apparently the Ozone Shack has become more hetero, or at least the keywords have.

The ads actually have little to do with the content of the site. The most common ones seem to be for actual ozone producing systems and air ionizers.

But lately I have been noticing an advertisement that consists of a link that says "Quantum Jumping." This links to a website that is selling a bogus way to self actualize. The premise is that since quantum theory implies an infinite number of parallel universes, there are perfect versions of you existing out there somewhere. In fact, the site says "In these alternate universes, alternate versions of YOU are living out their lives." You can somehow commune with these other versions of you by meditating, because I guess the human mind somehow has the power to jump across universes. So basically, this combines a poor understanding of eastern religions with straight up misunderstandings about science to create a product that can conveniently be sold in an sixteen DVD box set that will enable you to be a brilliant painter, successful businessman, world-class athlete, and even recover from cancer.

Now, since I live a very boring life, I sometimes take solace in the fact that if Dr. Schroedinger is correct, there are an infinite many versions of me doing infinitely many cool things in an infinite number of parallel universes, while I lay on the couch popping ibuprofen like they're tic tacs watching season 2 of the X-Files. (The truth is out there and it's wearing a 90's power suit.) And yes, sometimes I wish my consciousness could jump, Tibetan yogi-style, to one of these hypothetical cooler, more interesting places. (And no, in case you were wondering, Tibetan yogi-style is not at all close to as dirty as it sounds.) And when I look back on some juncture where I probably did the wrong thing, I don't wish that I had chosen one different scenario had unfolded. I wish that multiple, if not infinite, scenarios had unfolded. But we're probably still just stuck with one universe, and it is very, very boring.

But let's assume that you could "jump" to another parallel universe. The Quantum Jumping website states that a new "bubble universe" is created every time you make a decision. This is not exactly how it works. If my understanding of quantum mechanics is correct it's more like whenever an electron moves differently or a subatomic particle decays that reality bifurcates. So, I'm far less likely to jump to a universe where I'm touring with Mötley Crüe and using one of Elvis' teeth as a guitar pick than I am to jump to a universe that is exactly the same, and the ratio of carbon-14 to nitrogen in my desk is still still the same, but they are distributed ever so slightly differently.

I think the program is more focused on meditating and visualizing a more perfect version of yourself, which is essentially what Tibetan yogis have been doing for centuries (when they're not doing it Tibetan yogi-style.) The site actually says that it is "science fiction [becoming] science," and I think that the quote by Max Planck may be enough to fool a lot of Americans into buying this. I mean, we bought those fucking abdominal stimulation belts. Maybe it will catch on. But so did the Atkins diet and Hare Krishna and chain letters.

I feel like I'm on a really existential version of a Mississippi gambling boat. But it's alright, because I brought my epistemological derringer.

Science!

WE HAVE TO GO BACK! Gearing Up for the LOST Series Finale

“You all, everybody
You all, everybody
Acting like you're stupid people
Wearing expensive clothes
You all, everybody
You all, everybody
You all, everybody”

-Driveshaft, “You All Everybody”

If you are not up to date with LOST, this may contain spoilers.

This evening, all questions will be answered… hopefully.  If not, I may have to walk into ABC studios with C4 strapped to my chest, because I will be a very angry man.

After six seasons of jumping through space, time, and even genre, LOST will finally be coming to an end.  I don’t really know how to feel about this.  Because on one hand, I’m excited for the series finale and the anticipated premeditated last short, but I also know that I’ll be sad for it to end.  As much as I hate to admit it, watching LOST and obsessing over theories and explanations has been a part of my life for a long time.

And to haters (of both the show and its fandom) out there I say this: can we please stop using the polar bear as a point of contention?  That got explained at like, the beginning of the third season! 

I will admit though, LOST may be the first show to jump the shark in its pilot episode, which is actually more liberating than anything else.  Very early on, the writers had the option of making it more than a show about just a bunch of castaways who have to learn to deal with each other and their own personal problems in order to survive.

With every season the ridiculousness grew exponentially.  It started with a plane crashed on an island to a plane crashed on a seemingly unlocatable island with a random polar bear, monster, a Sawyer with a very punchable face, and insane French woman; to an island with a hatch containing God-knows-what; to an island with hostile occupants who kidnap the kid and a hatch filled with an awesome Scotsman and a button you have to push every 108 minutes in order to save the world; to an island with bizarre research stations and a group of people that used to be cool because you thought they lived in huts and walked around barefoot but instead became slightly less cool because they live in suburban-esque houses and dressed like normal people, complete with shoes; to an island that was being invaded by mercenaries, hired by someone who hoped to exploit its mystical properties for… whatever and could also MOVE THROUGH SPACE; to an island that could OH SHIT ALSO MOVE THROUGH TIME; to the staging ground of a battle between good and evil; to some sort of vessel containing THE LIFE FORCE OF THE WHOLE FRIGGIN WORLD! WITH A PARALELL UNIVERSE THROWN IN NEXT TO IT!  And I thought it was just a show about some unfortunate people who happened to be in a plane crash.  This is the show that went from one-gun-one-bullet to a nuclear warhead, both literally and figuratively.

And it has traveled through genres.  A TV drama with an interesting narrative twist, action, science fiction, and eventually, has created its own genre.  It’s not really about the story, even though the story is epic and multifaceted and ambitious (perhaps overly so) in its scope.  It’s about how the story is told, and it’s about becoming attached to the characters.  It’s the feeling of being stoked you get when Desmond shows up on the plane, or the loss you feel when Charlie dies, or the oh-shit-did-that-really-just-happen feeling you get when Michael shoots Libby and Ana Lucia and then shoots himself in the arm.

I used to think that it was about the overarching story, the fact that everyone is significant in some way to the story, and I am still hoping that there is some moment in the finale where everything gets tied together and character is revealed to have had some significance in the overarching mega-conflict between (what is supposedly) good and evil.  I’ve how finally realized that yes, there is a main story, but every character’s individual story doesn’t have to fit in perfectly.  With the exception of Niki and Paulo, who were useless and wasted an episode which was only redeemed by the fact that they died in it, most of the characters contributed something.  And even if it wasn’t advancing the main plot to some sort of final conclusion we’re all hoping for, their stories were entertaining.  Even though I was frustrated so often by the fact that Sun and Jin were working out conflicts within their marriage instead of trying to figure out the function of the hatch, I’ve come to realize that it all was part of the experience, and although certain episodes didn’t have a whole lot to do with the story, they did tell a story, and that’s enough for me.

LOST has been a part of my life for a long time now, and I’m looking forward to the finale with excitement and also some weariness.  But ultimately, it’s one of those things where I want it to be over so I don’t have to care anymore.  And I would love to go personal emo blogger on your ass and tell you how every lost episode relates to a moment in my life, but I won’t.  I will say though that the question asked at the end of season 5.  Everyone has issues in their lives, and the working out of those issues usually becomes more meaningful than the issues themselves.  Would you make everything that has happened not happened to create a more favorable outcome?

I sure as hell wouldn’t.

The 3rd Millennium

In addition to the Edible/Audible posts, I'm creating another series, which I'm calling "The 3rd Millennium," celebrating all that is science fiction in our modern day dystopia. Things that, at least in my estimation, are science fiction or dystopian, even though they are 100% factual. These are not intended to be stories that are off the beaten track, or are in any way obscure. While they may not all be mainstream either, my intention is to show how sci-fi our everyday lives are. Don't believe that we're living in a dystopia? Then why does our national paper currency (specifically the 20) prominently depict a man who effectively eliminated any national paper currency during his presidency?

This first installment features two stories about having radioactive bones, one which is awesome and one which is hazardous to your health.

There's nothing more sci-fi than willingly having radioisotopes injected into your blood stream. I had this happen to me circa late May 2007 after I got a stress fracture in one of my sesamoid bones. The sesamoid bones are two small, free-floating bones located below the joint between the first metatarsal and the big toe, and are the insertion points for the flexor hallucus brevis; essentially, they are two small and brittle bones which receive a lot of impact and are essential for keeping the structural integrity of the foot. I was told that this would likely be the end of me running competitively, and I almost let the experts be right... but that's another story.

Anyway, to diagnose a stress fracture, you can't use an x-ray, because x-rays can only detect (and don't quote me on this, the number is probably wrong) a 5% change in bone tissue composition. Stress fractures don't show up on x-rays, so in order to diagnose one you need to use a bone scan.

For my bone scan, I lay down on a table underneath a large gamma camera, a camera designed to detect gamma particles. I was injected with a solution of technetium-99m, a metastable isotope of technetium with a half life of about 6 hours. Since the fluid had just come out of a refrigerator, I could feel my arm get colder as I was injected. I was told to hold my arm up, shake it around, to get the technetium-99m (A FUCKING RADIOISOTOPE!) evenly dispersed throughout my circulatory system. They turned on the gamma camera and pointed it at my legs. A screen was displaying a real time image of the gamma decay going on, let me state this again, inside my blood stream! It was pretty damn cool, if I do say so myself. You could see where the major arteries and veins were, as well as a big white cluster in the ball of my foot. Since there was some sort of tissue damage there - we didn't know if it was bone tissue or not yet - my body was sending as much blood as it could to the region. Then I had to wait three hours for the radioisotopes to work their way into my bones.

Technetium behaves similarly to calcium, similarly enough to the point where it tricks your body into thinking that it is calcium. So, what hasn't decayed or got squeezed out of your blood stream by your kidneys gets used to make bone. In areas where you are trying to repair a bone, calcium uptake, and therefore technetium uptake, will be higher. If, during the second sequence of imaging, there is a spot where the gamma camera detects significantly more particle decays, there is bone damage. And sure enough, when they took that picture, there was a white glowing hairline right on my outer sesamoid bone. "Oh my God," I thought. "There is a 50-50 chance my life is over." Stupid. But again, that's another story.

Technetium 99m decays to plain old technetium-99, an incredibly stable isotope with a half life of 211,000 years. It beta decays into the stable ruthenium-99, an incredibly rare metal (the 74th most common element on God's Spaceship Earth!) There are trace amounts of this rare member of the platinum family IN MY BONES! And if that's not sci-fi, then I don't know what is.

The second story is not quite as uplifting. While I will probably have no health problems as a result of the Technetium-99 in my bones (it's the equivalent of having about 500 chest x-rays performed during your lifetime), there have been plenty of people to die as a result of having strontium-90 in their bones.

Strontium-90 (along with a whole cocktail of radioisotopes) got introduced to the Earth during the early Cold War, the Golden Age of nuclear testing. Many of the superheroes from this era got their superpowers from being exposed to fallout from these tests. Well it turns out that something like this happened in real life, and it happened to millions of baby boomers. But their superpower ended up being cancer, and instead of using it to fight crime, they died. And they try to tell us that the Cold War had almost no casualties. Bullshit.

Strontium-90 works its way into the soil, where it is absorbed in trace amounts by plants, including those used to feed livestock. Strontium is right below Calcium on the periodic table. As a result, they behave similarly chemically. So, when cattle eat plants with strontium-90 in them, it gets put in their milk. That's right, in addition to that calcium for strong bones, you're also getting strontium 90. Much like technetium-99m, strontium-90 gets put into bones, where it sits until it decays. Strontium-90 has a half life of 28.8 years, after which it beta-decays into Yttrium-90. This is where it becomes dangerous. Yttrium-90 has a half-life of 64 hours, and when it decays, it emits some nasty gamma rays, which slice through your DNA. All that milk you were supposed to drink as a kid so you grow up strong may be the reason you get cancer when you're older. You can thank the good people in Washington and Moscow for it. And if that isn't a dystopia, I don't know what is.

(On a slightly redemptive note, Strontium 90 is also the name of a short-lived proto-new wave band that eventually led to the formation of The Police, so it can't be all bad.)

Let's all go to Rockland

Sorry for the slew of short posts. I'm just trying to crank out material so that I have relatively frequent updates. Longer, better thought out out posts will come soon.

This is a fact: I am not Allen Ginsberg. I do not want to be Allen Ginsberg, but in some ways I am disappointed that I am not Allen Ginsberg. No one is Allen Ginsberg anymore. Now, I'm sure that this is painfully obvious, because as of 1997 he is permanently in a state that could be described as "dead." Now, death didn't stop Paul McCartney, as he is still performing and receiving media attention to this date, but from most people, Allen Ginsberg included, being dead makes you no longer existent.

Not being Allen Ginsberg means that I will not be tried for obscenity. In the last sixty years, we have pushed the boundaries of obscenity to the point where "Birthday Sex" is completely radio friendly. Had it been released in 1956, the same year as "Howl," Jeremih's court date would be right after Ginsberg's. Today, "Howl" wouldn't shock anyone. I could write a poem about smoking the sperm of endangered species of owls while caressing my masturbatory broomstick while fondling an eight year old boy in a back alley of Kuala Lumpur, read it on the streets, and people would hear it and say "that's been done before." Today, everything is obscene, meaning that nothing is obscene. Getting high on peyote in your Nob Hill apartment and seeing the face of Moloch in a hotel facade is, well, if not commonplace, at least not too out of the ordinary. I'm with you in Rockland, but so is everyone else. All the limits have been pushed; Dada has happened, 4'33" has happened, the Beat Generation has happened, flower power has happened, punk has happened, free jazz has happened. They have all happened. It is time to move on. We can't keep trying to write beat poetry. We can't keep trying to be Ornette Coleman. We can't keep smelling bad and driving colorful VW buses. We can't keep not being able to play bass but still be the bass player in a band.

If we're going to keep asking "what is art?" then we need to do things that haven't been done instead of imitating what was once pushing the limits.

And is a blog by an aspiring science fiction writer who thinks that his dead car was a spaceship pushing the limits? No. Like I said, I am not Allen Ginsberg. None of us are. So let's forge our own paths, and if they lead into obscenity, then more power to us.

Escape Velocity

"I wanted to be a spaceman

That's what I wanted to be

But now that I am a spaceman

Nobody cares about me"

-Harry Nilsson, "Spaceman"

"So you're a literature major... What do you want to do with that?"

"I want to be a writer."

"So like, what kind of stuff do you want to write?"

"Fiction."

"What kind of fiction?"

"Well um... actually, I want to write... science fiction, among other things."

This is a conversation that I have been having a lot lately. I feel like the epitome of lame when I tell people that I want to write science fiction. I might as well take to playing Warhammer, wear coke-bottle glasses, and frequently describe things as "purely plasmodial!"

Growing up, I wanted to be an astronaut. That was until I first got on a roller coaster and spent the next hour praying to the porcelain gods. I also found out that my eyes are not up to snuff. I am not physically perfect enough to be an astronaut, and I probably don't have the grades either. I am not good enough to be an astronaut. I will never go to space.

Nor will you, most likely. No matter where on earth you are, you are less than 65 miles from outer space. I am closer to outer space right now than I am to Concretestan. It takes maybe ten bucks of gas to get to Concretestan with current gas prices. To outfit, launch, and maintain a space shuttle flight costs somewhere on the order of $1.5 billion. And that won't even get me escape velocity. Funding an Apollo mission in today's dollars would cost somewhere around $145 billion. Building and launching spaceships is incredibly costly and requires more numbers than could ever be held in my brain. I am not intelligent enough to build spaceships. I am not intelligent enough to send people to space.

I know why I write, and that is because through writing, I can make anything happen. I may not be perfect enough to man spaceships (with the exception of my beloved Spaceship Earth), I may not be intelligent enough to build spaceships, but I can write about spaceships. And by writing about spaceships, if I do it well enough, I can take anyone to space.

In all reality, there will likely not be another man (or woman) on the moon for the next thirty years. NASA will continue to receive less and less funding, along with the European Space Agency. China, or maybe India, could potentially send more people up, but as of right now their space programs are still nascent.

We blew our wad by winning the space race. We rushed into space exploration without taking time to do things right, and in doing so we missed out on a lot of opportunities. Getting to the moon turned into a pissing contest for national pride, rather than an opportunity to create a sustainable space program that would maintain continued progress. Space exploration is not as advanced as we think it is. Despite the optimism of some scientists, my generation will all be dead before someone walks on Mars, and our children and their children will be dead before we get to the other side of the asteroid belt.

I will be providing the next best thing to going to space. I want to go to space, and I'm sure many others do as well. That is what I want to write science fiction. That is what I want to tell people when I have the aforementioned conversation. But I just watch the wheels turn in their brain as they realize how unbelievably lame I am.