Illinois is ass backwards

I had a very pleasant, productive conversation with Suzy Woods, Visiting Director of Disability Services at UIS, this afternoon; during the course of which I discovered that UIS Lincoln Residence Hall is indeed ADA compliant, but here's what that means:

LRH is ADA compliant because residence halls are classified as "transient housing." In the words of Eddie Murphy, "Let's talk about that." Other spaces classified in like manner are motels. The term "transient" is most often used to refer to .... come on readers, you know this one ... the homeless! So, the government considers students residing in residence halls analogous to homeless people living in motels, or ...can somebody say "crack house!"?

My home state has laws and procedures in place that require residence halls to meet conditions above the "transient housing" mark, but Illinois still has nine institutions dedicated to housing the mentally disabled, the kind of places no doubt that were revealed as cesspools in New York state in the late 70s. Why? Because these
"institutions" are staffed by well paid union workers.

I had high hopes when I moved to Illinois, a union state. I now see it as a rheumatic old man chocking on red tape.

Language as play part 2: an intellectual discussion of Hentai?

I didn't believe it either, but at the bottom of the page linked below, you will find an audio commentary that amounts to an intellectual discussion of the sociological implications of Hentai in 21st century Japanese society within the context of tabletop role playing. If that isn't a white nerds' version of "Your Momma," I don't know what is.

http://www.rpgnow.com/product_info.php?products_id=54698

Of course, I haven't bought the pdf advertised above because I don't want to spend $13 on something that amounts to a bunch of zeros and ones [I've used "amounts to" a lot in this post. I must be thinking in terms of quantity, like money, or maybe it's lack of sleep. I apologize of the lack of finesse.]. I'll go "halvesies" with anyone interested though. Then again, I fully support paying for intellectual property. Contradictions, I know.

The positive side to being broke

Broke people are forced to be creative. Hip Hop was born that way [and I mean real Hip Hop, not the "booty-butt cheeks" crap marketed to board white kids with too much disposable income]; inter-city arts programs were cut, and kids in the South Bronx had to make due with what they could find cheap--turn tables, mics, etc.

So, to my point. Valentine's Day is tomorrow, and I have about twenty-four bucks in my bank account until payday. I can't afford to take my wife out to dinner or buy her a Reno 911 DVD, something that I would normally do. I wrote her this poem:

A Soft Place to Fall

Twilight hours—anxiety all the rage,

The warm smell of you

Bundled with mammal care,

In quilted generations—

Thread count, thousands of days;

Krishna is the taste of water,

You’re the waterfall

Because you’ve given me

A soft place to fall.

My cold skeleton meets your flesh.

You babble lucid affections—

Sleepy syllables give weight to love,

Heavy too, at the wake of sunrise.

Only we, or maybe a guinea pig,

Would have it so good—

Marriage isn’t mystical;

It’s sharing life’s deliciousness

Amid the struggle.

God is no fool,

Only plays one on TV.

Our trajectory is backward

Into transcendence, you and I.

She said it made her year [and yes, she gave me permission to post it here].

Still a few good people

I am happy to report that, even here in Springfield, there are a few good people. This morning my wife's car wouldn't start, and Triple A was taking its own sweet time responding. We called our apartment management office [Apartment Mart of Springfield, 1600 Toronto RD.] to ask if someone would jump our car. They had someone out within five minutes. I've lived in a few apartments in my day, but no management company has been this helpful.

"Robotech is back now"

For the true anime enthusiast, I wrote the following essay in one sitting as an example for an assignment prompt in English 102. If I had to score it, I'd give it a solid B:

Robotech: Timeless American Sci-Fi

February 27 2008 will mark the re-release of the Robotech tabletop role-playing game by Palladium books. The original game was my first foray into role-playing at the age of twelve. A friend had pointed out an ad for the game in the first issue of Marvel Comics’ Visionaries featuring penciled images of the animated series from Japan’s quintessential image: giant gun-toting robots that diehard fan boys like myself knew signified a sci-fi epic matched perhaps only by those two franchises beginning with “Star” [“anime” would not enter American pop-culture vocabulary for another five years]. Over the past twenty-one years, I’ve delved into both hardier and sleeker game systems: three and a half versions of D&D, FUDGE, Runequest, etc, but, for all of the admittedly clunky mechanics of Palladium’s house system under the hood of the Robotech game then and now, the prospect of encountering it again amounts to intellectual comfort food—the bubbly, crusty pan of mac ’n cheese fresh from the oven that any of us over thirty know we’d be feeling in the morning. But the memories of friendships forged in countless hours of narrative creativity are worth the retread.

Now, most would hesitate to call role-playing games “intellectual,” but these books were the collective catalyst for transforming a twelve year-old, who wasn’t a recreational reader, into an English instructor—they facilitated the discovery of the juxtaposition of imagination and language. This all started with the Robotech franchise: the result of producer Carl Macek’s efforts to produce a plot line that would weave three distinct Japanese animated series licensed to Harmony Gold USA into a cohesive eighty-five, twenty-two minute, episode run for an audience of Ragan-era adolescents that has sense spawned three DVD collector’s editions, more than twenty novels, plus a plethora of other media and merchandise over twenty-two years, including an upcoming feature film with Toby Maguire attached to produce.

Prior to Macek’s handy work similarities between the series were accidental: all depict giant, transformable robots, or mecha, piloted by humans fending off an alien threat. Macek’s revision coalesced with the term “Robotech” to signify the oft unexplainable alien-derived technology seen on screen. Each series became a “generation,” or act, of the unfolding plot. Earth’s clash with an armada of fifty-foot giants leads to a near-totalitarian Earth government’s post-apocalyptic confrontation with the remnant of the erudite civilization responsible for those giants twelve years later. Decades afterwards, Earth is enslaved by the entirely alien enemy of both previous invaders. These aliens acquiesce not from force, but prompted by love to self-discovery. Hopefully the uninitiated reader has gleaned a skeleton of the plot’s intricacy from that brief synopsis. Mecek notably conceives this generational approach two years before Gene Rodenberry’s re-launch of Star Trek under the TNG mantle. Robotech’s enduring success is remarkable if only because the whole thing was designed as a means to turn a quick buck, an American purgative.

By personal taste alone, I would rank Robotech among the top five timeless American produced sci-fi franchises, but the question remains if its place may be objectively assessed as such. If I’m going to say “Robotech” in the same breath as Star Wars, I may as well invoke the criteria Roger Ebert establishes to assert that films place in cinematic history: those of “technical watershed” and “deceptively simple storytelling”(Ebert). I would add that Robotech fans also approach it with equal ferocity as Star Wars and Star Trek fans relish those franchises.

By today’s CGI standards, even the “Remastered” versions of the draftsperson’s precision hand drawn cells appear grainy and primitive, but few had seen their like in 1985. The famed original Transformers series had aired the year before, but its detailed depictions of now classic giant robots paled in comparison to those in Robotech. Battle scenes sported multiple mechs form different vantage points. Of course, this meticulous work is the product of an ideology informing the animation, the point of contact for the Americanized plot: animation audiences can be sophisticated enough to appreciate artistry. This transplanted innovation would not be seen in entirely homespun animation arguably until Warner Bros. Batman: The Animated Series in the early 90s.

Robotech differs from previous Japanese animated properties re-packaged for the US market because, while plot elements were changed, with the exception of a few now laughable stock shower scenes in the second “generation,” the footage of the original Japanese parent series, though sometimes spiced with stock footage for the sake of continuity, remained intact when aired. That meant relatively graphic violence, unapologetic deaths of principal characters in war, psychological instability and drug addiction, long term effects of grief, the now-stale anime trope—the naïve alien in drag, etc. Robotech was pulled from some affiliates in the South because of the series’ inclusion of an inter-racial romantic relationship and a transsexual heroic character.

Despite such ill-founded controversy, Robotech’s plot, like Star Wars’, is “deceptively simple.” In episode one, nineteen year-old Rick Hunter, flying circus ace, finds himself amid an interstellar conflict neither side understands. The bulk of the first thirty-six episodes, with or without the giant mechs in the scene, catalog Rick’s maturation over a decade. Episode thirty-seven introduces the half-alien Dana Sterling, who must confront her feelings of disenfranchisement as the only one of her kind. Similar themes are addressed with multiple characters throughout the series. There is no force here, or Vulcan mind-meld, but the theme that humanity as a quality, not a species, will prevail runs throughout Robotech. And perhaps because it is animated, Robotech depicts the human cost of war more responsibly than others in the sci-fi genre. Characters not only wounded, but bleed and react to injury realistically—no stun setting or instant cauterization.

Robotech’s sophistication does not exempt it from some of the prevalent shortcomings of sci-fi. It has the same dialog issues as Star Wars; just listen to the song lyrics—bad by anyone’s standard, even for the 80s. It doesn’t have guys in red shirts dropping dead every episode, but the overuse of spliced footage might infuriate even the most dedicated fan. Some of Mecek’s continuity elements are down-right silly. The prime example is “protoculture.” In the original 1982 Japanese plot of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross, the term signified culture predicated on procreation through natural means; in Robotech it refers to a distilled substance used to facilitate the link between pilot and machine. Fans debate that one heatedly on the internet.

The combination of the plot and painstaking animation attracted a broad fan-base, which is,though smaller than that of other enduring franchises, intensely loyal. Blogger Peter Rojas has this to say: “You seriously don't want to know how much of my spare time I devoted to tracking down even the most mundane details about[Robotech]”(Rojas). The Robotech: The Shadow Chronicles DVD (2006), a new animated feature, has brought the project full circle after a twenty year hiatus: original animation is now being produced to fit the Robotech storyline. Such a feat would not have been possible without fan demand. If for no other reason, Robotech will be remembered as the gateway to Dragon Ball, Cowboy BeBop, Death Note, etc. for American audiences.

A Deeper Knowledge of Ourselves

This weekend, one of our martial arts instructor's thirteen year-old son left this world. He had lived with Downs Syndrome, and his body expired from pneumonia. In Islam it is understood that individuals with profound mental-emotional challenges are Abraham's righteous whose presence among us stays the wrath of God because they are incapable of sin--if one accepts that true, or mortal, sin requires awareness of the consequences involved. Death is always inconvenient, but when one of these people leaves, innocence is somehow less accessible, wrapped in human form. The danger of this line of discourse is, of course, the tendency to metaphorize the individual--the mentally challenged are not the chorus of a perpetual Disney musical; rather their smiles amid tantrums, excrement and the stuff of life we try so diligently to avoid, call use to a deeper knowledge of ourselves. For those like my friend, whose spiritual journey necessitated the care of her son, these righteous are an invaluable mirror of love of God, perhaps more so than the most eloquent homily or treatise--arguing with unconditional love is exceedingly difficult. Please make Paula and her family the focus of some of your prayers or transcendental well-wishes.

Language as Play: What is Evil?

Monday evening, a former student interviewed me for her "Writing in the Disciplines" paper; she asked what separates writing in English from writing in other disciplines. My answer was the notion of language as play. Here's an example:

In Wendi Pini's Elfquest, Savah, the Mother of Memory, tells the youth Suntop to view evil as the absence of love. If we accept that definition for the sake of argument, the next question would logically be: what is love [club track from the 90s plays in my head]. The stock answer is of course: God is love; well then who, or what, is God? According to St Anselm, "God is one then who no great being exists" [I borrowed that from Dr. Howard J Resnick]. So God is the "supreme being, or person; so what qualifies personhood? ... and so on.