Karen's Rants and Raves

Internships Everywhere!

Karen — Wed, 06 Jan 2010 22:42:00 +0000

In addition to being at war with Hello Kitty, apparently I am now also at war with every HR department in the world. To tell you the truth, it's been a cold war up until now anyway, and it's nice to get everything out in the open.

I'm getting sick of how the term 'internship' has become so broad in meaning that it now seems to cover everything from slave labor on up. I respect internships, I am in fact technically interning right now, but this is getting ridiculous.

Okay guys, I understand that you can get away with it- I understand how, in this day and age, you can get away with offering nothing but "experience", especially if you're a publishing house or magazine with a degree of name recognition, to people who aren't even necessarily college students- just people you don't want to have to pay. I can dislike it until the end of time, but hey, I understand.

But do you have to be so brazen in your claims that your interns will do the exact same work as your staff? Do you have to make it sound like working for free is a privilege, that people should be proud to merely have the opportunity to send their resumes to you? Why do you make it sound like I should be thanking you for offering to cover my metro card for transportation, like this bountiful gift should reduce me to tears, speechless in the vastness of your magnanimity? Why do you have to go on endlessly about how I must adapt to your "fast-paced, professional environment", when you're the one who needs to call in what's basically a slave laborer in order to meet deadlines? It sounds like if anything, it's you who needs my fast-paced, professional ability to get the work done that I signed up to do.

Then there are the internships with "stipends", where it's a paying job that they call an internship so they can get around the fact that they're paying less than minimum wage, but you know what? I'm not even complaining about that; more power to you, you guys. The situation seems to have gotten so bad that you have to give your respect to the people who still feel morally obligated to pay something, anything at all. Also, in those cases I've noticed that they usually don't make a huge deal out of the stipend in the listings, and instead just make it obvious that they respect your time enough to at least cover your transportation costs and maybe a cup of coffee.

And then, there are those few who offer paying internships that are actually right and proper paying internships, and then I have to wonder what they're doing in the internships section. Hey, you could get away with calling it a job at this point and move up in the world, you know? Sure, even the proper paid internship offers nothing that even vaguely resembles health coverage, but who expects that anywhere? I'm not crazy or anything.

Comics, Decisions, Decisions about comics

Karen — Thu, 10 Dec 2009 17:06:00 +0000

You may have noticed that, between the book talk and music essays and such, I try to blog about topics other than my personal dilemmas; I would hate to create the kind of self-indulgent blog that's of no use or interest to anyone but myself. That said, a personal blog is the place to put down some of your personal feelings and musings- especially for someone like me, who writes a lot but usually has to abide by certain topical constraints. This is the place where, instead of worrying if something is 'appropriate for the readership' or not, I can just jot down whatever. So I've decided that I won't hold back from strictly personal blogging on occasion, but I will tag it 'personal' and let readers decide to read it or dismiss it as they see fit.

The header image is a piece that I'm working on for Dark Juice Box, a project that has become problematic as of late. A few months ago, I had realized that just because ''Sterling'' is always going to be a sporadic comic, that doesn't mean that I'm strictly incapable of doing a regular webcomic. I look at something like XKCD, and think "you know, I could really do that." My MO has always been to attempt something incredibly ambitious and fail, rather than attempt something more feasible and succeed. It's just part of my nature to be that way, but enduring all the fail does get tiresome; nothing teaches you like failure, but it's not worthwhile if you can't turn those lessons into something better.

The idea behind DJB was that it was going to be a much easier comic to do than Sterling, and that updating it regularly would take priority over everything else, something I've never done before. I figured that if a page of DJB took me two or three hours as opposed to, oh, I don't know, twenty, updating two or three times a week really would not be a big deal at all. So I could do DJB, have the experience of doing a real and proper webcomic, and still keep plugging away on Sterling in the background like I always have.

This was all great in theory, especially because I'm a lot older now than when I started Sterling, and there are obvious advantages that come with that. However, the more I worked on DJB, the more I realized that I'd created a monster that didn't fit the format. Instead of a simplistically drawn webcomic, DJB would require lush, colorful images, more vivid than anything I've ever done with Sterling, and if anything, would be far more dependent on the art than Sterling. If you're curious about what this would look like, the whole "Northern Continent" sequence was kind of a test run for the art style in DJB.

So, what do I do now? I like what DJB is turning into, and I think it has serious potential- I always wanted to do a fantasy comic as a kid, and now it feels like I'm doing what I've always wanted to do. But I'm hardly giving up Sterling. Yet, I'm certainly not going to have two sporadically-updating, soul-sucking, time-devouring webcomics- that sounds like the surest recipe for going insane that I've ever heard. I could come up with something else as my "easy" webcomic project, but what, am I supposed to have THREE comics going on? In the midst of blogging, writing for newspapers, and other projects? More insanity. Oh, and did I mention that Sterling needs to be reformatted like a son-of-a-bitch? Forget even adding new art, all of it needs to be cleaned up, and the earlier pages need to be broken up into multiples for better readability. When I started doing webcomics, there really were very few standards for this kind of thing, but now there are, and webcomic readers expect certain things, with good reason. But how can doctoring up the archives take priority over updating new stuff?

Right now, I'm putting off making any decisions on any of this, and focusing on finishing a few projects that have been on the cusp of completion for a while- this includes things like my Nine Inch Nails series, my Parasite Eve series on Destructoid, and most importantly, Kids, Sterling Chapter Two. There are many possible solutions- one is to just save DJB for a couple of years from now when I finish Sterling, so I will actually have a plan for "life after Sterling." Another idea is to not even try to do DJB as a comic, but instead do it as something more like a light novel series with illustrations- that way, I can draw the kind of images that I feel are integral to telling the story, but I don't have to waste hours and hours drawing people doing mundane things like walking to school and opening doors. Both are decent ideas (and come to think of it, I can combine them for maximum effectiveness), but does that mean I'm never to have a real and proper webcomic? That just seems really disappointing somehow.

Anyway, after being on back-burner status ever since I started writing for Japanator, "Kids" is now front and center and will be concluding shortly. What's awesome is, I've drawn every background I need in this chapter already, so I can just borrow that stuff from my image library and focus on the stuff I actually want to draw. Bwah hahah, it's like hacking I tell you.

Narnia Whiplash!

Karen — Sat, 05 Dec 2009 00:50:00 +0000

Right after I posted that I had no problem with the Christian symbolism in Narnia, THIS had to go and happen. Don't read the rest of this entry if you haven't read Narnia and/or don't want it spoiled for you.

lalalalalalalalala handy spoiler avoidance space lalalalalalalalalala

Everybody dies. Everybody dies in a ridiculously contrived rail accident. I can accept the fact that it happened, but I take issue with the fact that absolutely every major human character was killed, even those who weren't on the train. Everybody dies, and we're supposed to think this is a good thing, because Narnia has now become heaven.

I would like to amend my statement from the last entry: I have no problem with the Christian symbolism in Narnia, until the end. Up until the end, you don't have to share Lewis' beliefs in order to enjoy the story; most of the Christian symbolism is used as a convenient framework, and the rest of it is all about trying to be a good person, something I have no trouble relating to. He crossed an extremely important line with the final plot twist, because if you don't share Lewis' belief in a happy, wonderful afterlife, what you have is an ending where all the characters that you care about die, some of whom are barely more than children.

It's not that I don't believe that the gang goes to Narnia: it's Lewis' world. What he says happens, happens. It's just that enjoying the ending is contingent on your belief that the characters aren't missing much by virtue of being dead, and I believe they are missing something; I believe it's a terrible waste.

While I'm not Christian, I don't take issue with most Christian beliefs- wow, so you should try to be a nice, forgiving person? You don't say! Probably the one aspect of the religion that I can't relate to is the belief that the afterlife is just so peachy-keen that we should all hurry up and die so we can get there. I'm sure many Christians don't interpret it that way, and see the concept of a pleasant afterlife as a kind of consolation prize, but in Lewis' interpretation, the attitude seems to be "Oh, so we're all dead? AWESOME!" I just cannot reconcile myself to that.

It would be completely different if Peter had died fighting in World War II or something and ended up in Narnia (hey, you could do a lot worse), but this is just disturbing. What's strange is that there is so much keen insight into religion and how people manipulate it in The Last Battle that this is the last thing I expected.

Okay, I have the answer: I do recommend Narnia. We're all just going to say "Yeah it was great, the ending was stupid but whatever," and leave it at that. I have such disdain for the concept of being keen on dying that I don't even want to give it any more attention than I already have.

Book Round-up: Narnia, Umberto Eco, and Susanna Clarke

Karen — Tue, 01 Dec 2009 02:49:00 +0000

It's been a little while- time for some more book talk.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Magician's Nephew, The Lion, The Witch and the Wardrobe, A Horse and His Boy, and Prince Caspian (by C.S. Lewis, as though you didn't know)

I've been meaning to reread Narnia for years now, and I've finally started digging into my handsome collected edition. I remember inhaling the series as an eight-year old, but other than a few mental images, I can't recall much from the first time I read it, and that's always bothered me. As a kid, I read The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe first, but as Narnia fans know, The Magician's Nephew is actually the first book chronologically; my Harper Collins signature edition presents it as such.

Even though this was Lewis' preferred order, I think it does a bit of a disservice to both books; The Magician's Nephew is slow to start, and lacks the immediate appeal to the imagination and page-turning quality that Lion has. It's not bad by any stretch of the imagination, but I think it does a better job of informing the adventure that you've read after the fact, as opposed to introducing it. With Nephew first, Jadis terrorizes the series for two whole books, only to be killed very suddenly in Lion. Considering that so much of the first book is devoted to chronicling how Jadis became the titular Witch, it was very strange to see her dispatched so unceremoniously. Without the whole extra book of build-up, the fact that the White Witch disappears as a presence in the series after Lion wouldn't present a problem. Plus, while the creation of Narnia in Old-Testament style is nice, it's not essential to know from the beginning.

Of the four I've reread so far, A Horse and His Boy has been my favorite, although I find myself with surprisingly little to say about it- it's just a gripping, old-fashioned adventure story, with talking horses no less. I could go into the Christian symbolism throughout the series and so on and so forth, but I think that's kind of pointless; Lewis used Christianity as a framework, and it worked well for the stories that he was telling. I may change my opinion upon reading the later books, but as of now, Narnia doesn't awaken the desire in me to attempt any deeper analysis; it's just there to be thoroughly enjoyed, and I'm grateful for that. This series brings the excitement of reading a book under the covers with a flashlight when you're a little kid and it's supposed to be lights-out, and you get that feeling back every time you pick it up.

Foucault's Pendulum (by Umberto Eco)

While I've enjoyed every book by Eco that I've read so far, and FP is no exception, I do find myself slightly disappointed with the conclusion. Three-quarters of the book is fascinating, and then it kind of degenerates towards the end. It's not one of those stories where the book appears to run out of pages unexpectedly; there is a proper ending. However, the ending seems kind of banal compared to the depth of the material that proceeded it.

The book deals with conspiracy theories, particularly those concerning the Knights Templar. While conspiracy theories are almost never consistent with reality, the fact that people believe them leads to real conspiratorial, dangerous behavior, and that's the aspect of the topic that FP mainly deals with. However, by the end I felt like the message of the book had become "Gee, aren't these conspiracy theorists insanely dangerous?", and I had assumed that Eco was building up to something more interesting. It's entirely possible that there's a lot more to it than that, but I just didn't understand it- and I don't give many writers that kind of credit. I may have to try reading this one again in a few years and see what else is there.

Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell (by Susanna Clarke)

I actually read this several months ago and forgot that I wanted to write about it, which isn't an encouraging sign. I did enjoy this book quite a bit in the end, but it wasn't a smooth ride.

In my attempt to properly sum up my impressions of this book, I keep coming back to an interesting question: how long should you give a book to "get good" before you give up on it? I'm forgiving of books being a little slow to start; I might characterize that as a flaw, but it won't discourage me from discovering what a book has to offer, once it really gets started. Besides, there's a pretty fine line between cutting out superfluous information and robbing a book of it's character, and I understand that everyone has a different take on that. I allow for that difference.

However, if a book takes over 350 pages to become interesting, isn't that pushing it just a bit?

Once I had FINALLY been introduced to the setting and the characters properly, it became a unique, downright fun reading experience. Before the titular characters team up and move into the forefront about halfway through the book, everything seems to revolve around secondary and tertiary characters for a long time, and I'm baffled by that decision. I understand that Clarke wanted to not only write about a world where magic is real, but create an entire alternate history for England, and you don't accomplish that in novella-length works; yet, I think there is just too much superfluous information here.

If there is one overall problem with the book, it is that Clarke seems to love the fantasy world she created far more than the story. There are copious footnotes, nearly all of which reference imaginary publications on the subject of magic in perfect MLA format. The references to imaginary books are cute at first, but at some point, I got tired of seeing references to books that were apparently very interesting, but that I would never get to read. It seemed like she was providing me copious documentation that her imaginary world was fully realized, and I really never doubted that it was- I just wanted to get on with the story.

Next on my reading list is more Narnia, the rest of Pullman's His Dark Materials series (although something tells me that it's going to annoy me), Haruki Murakami and Salman Rushdie...provided I can finish everything before the library summons the books back to its dark clutches. Oh dear.

Blog about Blogging

Karen — Fri, 30 Oct 2009 02:04:00 +0000

The idea of having to write a blog about blogging makes even sweet little Tomoyo facepalm.

If you've been following me on Twitter, or paying attention to what I'm doing whatsoever, then you've probably noticed that the blogging situation has got a bit...complicated. I said in an earlier blog that I planned to blog every day, and while it may seem like I'm failing at that goal, I'm really not-- true, I don't blog EVERY day, but it's not uncommon for me to do 4-5 blogs per week; they're just all on different websites. I update my GamingGoddess blog at Destructoid.com regularly, and recently I've started doing some anime-related blogging at Japanator.com. With this blog, that makes three distinct blogs that are being regularly updated; I think it begs the question why I don't combine them all into one huge, multi-disciplinary active blog, and call it a day. While I want to, I don't think I can in good conscience.

I've gotten a lot of exposure from Destructoid and lately Japanator, and moving my articles about game and anime related content, respectively, off of those sites would seem like an attempt to parasitically steal some of their audience. That's the last thing I ever want to do. While I'm not 100% in favor of everything these sites do, the fact is they've allowed me to connect with readers in a way I never could before, and I'm very grateful for that opportunity. I could just mirror the content, but that just seems like a less obvious way to do the same thing.

And yet, this is the blog with my name in the URL; I'd love to have everything in one convenient archive. At first I rationalized it by saying that all of my "personal" stuff would go here, but really, my feelings about games like Final Fantasy or anime like Evangelion are no less personal to me than my thoughts on Nine Inch Nails. And my narrated playthrough of Parasite Eve on Destructoid is part extended-review, part how-to, part literary analysis, and part personal narrative. I may not feel the same way about it as I do about the comics I make, but I still think of it as a creative project-- something far more personal than just reviewing a video game here and there. Ultimately, that's something I want my name on.

So I've decided that the best compromise is this: my gaming and anime blogs will always go up on their respective sites first, but after a week or two I can add those entries to this archive if I want to. That way, I'm still contributing to those communities by always giving them any relevant content first, but further down the line, when someone looks through the archives here they'll be able to find everything without having to navigate multiple websites. Of course, in the event that I ever start doing any professional writing on the web, that content would not be mirrored here because my employer would be paying for that exclusivity-- but I put that in the "I'll worry about that when/if it happens" category. I just wanted to state that for the record.

Anyway, I hope you don't mind my taking the time to explain what's going on in the land of Karen Bloggery. Meanwhile, I have a backlog of stuff now that could definitely go here, so updates of older (but hopefully, still entertaining) material will be intermixed with the new updates for a little while. Some of them may even be REFORMATTED for your reading pleasure (whoo!)

20 Years of Nine Inch Nails (Part 4)

Karen — Fri, 23 Oct 2009 04:44:00 +0000

For just pennies a day, you can save a Trent Reznor from being uncomfortable on MTV. The Save the NIN fund pays for things Trent Reznors need, like extra keyboards to smash, 10-gallon drums of corn starch, and an announcer who can pronounce the name of his band without calling it "Nine Inch SNAILS."

At first I ruled against including media in these posts, because in this day and age anybody who wants to find that stuff can do so. However, I've realized that the act of choosing what's relevant can be a part of the writing process. Now, you can watch all of them, watch some of them, or ignore them completely if you have no use for them.

First, let me get something out of the way that I would have posted in Part 1 if I'd been including video then:

Watch out for the guy in the back

Pre-NIN Trent Reznor, as a part of another band. I love how everyone else looks seriously '80s, and young Trent appears to be dressed for 1997. God bless the '80s; God bless Youtube.

Witness Protection: Speaking Truth to NiNnies

I may need to take an assumed name and hide myself; learn to blend into the shadows, like a ninja. There may be no amount of preparation possible to keep me safe; I am about to write some things about The Fragile that are not entirely complimentary. NIN fans the world over will want my head to hang on their mantelpiece.

"That was the girl who dared criticized The Fragile, we caught up with her eventually. She thought she was so clever, hiding in that big pile of comic books and Tori Amos CDs, but the smell of coffee and Orbit gum gave her away. Now, you can see her head over there, next to my mint copy of the Into the Void single autographed by Trent Reznor, or at least someone who looks a lot like him. It might have been that guy from Lost, actually."

Nineteen Ninety Nine

There are a couple of general guidelines for life, some well-recognized and some less so. There's Benjamin Franklin's famous assertion that the only certainties are death and taxes, the maxim do unto others as you would have them do unto you, and the fact that you should never let Trent pick the singles.

I was ecstatic the day I saw the single The Day the World Went Away at the record store (hey, remember those?), the first single off of The Fragile, NIN's long-awaited fourth album. Finally, a new song from NIN! And a real single, off a real album, not a joke remix EP like The Perfect Drug (no offense to The Perfect Drug!) Yippie-kiyaay! Moments after listening to the song, my excitement morphed into confusion, and finally intense disappointment. Months later, when The Fragile hit the shelves, I bought it dutifully, but without much enthusiasm; my faith in NIN had been shattered. I remember lining up at my local Sam Goody to buy the album, but I was also purchasing the newly released VHS subtitled editions of the Sailor Moon movies, and I was much more excited about the anime at that time. NIN put out a hugely experimental, double CD? That's nice. I used to really like them. I'll listen to it later, Sailor Venus awaits.

Am I the only one who makes this connection?

It's not that TDTWWA is a bad song; on the contrary, it's grown on me tremendously in the intervening decade. I especially like the acoustic version released as a part of the And All That Could Have Been package several years later. But it's like the Waiting for Godot of rock singles. There's nothing wrong with Waiting for Godot, it's brilliant in fact, but can you imagine taking someone to see Beckett's existentialist lament when they were expecting something more along the lines of Cats? I was expecting a Closer (which I had learned to appreciate by that point), or a Head Like a Hole, and instead I got a song that wasn't single material, but was one of those quiet pieces that you ignore on first listen, but only grow on you much later after you've tired of the catchier tracks. If you need a time machine to properly enjoy your single the day you buy it, there's something terribly, terribly wrong. It was a bait and switch of modest, but significant, proportions.

Reznor later said that he wasn't trying to commit career suicide with The Fragile, but that's pretty close to what happened. Whether it was the intention or not, singles like TDTWWA and later, We're In This Together (which was musically innovative, but possibly the whiniest, most melodramatic song NIN has ever put out) sent a clear message to the throngs of rock fans who rallied around Closer as a party anthem; This is not mainstream music. This is ARTISTIC music, do you hear me? NIN is an art band. Go away, millions of fans.

Introduced by Johnny Depp, no less

NIN performing at the 1999. MTV Video Music Awards. I don't think that this one of their better performances of this song, but I chalk that up to MTV besmirching everything it touches. I want to know what it is Robin did that was so funny it made Trent laugh in the middle of the song.

Oh, and isn't it a shame that we're ten years too early for Kanye West here? I would love to see what happened if he interrupted Nine Inch Nails instead of a willowy folk singer girl. I've seen Trent get violent with that mic stand....

Into the Void of Certainty

The highest compliment I can pay to The Fragile is that, even a decade later, I'm still not sure how I feel about it. It's the only NIN album that sounds pretentious to me; I can almost hear Reznor's desperation to out-Spiral himself, prove that the novelty of The Downward Spiral was not a fluke. Tracks like The Great Below, while beautifully arranged and loaded with potential, seem to fall slightly flat, lyrically derivative and lacking the sincerity of NIN's earlier work. Throughout the album, the music is on a level above the lyrics and the vocals; the pretty, playful Into the Void, one of the album's most original compositions, is somewhat let down by Reznor's vocals-- god forbid a song on the album merely be whimsical, there needs to be some self-hatred in there! Some of the darker tracks, like No You Don't and Where is Everybody, are both depressing and forgettable; well, at least you'll forget how depressed you were.

And yet, no matter how many disparaging things I find to say about it, there are plenty of moments when it all comes together. Somewhat Damaged is a fantastic opening track; it is also dark and depressing, but the constantly building intensity is so effective that you can't help but revel in that darkness, which is what the best metal does. The primarily instrumental tracks are of course free from the lyrical malaise of the rest of the album, and they truly shine. Even when I was too disappointed with The Fragile overall to truly appreciate it on its own merits, Just Like You Imagined still struck me as one of the most beautiful pieces of music I'd ever head; I used it as the soundtrack to an animation I made during my senior year of high school. The Way Out is Through is just as evocative as the title would suggest, almost a thesis statement for the album. La Mer, largely a piano piece featuring some French lyrics by a female vocalist, is quietly mesmerizing. On a few songs, primarily the title track and Even Deeper, Reznor gives a quieter, more nuanced vocal performance that would become characteristic of later albums. The flip side of being pretentious is that, if you're aiming for high artistry, sometimes you actually reach it, and the Fragile is a long double album-- there are a lot of mediocre tracks, but there are a lot of winners too, and the winners are forces to be reckoned with. The constant presence of stringed instruments, as opposed to the mostly electronic fare of The Downward Spiral, adds a feeling of warmth to the album that hasn't been equaled on any NIN release before or since; something about it reminds you of a rainforest.

NIN learning how to play JLYI live (it's possible?)

Despite some of the band members screwing up the vocal part a little bit in rehearsal, I like this version of the song a lot.

I guess the easiest way to sum up the album is that it's massively flawed, but also massively beautiful. If it's a failure, it's only so in the sense that you have to wonder what the album would have been if Reznor had been in a better place emotionally when he made it-- The Downward Spiral casts too large a shadow on it. It really only fails in its inability to make good on immense potential. It's a sacred cow for NIN fans because that was the album that separated the men from the boys and the women from the groupies; if you stopped being a huge fan of NIN during The Fragile era, it's because you were a fair-weather fan and never understood what NIN was about musically anyway. I like to think that, even though my NIN fandom waned during that era, it's not because I didn't understand NIN. I think I understood NIN well enough to understand that the album could have been so much more.

Sales Falling Apart

If I'm ambivalent about The Fragile even now, I've got nothing on the critical response to the album, which over time has proved to be entirely nonsensical. At the time of its release, numerous publications like USA Today, Entertainment Weekly, Alternative Press, and Spin Magazine heaped lavish praise upon the album. However, when The Fragile did not sell to expectations, retroactively many music critics apparently decided that not only was it not that good, but despite what they may have said before, they never actually liked it that much in the first place. In the press about 2005's With Teeth, a lot of critics addressed it as a comeback album, as if The Fragile were a disgrace that required coming back from. Now, ten years later and in the light of NIN's recent critical success with albums like Year Zero and The Slip, suddenly everyone remembers that The Fragile was amazingly ahead of its time. Make up your goddamned minds, people.

For a while people liked to refer to The Fragile as a commercial failure, but that's a slight that I haven't heard much these days; I think in light of what's happened to the music industry in recent years, the double-platinum sales of The Fragile are looking better and better. At the time though, the fact that The Fragile sold less than expected and did not produce any radio hits on a par with Closer, or even anything close to that, seemed to signal the end of NIN as a powerful force in rock. Furthermore, the remix album Things Falling Apart was bland, as remix albums go.

And All that Could Have Been

Nine Inch Nails 'La Mer' ((Live from AATCHB))

In 2002, NIN released a live CD and DVD. At the time, the title struck me as disturbingly self-lacerating; just imagine all that could have been, if The Fragile had been better and NIN shows were still completely sold out like they were in the good old days. Actually, the title refers to a bonus track of the same name off of the Still album, which was included as a bonus with the deluxe version of AATCHB. While the live album was pretty much what you would expect, Still was a surprise. Including several new songs (primarily instrumentals) and acoustic remakes of earlier songs, the bonus disc was the star of the package. In theory, there was a six-year gap between The Fragile and 2005's With Teeth, but a lot of NIN fans didn't feel that way; Still felt like an album unto itself.

Nine Inch Nails - Gone, Still.

It also began a trend which would continue throughout the rest of NIN's existence up to the present; grandmas and grandpas saying "I like this music, who is it?" and experiencing extreme confusion when confronted with the answer.

"But this is classical." "Yes." "You're saying it's Nine Inch Nails?" "Yup." "Aren't they the group that sings those terrible dirty songs?" "Yup." "But it's classical piano." "Yeah, they're schizophrenic like that."

Personally I'm not that fond of AATCHB itself-- the lyrics suffer from Fragile-Era melodrama. But the instrumentals are great, and the acoustic version of The Becoming proves that, despite everything that should make it impossible, NIN can make heavy metal with a grand piano. I think it's safe to say that that's a rare skill.

Metal +Grand Piano: Because it was there

What are you people doing? Is this safe? Does Elton John know what you've done with his piano? That poor bastard.

Next on NIN: The Series (or whatever it is that I'm doing), the With Teeth and Year Zero eras. I was going to post the video for The Hand that Feeds to get you all revved up for With Teeth, but there's been a lot of Trent Reznor in this entry, hasn't there? Yeah, I think so too. NIN is about more than just the front man, afterall. So instead, please enjoy this totally Reznor-Free version of The Hand that Feeds.

Rick Astley vs Nine Inch Nails - The Hand That Gives You Up (BRAT Mashup)

God, I love the internet.

In Response to "Obama's War" (PBS Frontline)

Karen — Mon, 19 Oct 2009 22:02:00 +0000

Last Tuesday night I watched "Obama's War", PBS Frontline's hour-long documentary about the war in Afghanistan. The main value of the documentary was that it showed a lot of things that you don't see on other broadcasts- and I'm not referring to the violence. Little things, like a marine trying to communicate with a group of Afghan villagers and running into translation issues, or the troops lazing around sans gear in the 120 degree heat of an abandoned school, gave you a sense of what it must really be like to be there. Now, I'm sure soldiers would laugh at the idea that someone like me 'understands' what it's like to be there (I don't profess to know that much) but for the first time, I felt like I had gotten at least an inkling of what it must really be like there, aside from the explosions and the television vistas of oceans upon oceans of sand.

If I took one thing away from the program overall, it was that the war in Afghanistan is not only different from the war in Iraq; it's like the war in Iraq through an insane funhouse mirror, where everything is similar on multiple levels but different in every way that truly matters. "Yeah, they're asking for more troops in Afghanistan, but this time they have an actual PLAN for what to do with those troops. This may seem like a pre-emptive war, because we're trying to sort out Afghanistan in order to avoid future terror attacks, but it's actually not pre-emptive because it's a continuation of the same war we started eight years ago- the one that was actually in direct response to an attack. Their current plan is based on winning the trust of the Afghan people through kindness and respect, which would probably work were it not for the fact that the Afghan people have been treated so arbitrarily over the course of the war, not to mention the last several decades, that they don't believe it when the troops say they're there to help. Instead of distracting us from a more important subject, this war is also a shadow-war with our ally Pakistan, who are peaceful on the surface but have been supporting the Taliban all this time, and one way or another, we are going to have to set a precedent for how military powers will deal with this kind of warfare, which bypasses diplomacy or even accountability, by doing the dirty work through faceless terror organizations," and so on.

I believe that General McChrystal is right in requesting more troops in order to strengthen the counter-insurgency, but then I hear myself thinking 'more troops' and 'Middle East' and I want to slap myself. I know it's different, but the failures of the Iraq war instigated a kind of paradigm shift in how most people in the US think about war: We don't want to go into it half-assed ever again. In fact, we don't even want to go into it three-quarters, seven-eights-assed ever again. It would take the emergence of swastika-emblazoned ,WWII-era Nazi's en masse from a time machine to convince many Americans that it's worth sending any troops into any war EVER AGAIN. "Get the troops out of Iraq and Afghanistan" has become a mantra, and many people don't want to acknowledge the fact that those are two different things; it just makes everything so painfully complicated.

For example, there's a lot of talk of 'nation-building' in Afghanistan, and it was basically glossed over in Tuesday's documentary when one diplomat said "This is Nation RE-building; there is already a Nation there." Unless you're looking at it from a Poli-Sci perspective, that seems like meaningless semantics, but it's critically important. When all these people say Nation-building, what they really mean is State-building; Nation building is virtually impossible. The sense of shared history and destiny that forms a Nation cannot be forced; the machinery of the state that complements that Nation is another story. It's extremely difficult to build a state without a nation, and that's the main problem in Iraq; the place is made up of several distinct nations who, for the most part, would be just as happy never to see each other ever again. In Afghanistan, while the organization is primarily tribal and local, the major conflicts in their history have not been along ethnic lines, at least in recent decades. Left to their own devices, the Afghan people instituted a secular, progressive government in the 1970's, which lasted until the Soviet Invasion. Recent history attests that they don't have a problem with the idea of being united under one government, and a secular one at that; they just wish their current government wasn't corrupt to the point of uselessness. In other words, we're not trying to force something on them that they have no interest in.

Forget Religion

Another aspect of the situation that is difficult to understand is the role of religion, although that's really more about the concept of religion as an organizational tool than actual religious belief; another thing that "Obama's War" did was reinforced my opinion that all of these conflicts are 99% secular, 1% religious. Money, territory, power, ethnic prestige-- these are all purely secular concerns. The holy war concept is a useful lie, because it sounds a lot better when you say "I'm doing this because God told me to, therefore it is RIGHT", as opposed to "I'm tired of being one of the have-nots in this society and my peeps have hated your peeps for eons anyways, so I don't have a problem killing you to get ahead." Whether that's a lie for the outside world or a lie they've internalized probably depends on the individual extremist, but it doesn't really matter. You can blame religion all you want, but the fact of the matter is, if we somehow woke up tomorrow to a world where religion no longer existed, people would find another pretext to fight over money, power, and prestige. "Jihad" isn't a philosophy, it's a meme.

Frankly, any talk about 'Jihad' at this point is a complete waste of time, because what terrorists groups are doing has virtually no relationship with anything in Islam. Terrorists want to hide behind the belief that there actually is some sort of holy war going on here, and every time we talk about their 'Jihad', we're cooperating with them. If there's anything resembling a true Jihad going on, it's on the part of Muslims who are fighting to stop their practical, egalitarian belief system from being defiled by all of this.

If you still don't believe that religion isn't really at the heart of any of this, consider this: the true believer, who takes every word of their text literally, has no reason to hurt you in this life; he BELIEVES that you will burn in hell. Feeling the need to shoot you is a sign of true spiritual insecurity, and it's downright embarrassing.

The Solution, such as it is

The really frustrating part for me is that there actually is a clear solution; it's just politically unfeasible. Unfeasible to the point where I wonder if we wouldn't be better off packing off and going home, regardless of the fact that everything will only deteriorate further, and who knows what consequences will stem out of that.

In the documentary, the American troops stationed themselves near a market in order to get closer to the Afghan people; afraid of being shot by the Taliban, the civilians abandoned that market and went to shop at a different one, miles away. The Marines then had the unenviable task of trying to convince the villagers, through poor interpreters, to come back to the market. The Afghan people don't believe that the soldiers can protect them from the Taliban, and why should they? Soldiers are dying; the marines don't have sufficient resources to thoroughly protect themselves, let alone anyone else. Forget about forging long-term trust and proving that the Americans are there for the duration this time: the Afghans don't have good reason to trust the Americans when they say "We will protect you from getting shot tomorrow."

In order to win true, deserved trust from the Afghan people, the troops have to be able to say "We will protect you", and make it look like a no-brainer; if the US presence were so overwhelming that you couldn't through a rock in Afghanistan without hitting an armed marine, suddenly the idea of the soldiers protecting the populace would have to be taken seriously. If the US presence were such that the idea of a Taliban attack was ludicrous, because, with all the marines around, it would be unclear whether the Taliban would have a place to stand, we would not have to convince the Afghans of our commitment to their safety; it would be palpable, so demonstrably true that there would be no question. With that level of safety, there would be greater cooperation in areas that will ensure future success- training large numbers of Americans to speak the local languages, supporting the next generation of Afghan artists and musicians who will promote and expand the traditional culture and help build Afghan pride and solidarity, building schools, etc. The impenetrable military shield would create a venue where all the things which would truly build Afghanistan- most of which are non-military, and would require non-military actors- would be possible on a grand scale.

If we followed this strategy, we could create a kind of sister-country in Afghanistan, helping them to follow up on the progressive path they started on in the 1970's, before the cold war threw everything off track and led to the post-war troubles that spawned the Taliban. In the new Afghanistan, the Taliban would be unwelcome; they could try to survive through their cooperation with Pakistan, however I don't see how that could work- the Pakistani government has been nothing if not pragmatic. If supporting the Taliban in resisting the US would seem like a tremendous resource drain for them (which it would be, if the US presence was on the scale that I am talking about), does anyone really doubt that Pakistan would drop them like a hot potato? There has been much talk about coercing Pakistan to be cooperative; in my view, we could bypass that entirely. Just make supporting the Taliban a big enough pain in the ass for them to deal with that it's not worth it to them anymore, and suddenly we're on the same side.

The obvious problem here is that, in addition to the issue of getting a war-wearied American populace to commit to a military objective on this scale (which is probably a deal-breaker in and of itself), I don't know if the numbers I'm envisioning here are even possible without a draft. Maybe they would have been possible had the Iraq war not so thoroughly exhausted the American military, but as of right now I doubt it. Of course, then I see myself typing words like "draft", and I want to slap myself again. It's so bizarre; I don't like the idea of large-scale military engagements one iota, but given that this situation has already been created, committed to, and sacrificed for, we can either do what it takes to win- an effort that will, at least in the short term, seem like madness, and anachronistic madness at that ('didn't we learn anything from Vietnam?' as many will say with even greater didactic frequency')- or continue to play a waiting game, hoping that we'll get lucky and things will somehow take a turn for the better of their own accord. I'm afraid that without a much more significant commitment, the level of involvement we have in Afghanistan now will do nothing except stall the inevitable, if even that. If we send more troops, that means more Americans sending their children off, possibly to die, on a premise that no one professes to truly understand; if we don't, those that have died so far will have done so for nothing, and will continue to do so in dribs and drabs until we eventually slink away with our tail between our legs, after another decade or two of stalling, while the terrorist nirvana that Afghanistan will have become plots more heinous crimes against humanity.

There is no way out of this that isn't difficult and ugly; if I seem to favor the higher-risk, go-for-broke approach, it's because that at least in theory, that strategy could eventually create another strong, secular ally in the region- almost like a second Israel, albeit with very different fashion and cuisine. And if we set a precedent of rehabilitating failed states, it will make it difficult for terrorist organizations to get a firm foothold anywhere- could they really take advantage of the power vacuum in Country X, if in all likelihood the US (or maybe even China) could step in at any moment? Despite how ludicrously expensive the whole thing may sound, making a habit of turning terrorist hotbeds into proper states means we'll be dealing with proper states rather than terrorist hotbeds; and unlike terrorist hotbeds, dealing with states is something America traditionally doesn't suck at.

We've been afraid of the loud bang of nuclear MAD, World War III, for a long time. Lately, it looks increasingly like there might not be any bang, but a series of whimpers so cacophonous they end up being louder in the end. The WWII metaphors of the Bush Administration, used to try to justify the War in Iraq, annoyed the hell out of me, but as with so many things, maybe they were partially right- even more unforgivable than being flat out wrong, which we could just ignore. You cannot apply the rules of WWII to today- the paradigms have changed. For one thing, it's a lot harder to tell when you've won. But one thing remains the same; if what you're fighting is truly a World War, you have to commit.

I know; it's easy to say. "If that's what you think, why don't YOU go to Afghanistan, missy?" Well, maybe I will- it's possible they might need English majors there at some point. They certainly don't have much of a use for us anywhere else.

20 Years of Nine Inch Nails (Part 3)

Karen — Tue, 13 Oct 2009 21:31:00 +0000

Little-known fact: The video for The Perfect Drug was created for the sole purpose of giving bloggers cool screenshots to work with. True story.

As luck would have it, my NIN fandom was at its height during the period where NIN could not be bothered to release a damn thing; maybe it was one of those absence-makes-the-heart-grow-fonder sorts of deals.

There was a five-year gap between the release of The Downward Spiral in 1994 and The Fragile in 1999 (technically, Further Down the Spiral was released in 1995, however that contained remixes of TDS tracks done by other artists than NIN, meaning that calling it a NIN album is a bit of a reach.) That's a long wait between albums, especially in an industry where the average shelf life of a band is only a few years to begin with.

At the time, Trent Reznor was distracted by outside projects; scoring the David Lynch film Lost Highway being one, and an ill-fated collaboration with Tool frontman Maynard James Keener another. While Reznor received accolades for his work on Lynch's film, the Reznor-MJK project, tentatively titled Tapeworm, is credited with the creation of only one commercially-released track. The idea of a NIN/Tool crossover however has proved so appealing to so many fans that Reznor claims that he has now spent more time answering questions about Tapeworm after the fact than he and Maynard ever spent working on it. For hard rock fans, it seems Tapeworm will forever be 'the one that got away', a kind of holy relic of 90's rock.

If it was a sparse time for NIN, it was also a confusing one. The one new song NIN released during the era, The Perfect Drug, was credited to NIN; however, other short instrumentals on the Lost Highway album were credited to Trent Reznor individually. Was Trent branching out as a solo artist, at least in the realm of film? Was NIN becoming a truly collaborative act, necessitating the distinction between the band and Reznor himself? Would any of this matter whatsoever unless any of the above parties got down to business and recorded the next stupid album already?

Reznor has admitted in recent years that the gap between albums was largely due to fear; after the tremendous critical and commercial success of The Downward Spiral, he was afraid that he was destined to be called a has-been pretty much regardless of what he did next. Unfortunately, though his procrastination may not have helped matters any, his fears proved to be well-founded: it took an album or two for people to accept that NIN would not, could not, make the The Downward Spiral again (not on a boat, not on a train, not with a pig, not in a wig, not in New Orleans, not with a walrus. Sorry.) Nevertheless, in 1997 we did get to hear The Perfect Drug-- like an oasis in a desert with no NIN, which come to think of it would be like most deserts, but c'est la vie.

The Perfect Video

If the Closer video was a worthy addition to the song, the The Perfect Drug video took the "Music video that actually has a legitimate artistic reason to exist" concept to a higher level: the video is better than the song. In one sense, the video justifies the song.

It might seem obnoxiously pseudo-intellectual to presume that a song needs justification to exist, and I suppose it is, but The Perfect Drug presents a bit of a strange case. Ostensibly written for The Lost Highway soundtrack, only one tiny part of the song actually features in the movie- a tiny part with no vocals, incidentally. While The Perfect Drug was technically a single, the actual song did not appear on the commercially released EP- only a collection of remixes, something that annoyed me tremendously at the time (maybe it's just me, but when I buy CD single, I'd kind of like the actual song to be on it.) While the song has many interesting features and was nominated for the Best Hard Rock Performance Grammy Award in 1997 (one of NIN's twelve Grammy Nominations, two of which were wins), it usually doesn't make appearances on fans' "Top 3 NIN Songs" lists. It's solid, impressively experimental, and catchy, but lyrically a bit derivative of NIN's previous material.

Where Mark Romanek got the idea to turn TPD into a gothic, Edward Gorey-inspired visual feast, I'll never know. But at some point, the video ceases to be a Nine Inch Nails product and becomes Romanek's Opus. He somehow coached a believable performance of a distinct character out of Trent Reznor, who had never played anyone but himself in videos (albeit with some showmanship.) In TPD, instead of Reznor we have a haunted nobleman in a dark Victorian estate morning the loss of either a woman, a child, or both-- it's hard to tell. More importantly, the video has the nerve to reach for grandeur and actually captures it.

Goatees: Should only be acceptable in this video, and POSSIBLY on Hugh Jackman. That is all.

At first glance, it looks more like a trailer for a feature film than a music video-- it's so fully realized that you believe there must be more there, more than this few minutes of film accompanying this strange song, equally soothing and cacophonous. Some people have expressed the wish that this video be expanded upon and made into a feature film; I think that would be redundant. It is a film; Romanek just did away with the need for things like "dialogue" and "running time."

Next time, I get into the second half of NIN's discography with The Fragile, Things Falling Apart, and And All That Could Have Been. You realize that by the time I get to Ghosts, I'll have probably have such commentary-exhaustion that the entry will read "NIN made album with no wurds, wuz good!", but we'll see.

20 Years of Nine Inch Nails (Part 2)

Karen — Thu, 08 Oct 2009 18:51:00 +0000

From Closer.

Before delving into The Downward Spiral, there is one critically important thing concerning Broken that I forgot to mention last time (shame on me). Since the two bonus songs, Physical and Suck were so different in tone from the rest of the album, the CD version pushed those songs all the way back to tracks 98 and 99, meaning listeners had to skip through 90 blank tracks to get to them. The cassette version of Broken (which was the version I owned until the early '00's) dealt with this problem in a much more elegant way; all you had to do was flip the tape over. This means that NIN managed to produce an album where the cassette version was superior to the compact disc, a nigh-impossible feat.

I told you they were good.

The Downward Spiral

If you weren't paying much attention to rock in the '90s, a lot of it was like this.

Hole- Courtney Love's band- opened for NIN in the mid-90's, when NIN was touring in support of The Downward Spiral. Love later complained profusely about the debauchery she witnessed on that tour. General rule of thumb: When Courtney Love says that you should be conducting yourself with more decorum and restraint, maybe it's time to re-evaluate your lifestyle.

I can think of no better example of life imitating art than the whole TDS era of NIN. The initial plan for TDS was a kind of thought-experiment on Reznor's part; exaggerate his current problems to the nth degree, and write an album from the perspective of the character he believed he could become in that situation. It was an attempt to deal with the darkest aspects of human nature through art, without having to experience them directly. Fortunately for NIN's value to posterity, but unfortunately for Reznor personally, the narrator's descent into madness and finally self-destruction rang so true for the world at large that most people assumed that the album was (at least mostly) auto-biographical. While the album's themes of substance abuse and megalomania had not been an accurate reflection of his life up to that point, the assumption of millions that he was the person he had written about, added to the excesses of stardom and constant touring, made it hard to tell the difference.

If Reznor acted like a crazy rock star for a good long while (and he admits it), at least he created a record of proportional insanity. I hate it when rock stars think they can get away with the fun stuff and skip the crucial "art" and "suffering" stages. That's just rude.

Closer to Meaning

Okay, you want to know what The Downward Spiral REALLY means? The monkey died for our sins. Clearly.

The phenomenon that grew out of the saturation of the song Closer was unique. Out of context, the song sounds like a frat party anthem; the notoriously dirty chorus tends to grab most of the attention. In the larger context of The Downward Spiral, it's part of an incredibly desperate cry for help that eventually terminates with the narrator committing suicide during the title track. While the chorus can be interpreted as a celebration of nihilism, it's hard to find a "cool" interpretation for lines like "You can have my absence of faith" and "Help me get away from myself!" While most people were blown away by the fact that a commercial single had the word "fuck" in the chorus, the defining phrase of Closer is "Help Me"; it appears four times more often.

Of course, radio stations and MTV were not going to play the song straight out, so the radio edit notoriously contained a pregnant pause where the f-word should be. That edited version, which achieved such ubiquity in the mid-90s that it approached total media saturation, had the effect of making the song sound even more shocking than it actually was. With the word so obviously edited out, it tended to make you scream the word in your head involuntarily. The censorship had the odd effect of appearing to be holding back the brutal nature of the song, which only added to it's allure.

As a kid, I hated Closer; I was too young for TDS at the time, and all I could get out of the song was "Look how dirty this is, isn't this shocking!", and I was a precocious kid who resented that sort of thing. It was only many years later that I came to appreciate it. Lyrically, it's brilliant despite the chorus; the narrator is doing anything he can to stop himself from thinking, a plan where sex is just the latest in a long string of distractions. But he can't decide whether this is a good idea or not. Does abandoning reason and existing on a purely animal level really bring him "Closer to God?" Isn't it supposed to be the other way around? If people are at their most divine when they use their reason, why does running away from it feel like the right thing to do? Earlier in the album, within the song Heresy, Reznor quotes Nietzsche: "God is Dead." Which is really unfortunate, because God tends to be the one you want to answer this sort of thing.

At the end of the day, what is Closer? A celebration of casual sex, or a thinly veiled plea for the grace to believe in God again? Choose your poison.

Closer to Video

Whatever you're doing, you can be sure he disapproves.

For a brief period, the music video for Closer was the only music video admitted to the permanent collection at the Museum of Modern Art. I've heard that they recently added the video for Madonna's Bedtime Stories, also directed by Mark Romanek, which somewhat ruins the effect. Still, it's impressive.

Music videos, as a format, are very strange. Music is music: it doesn't NEED visuals. The institution of the music video has led to a profusion of songs that aren't much on their own, but make for good videos where a bunch of girls in skimpy costumes and body glitter can do some sort of gyrating rain-dance. Musicians without much talent for actual music have been able to ride the video format to fame, and for musicians who are more interested in the songwriting process, the necessity to make videos for every popular song is at best a distraction, and at worst a giant, expensive albatross hung around the neck. The format has also had the effect of screening out of the industry anyone who isn't physically attractive, which is backwards in a medium that should be dependent on how someone sounds, not how they look.

And then there's Romanek's Closer-ballsy, blasphemous, strange, slightly self-parodying, and above all, mesmerizing. In a "sexy" song, one would expect the usual procession of hot chicks parading around the lead singer like he's the best thing since cake; instead we get lizards, bugs, monkey crucifixion, a disembodied beating heart, and a vulnerable incarnation of Trent Reznor who looks like he must have needed to get a permission slip signed in order to appear in the video. While there is "adult content" in the video, as they say, the most adult aspects of it are those that the MTV version didn't have to censor; the little girl who appears throughout (whom we would like to believe is pre-sexual, but isn't), the metronome, the room full of incredulous old men in three-piece suits judging the proceedings, and so on. There's always been plenty of sexuality on display on MTV, but most of the time videos glamorize it; this is, if not the opposite, something different. There's no glamour here, just the inevitability of biology- like lizards laying eggs.

If the song is deceptive in that it sounds like it's about sex but is really about something else at its core, the video is about how most things tend to come back to sex on some level whether we like it or not.

The Bottom of the Spiral

From Hurt.

I ended up writing far more about Closer than I originally intended, as opposed to the album as a whole. It's such a tempting subject though, and that's symptomatic of the fact that NIN is, on one level, a one-hit wonder. To many fans, NIN is Closer; they have no use for anything else. It dominates the conversation. If I had to pick one other feature of TDS that should warrant special attention (and for the purpose of brevity, let's pretend that I do), it's the fact that the narrator kills himself on the penultimate track, not the final one.

That's right; the narrator kills himself and the album isn't over yet.

Hurt, the final song, is in a different style than the rest of the album. While TDS is sonically a dense, multi-multi layered production, Hurt is mostly just Reznor and a keyboard. In an album that tends to turn traditional song structure upside down violently, the chorus of "What have I become, my sweetest friend" is heartfelt and clean, both lyrically and sonically. I think Hurt was a preview of what some of Reznor's work would sound like a decade later-- Right Where It Belongs could very nearly be passed off as a Peter Paul & Mary song, but I'm getting ahead of myself.

Many people interpret Hurt as a song sung from the point of view of Reznor directly, as opposed to the exaggerated narrator of TDS. By this point, that megalomaniac has blown his head off and isn't around to get in the way. There may be no better end to an album than the way Hurt caps off TDS; after a loud, violent, theatrical self destruction, when the smoke has cleared, Reznor gets to say "Look, this concept album was an interesting experiment and all, but this is really me here. Please listen to me and don't repeat my mistakes." In a way, Hurt is darker than all of TDS: We know that it's only the narrator who died and not the man, but in the crushing sincerity of the album's post-mortem, we can't help but feel that he's not far behind his creation. The sense of loss is overpowering; Despite knowing that Trent Reznor is alive and well, I can't hear this song without a tinge of fear that the singer must already be dead.

Next time, some lighter fare with The Perfect Drug, and the rest of that whole weird period where no one was sure if NIN was going to put out another album or not.

Absinthe: When you're bored with all of the other drugs.

20 Years of Nine Inch Nails (Part 1)

Karen — Thu, 17 Sep 2009 22:49:00 +0000

Probably not a typical NIN jam session.

Someone, I can't remember who, casually mentioned to me a couple of months ago that Nine Inch Nails were performing at Jones Beach, and I said "hmm, that's nice." Ideally I would have gone, but I'm a starving-artist type who can't afford to buy a whole lot of concert tickets, Plus I saw NIN at Madison Square Garden a couple of years ago, and that was a fantastic show. I just couldn't justify splurging on a concert for a band I'd already seen, for a concert that probably wouldn't be as good as the previous one.

I just found out that the name of that tour was Wave Goodbye, and it was the last NIN tour. I really wish that the person I can't remember from a couple of months ago had told me that. Shame on you, unmemorable person: Maybe I forgot you for a reason.

Now I could probably write an entire book just about NIN (and by the time this blog has been around for a while, I might have essentially done so), but I'm going to try to curb my verbosity enough to write a proper retrospective and cover a little bit of everything.

Nine Inch Nails: A Retrospective

I first became aware of Nine Inch Nails at the age of twelve; this means that I have been a fan of NIN for more than half of my life. If my objectivity concerning the band is questionable, it's because we grew up together. Closer on the radio scared me like the bully down the street, Just Like You Imagined soothed my jagged teenaged nerves, and now, Discipline reminds me that no matter how far I've come in terms of maturity, or perhaps because of it, I need support so I can go further. And all of Broken was like an annoying little brother, almost as annoying as my actual little brother, which is saying something. And don't even get me started on "Reptile"; I may have first discovered the concept of sex with Paula Abdul's State of Attraction, but it wasn't until NIN that I actually gave a damn.

Among his achievements, Trent Reznor can claim several paradoxical feats- like somehow managing to simultaneously be a one-hit wonder and one of the most inimitable artists in the history of rock. Or being involved in the creation of landmark music videos that legitimized the medium as an art form, amidst the backdrop of music videos completely destroying the artistic integrity of the music industry. But perhaps the most important thing that separates NIN from other acts can be found in a simple phrase in the credits section of Pretty Hate Machine: "Nine Inch Nails is Trent Reznor."

He's wasn't dead, you idiots.

Technically, NIN should be referred to as 'he', since from a legal perspective, the name only refers to one person. However, everybody- and I do mean everybody- refers to NIN as 'they', as in "They're playing at Madison Square Garden tonight." Nobody who has ever seen NIN in concert would think otherwise. Many bands fight or even break up over 'creative differences'; with NIN this would be impossible by definition, since anyone who isn't cool with Reznor having the final say doesn't join NIN in the first place. And yet, it doesn't feel like a solo act with a couple of work-for-hire flunkies- musicians like Charlie Clouser, Robert Patrick and Alessandro Cortini have played a tremendous role in NIN, along with a good dozen more artists, all of whom are charismatic, stylistically distinct, and valued by the fans. With Reznor's leadership acknowledged from the outset, NIN benefits from the presence of one cohesive creative vision instead of a bunch of compromises; they can skip most of the petty power struggles that plague more 'democratic' acts. And yet somehow, they maintain the allure, the camaraderie, the sense of adventure, of a rock band. Characteristically, what was in some respects a selfish move by Reznor- demanding total creative control- in the long run saved everyone a lot of trouble.

There's been so many people in the line-up these past few years that I honestly have no idea who the guy on the right is-- they should start wearing name tags.

Another idiosyncrasy of NIN is the huge gap between the actual content of NIN records, and the public perception of that content. For a long time NIN was represented in pop culture as the preeminent shock-rock band; big brother-band to Marilyn Manson, awash with expletives, anathema to everything subtle, classy and refined. But as early as Broken, NIN featured piano solos among it's rock anthems, a trend that would eventually culminate in albums featuring many fully instrumental compositions, and even forays into the realm of classical. Rock critics had to pull out the big words to describe NIN records; Reznor, usually soft-spoken when interviewed, used even bigger words. Was this a crazy, drugged-out metal band, or a calculated, intellectual, progressive musical experiment?

Furthermore, why 'Nine Inch Nails'? People speculated that the title was a reference to the long nails that are used in the construction of coffins; others, perhaps optimistically, thought it referred to genitalia. The answer?

"It looks good in print", said Reznor.

Pretty Hate Machine (1989)

I'm seriously hoping that this is actually a picture of early NIN, because for all I can tell from this one it could be New Kids On the Block.

In the mid-90's, Closer was nigh-omnipresent on the radio, but I didn't like it; It scared me. I thought explicit songs like that shouldn't be on the radio where pure, innocent little lambs like me could hear it (I think I was a snotty kid, now that I think about it.) It was hearing a random airing of Head Like a Hole that made me a fan.

PHM sounds dated; the 80's appear to the be the decade where everything now appears even more dated than dated things usually do. Dated in high-def, if you will. And Reznor's earnestness can sometimes backfire, resulting in whiny vocals that just cross the line into being slightly annoying. However, not only does the album have intermittently fantastic vocals-- The perfect annunciation of the lyrics and emotional delivery of Head Like A Hole makes the song sound more like it was written for the stage( you can clearly hear EVERY word he's saying, a breath of fresh air in the realm of rock.) While I've always found Reznor's singing to be inconsistent, when he's good he's very good, and there are plenty of examples of that here.

Even if some songs aren't performed as well as they could have been, PHM makes up for it with consistently good songwriting. Nearly every song on the LP is catchy and singable, and while the lyrics are not particularly deep, they are always memorable. Down in it is like nothing else that had come out at the time, Sin could be another stage production number (what a musical that would be), and The Only Time is so guileless and playfully raunchy that you almost have to smile. Again, for the most part PHM isn't a lyrical showstopper, but lines like "And the Devil wants to fuck me in the back of his car!" have a unique, perverse charm to them. What kind of car does the devil drive, anyway? Is going into the backseat with the devil a good thing?

Alas, 20 years later some mysteries still remain.

Broken (1992)

At one point in Back To the Future, the Doc says: "You're not thinking four-dimensionally, Marty!" If you can't hear what's so great about Broken, you're not thinking four-dimensionally, Marty(and your taste in music is questionable.) Broken always sounds better in the future.

Reznor described Broken as an intentionally abrasive record, full of anger. A world of legal trouble with NIN's first label, TVT records, left him even more inclined to lament the influence of the great "They" who controlled the purse strings than usual. While at first the record sounds like a series of accidents at an industrial park (with about as much musicality), I find that it sounds better to me with every passing year. There is beauty buried deeply on the lower layers, but it isn't delivered to you on a silver platter. You have to actually acclimate yourself to listening to the record, the polar opposite of pop music's "hear it once and it's in your head" sensibility. When I first got it fifteen years ago, I liked one or two little parts of it but found the whole thing virtually unlistenable. Now, it's one of my favorite albums of all time. Listen to it long enough, and all you can hear is the beauty.

Woodstock '94: There are worse things than Swine Flu

NIN's performance of Happiness in Slavery in 1994 is still considered a high water mark of rock performance, at least for the kind of rock where moshing is not only permissible, but mandatory, and where everyone is far too stoned to remember what "high-water mark" means. Frustrated by the constant rain at Woodstock '94, the band took a dive in a giant mud puddle before the performance, and broke their instruments into pieces as punishment for being full of water and malfunctioning. Covered in mud, fifteen times louder than Nirvana, snarling with rage and consumed with the desire to murder some keyboards, NIN put on a show like no other. I wonder how many of the ecstatic fans in the audience knew that the song was actually mocking them, ever so slightly. My guess is zero.

The true brilliance of Broken, at least to me, is that it's not the primal scream it sounds like; there's more to it. On the umpteenth listen, you start to notice lines like these:

Slave screams, he's gonna cause the system to fall

But he's glad to be chained to that wall

Happiness in Slavery is a song about people unwillingly being pushed through the broken machine of social conformity-- or so it seems. But it's also about people who lament the machine, but are free from the responsibility to actually do anything about it by virtue of their powerlessness. People who bitch about "The System", while sitting around in their parents' basement waiting for a new CD to come out. Kind of like a lot of NIN fans. Kind of like Trent Reznor. It's unusual to have the presence of mind during your primal scream to implicate yourself.

Next Time: The Downward Spiral

No, I'm not a drug addict-- I just play one on TV in order to help create a persona which I can then use as a launch pad for my philosophy and social commentary. Why do you ask?

Book Review: Baudolino (by Umberto Eco)

Karen — Mon, 14 Sep 2009 03:28:00 +0000

It used to be said that the musical A Chorus Line was really meant for people who had already seen a lot of musicals; people who have never set foot in the theater before would be better off with Les Mis. I get the same feeling from Umberto Eco's novels, because while I think they're fantastic, I also think they're really meant for people who read novels all day long. If you're not a regular reader (and a novel-reader in particular), I would generally recommend something else- although, in this context, NOT Les Mis (I mean no disrespect to Hugo, but that's just not the book that's going to hook a reluctant reader into the world of literary delights.)

One of the comments I've gotten frequently about Sterling is that you really can't tell from the beginning what genre it is. In fact, two chapters into it you still really can't tell. I'm not a snob about genre fiction; I read plenty of books with elaborate, colorful pictures on the spine. However, sometimes I think announcing the genre up front is letting the cat out of the bag too early. We already know that the book we are about to read takes place in some sort of alternate reality-- it may be a reality very similar to ours, where the laws of physics remain intact, or it could be a reality where you don't know that you've jumped down the rabbit hole until you're halfway to the center of the earth. Why give that sort of thing away up front?

Eco seems to like constructing rabbit holes that have some sort of invisible force-field about halfway down; you can never confirm whether you're in a fantasy world or not. The titular Baudolino dictates a tale that's equal parts historical fact and medieval legend, and while the book has such a strange air of authenticity to it you can almost believe that centaurs did roam the middle east in the 1100s, we are assured - frequently - that Baudolino is a huge liar. If you're willing to label everything fantastical in the book as an exaggeration by Baudolino (and it makes perfect sense to do so), the book can be taken as solid historical fiction. However, passages like Baudolino's courtship of Hypathia, a fairy-like creature who should be merely whimsical, yet somehow becomes a vibrant woman that we can relate to, make us wish that the entire story were real. We don't really believe Baudolino, but I think the message of the book has something to do with how much we want to.

As historical fiction, Baudolino features plenty of sacks, murders, rapes, etc., but somehow I didn't find these sorts of details as off-putting as I did in Ken Follet's The Pillars of the Earth, a far more 'serious' historical novel. While Eco's characters feel like creatures of their times (who deal with hardships regularly and have developed an iron-tough skin), Follet's characters seemed to me to be 21st-century personalities shoehorned into historical characters awkwardly. The intent with Pillars was apparently to make you feel like you, personally, were present at the sack/murder/rape/torture, and while the book is admittedly compelling, it's compelling like a 20 car pile-up on the freeway. If anything, Baudolino is the more graphic of the two books, but it's actually the more pleasant read.

I purchased my copy at The Strand books in Manhattan; I haven't seen copies of it floating around in regular bookstores, so it may be somewhat hard to find. Whether this title is worth the time to both hunt down and read when you could be reading Foucalt's Pendulum and/or The Name of the Rose by the same author, I couldn't say; I haven't gotten around to either of those yet. I can tell you though that Eco's books are steadily moving up on my reading list.

First Podcast

Karen — Fri, 11 Sep 2009 00:58:00 +0000

Wilson and I recorded the first episode of a gaming podcast, tentatively titled GGcast-- if we end up doing a lot of these, I'll think of a better name. Anyway, it's basically just fifteen minutes of us chatting about video games, but it was fun.

Dark Juice Box Sample

Karen — Thu, 10 Sep 2009 04:50:00 +0000

It's still going to be at least a few weeks until the DJB website will be up, so here's a little sample of what the comic will look like. Unlike Sterling, it will be full color, but I'm trying to find a coloring style that has a little bit of depth to it without having to mess around in Photoshop for too long. Right now I like the idea of having lots of solid areas of color, but with areas like eyes and hair getting some detail work.

Go Tennis, Part II

Karen — Tue, 08 Sep 2009 21:52:00 +0000

I want to see a Raphael Nadal and Melanie Oudin play together as a mixed doubles team; they could raise the length of the game to about 85 sets, and while everyone else was keeling over from exhaustion, those two would just keep fist pumping and saying "We can do this, YEAHHHH!" Or they would come on the court looking so earnest, bright eyed and bushy-tailed that everyone else would just throw down their racket in disgust and not even bother to go through the motions.

I've been practicing with a racquet for the past few days and decided to play left-handed, because they way I grip the racquet with my right hand leads to annoying hand-soreness. You would think that playing lefty would make a difference, but ever since I had tendonitis in my right hand I've become increasingly ambidextrous; while I am a little clumsier with my left, it's really not anywhere near as big a difference as you might think. It's much, MUCH less inconvenient to have my left hand sore after some tennis practice then my right. Plus, playing lefty means I can toss the ball with my right hand, which is nice because that part of the game has suddenly become a lot easier.

I've overdosed on watching tennis due to the Open this week, but I still think getting into the game is a really good idea; for one thing, I have an excuse to buy one of those snazzy tennis dresses. I think I've desperately wanted a tennis dress for my entire life and only just realized it now.

I'll probably have five tennis dresses before I can consistently hit a nice backhand, but at least I know where my priorities are.

Go Tennis

Karen — Mon, 07 Sep 2009 01:59:00 +0000

I couldn't blog for a couple of days because I couldn't actually log into my blog; the problem is fixed now (not that I have a terribly clear understanding of what was wrong in the first place.) This sort of thing seems to happen to me much more often than the laws of probability would lead one to expect.

Every year, when the US Open is on TV, I get inspired to play tennis. It's the only sport where I both:

A)Understand what's going on

and

B)Care in the slightest

With professional sports, you have to be prepared to buy into the abstraction that where the ball goes actually matters on some level. With baseball, while I don't begrudge all of the people who enjoy it- and for that matter, more power to them- I just can't make myself care about whether the guy can get to the base before the ball does. The rules just seem so incredibly arbitrary that I can't really appreciate the skill on display. Sure, the guy who makes it to home plate may be a fast runner, but if I wanted to see running I could actually watch track and field instead. The pitcher may be fantastic, but if he hangs tough and the batters barely get any hits, it's dreadfully boring to watch.

I'm not going to try to argue that tennis is any less arbitrary, however I sense a certain elegance there that makes it possible for me to buy into the abstraction. It seems like a natural evolution of a game that people have been playing since the dawn of time as opposed to an incredibly complex game that someone made up, taking the concept of "move the ball around", and gilding the lily to a semi-ridiculous degree. Plus, I find the sensation of hitting a tennis ball to be more fun than that of dribbling a basketball or anything else of that nature. I can see why people would want to do a lot of it.

It makes such a satisfying *thwack* noise, too.

Despite my appreciation for pro tennis, I've never really learned how to play. Every time I try I'm upset by how bad I seem to be at it, mostly because I haven't learned how to play. I've only just realized that there's a way out of this diabolical, divide-by-zero sort of situation, because if I keep practicing, I probably will learn how to play at some point. There is something extremely odd about not learning until your mid-twenties something that most school children pick up in the third grade, especially when your academic career attests to above-average mental faculties. I don't think I'm stupid, but I think my smartness is of a more Savant-ish character than I had ever realized.

For the record, I also cannot tie my shoes properly or tell my left from my right without having to think about it. Seriously.

Review: Stick to Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!

Karen — Thu, 03 Sep 2009 03:08:00 +0000

One of the things I plan to do with this blog is review books, however that may be misleading; I don't necessarily mean "review" in the sense of an article-length critical essay. I don't want to pass judgment on books so much as write about them, so there are no rules as far as these sorts of entries are concerned. I may do one two-paragraph review of a book, or multiple entries on one book; you just NEVER know. Isn't it exciting?

Stick To Drawing Comics, Monkey Brain!(Scott Adams)

The ornery Dilbert-scribe finally went over to the dark side and published a book without pictures. Adams can sometimes come off as too glib, even for me (which is saying something), but this collection of short non-fiction pieces is consistently funny. It's also surprisingly thought-provoking; I like the fact that Adams firmly defines himself as a skeptic, but isn't afraid to question some of the quasi-sacred cows of the secular elite. For example, at no point does he claim to doubt the veracity of the theory of evolution overall, but he does question whether or not scientists are oversimplifying their ideas about how evolution actually works so they can flatter themselves by saying that they understand it. Personally I think some people are so distracted by the need to point and laugh at creationism that they don't realize that our understanding of evolution (and related concepts) could probably use some work, but enough about that for now.

Often when an artist does something out of their comfort zone, the best part of the package is whatever remains close to said zone. In other words, one would expect that the numerous anecdotes about Adam's cartooning career with Dilbert would be the best part of the book. While I enjoyed the insight into the world of professional cartooning, it's a credit to Adams that they aren't.

It's available as a bargain book from some retailers, making it a steal at only a few bucks. Go for it.

Stupid Anti-Evolution Bugs

Karen — Tue, 01 Sep 2009 21:14:00 +0000

I'm mad at the bugs; they've been breaking the rules.

And don't give me that "what rules?" business, you know exactly what I'm talking about: the deal where if they can limit their travels to my blind spots and/or my peripheral vision, I can pretend they don't exist long enough to override my nigh-overpowering urge to kill them. Most bugs are born knowing this, and generally, if a bug gets within two feet of my face, I give them the benefit of the doubt and assume it was a careless error, rectified as soon as they fly away. Once they hot-wing it to the distant peripheral-vision-only zone, then it's like, what bug? I didn't see any bug. No stupid bug has invaded the sanctity of my house. I'd better not CATCH any bugs in this house.

Lately though I've been getting these saucy, kamikaze-type bugs who love taking themselves out by flying straight into my nostril. Now, if I was a tiny life form looking to kill myself with a bang, the nostril would not be my venue of choice. I can only assume that these tiny bugs are not the top of the heap in tiny-bugland, evolutionarily speaking. They are probably a credit to their gene pool by getting rid of themselves before reproducing (although I suppose I have no way of knowing if they've reproduced yet or not, but I'm basically pro-evolution so I'm going to assume that they are reckless, pre-pubescent tiny bugs.) In all seriousness, I wonder if a species of house-dwelling bug so protected from nature has evolved that it lacks any survival instinct whatsoever. If generations upon generations of bugs have been living the high life off of bountiful orange juice spills and endless feasts of cookie crumbs, you have to reckon that the poor specimens aren't getting weeded out anywhere near as fast as they normally would. Multiply this trend by long enough, and you get a bug that assumes that a creature 50000 times its size is of no particular significance. Perhaps they interpret me as some sort of amusement park ride.

It is of course possible that these bugs aren't flying into me because they're too stupid to avoid me, but instead because they're having some kind of complex existentialist crisis, the pain of which has caused them to take their own lives rather than continue their wretched existence. But I think that's more of a Butterfly thing.

I should postscript this by saying that I've decided to try to blog every day, or at least close to it, for writing practice; I think it's safe to say that they can't all be winners.

Doctor Who: It Just Won't Freakin' End

Karen — Fri, 21 Aug 2009 03:19:00 +0000

Having a blog where I can write about anything is actually a bit overwhelming. To make things nice and easy, I've decided to start off by writing about my favorite television show-- no, NOT My Little Pony. Or She-Ra, Princess of Power. Or Sailor Moon. Or X-Men: The Animated Series.... okay, so maybe I have more than one, but this time it's Doctor Who.

The above picture, featuring Matt Smith in costume as the Eleventh Doctor and Karen Gillan as new companion Amy Pond, provoked a surprising number of responses from me. I thought I would share some of them with you.

Immediate Reactions That Might Be Kind Of Mean

a) OMG, they found little chibi-versions of David Tennant and Catherine Tate!

b) The BBC was so offended by the insinuations that there was sex in the Tardis that they've decided to make it seem not only unlikely, but impossible. What are they? Ten years old?

c) No danger of this guy being drafted by the Royal Shakespeare Company to play Hamlet.

d) He's so funny-looking, not even John Barrowman will want to kiss him...well okay, that's RIDICULOUS. But still, he's kinda funny-looking.

e) My, Christopher Eccelson and David Tennant are looking more handsome by the second.

f) This Karen Gillan girl is lucky that she's a companion for the Eleventh Doctor and not the Tenth, because if there was a Karen in the Tardis during the Tenth Doctor's era and it wasn't ME, well, let's just say that his Karen would have been "upgraded." Incidences of Forced-Karen-Replacement are rare, but not unheard of in the wild.

g) What is this Sweet Valley High doing in my Doctor Who?

...and I could go on, but I imagine you get the idea.

David is all like, "this is how you take a publicity photo, bitches."

For anybody who is completely and utterly confused right now, David Tennant (the actor who has been playing the Doctor for the past four years) has left the show; his final episodes will be the 2009 Christmas Specials, where presumably his incarnation will be killed off with much fanfare. Less talked about, but perhaps even more significant, is the fact that head writer Russel T. Davies has also left. While new head writer Steven Moffat steers the production of the next season, and Tennant returns to the theater- not unlike a salmon, returning upstream to spawn and die (and host Masterpiece Theater, which isn't terribly salmon-like but what can you do, metaphors are tough)- it's really not clear where the show is going.

Now, I'm not one of those manic Doctor Who fans who are busy filling the internet with bile about how Matt Smith is terrible and should be shot. While I will admit that I was hardly thrilled with the announcement of his casting, in truth I know better than to judge a performance that I haven't seen yet. My comments about his lack of attractiveness are strictly about personal preference-- I know that lots of people think he's good looking. I mean, I don't understand them and I think they're probably crazy, but that's beside the point.

Look at these two pictures. Matt Smith's first photo with the Tardis, looking kind of constipated, and David Tennant playing with an adorable kitten: Who is better?

It's not the actor playing the Eleventh Doctor that's my problem; What I've recently realized is that I'm uncomfortable with the fact that there is going to be another Doctor at all.

Why I Sort Of Want Doctor Who To End

During the years since DW's revival (or the RTD era, as some fans call it), despite the gags and silly costumes there's been a lot of quite serious stuff. The show regularly deals with themes that were only touched on during the classic Who era, if at all. Most of the popular episodes, like "The Girl In the Fireplace" and "Blink", are about mortality (when the Doctor says "Blink and you're dead", he's not just talking about the monsters of the week). "The Fires of Pompeii" dealt with the issue of power and responsibility that the show has traditionally shied away from- a core problem with the show is the fact that the Doctor never does anything with his time machine that YOU would do (like prevent World War II and the Holocaust, let's say), and they finally addressed that. Of course, saying "Some events are fixed and I can't change them" is a bit of a cop out, but at least they pointed out that "can't" and "won't" are two different things.

They've even taken the core concept of the show- The Doctor and his companion- and taken it to a place where it really makes no sense to return to the status quo. I really disliked the end of Season 4, but what happened to Donna represents a complete breakdown of the Doctor/Companion relationship, and I have to give them credit for going through with it. At the end, Donna was scared of him, and that's the last thing that he (or us) ever wanted to see. It's probably the only thing I've ever seen on television that was intentionally painful to watch, as opposed to just ending up that way due to incompetence. The idea that the Doctor could pick up a new person after being forced to acknowledge something so disturbing- that the relationship of equals between him and his buddies is a charade- is hard to wrap my brain around. Hasn't he learned that it's unfair to expose these people to so much danger, in large part from himself, just because he's lonely? Wasn't that the point?

See, this is going to hurt me a lot more then it's going to hurt you. Primarily because you will have no clue what just happened.

Of course, the ratings are good, and thus the show lives on; being Doctor Who, even after this series is canceled the story will probably pick up again twenty years down the road. I understand that a TV show is not going to have the kind of beginning, middle and end that a good book does. But I can't help feeling that the last season or so has constituted an actual ending, and to continue merrily along with cheerful new characters is kind of like a slap in the face.

On Research

Karen — Fri, 07 Aug 2009 01:13:00 +0000

I could not find one single decent book on horses at the library today; whether the library has a terrible selection of equestrian tomes, or all the horse-fiends have simply checked them all out, I couldn't say. I will need more reference material before I get comfortable drawing a certain baby unicorn.

Many people would tell me to forget about books and use the wonderful resource known as Google Images; this actually doesn't work too well for me. It's somewhat uncomfortable to sit at my computer desk and use the pictures for reference, and if I sit at my drawing desk the monitor is too far away. I could print them out, but ink isn't free, and then I get to playing an irritating game of "Will I get my ink's worth out of this reference picture?"

"Hmm, this picture could be useful, but if I print it out, will I actually use it? Or will I just stick it in a folder and never look at it again? Furthermore, is this the BEST example to use for reference, or should I go through several more pages of thumbnails to verify that there's nothing superior?...wait, is this even what I wanted to draw in the first place?"

I can't be the only one who goes through this...probably.

New Comic????

Karen — Thu, 06 Aug 2009 04:42:00 +0000

Sterling isn't a webcomic; it's a graphic novel that happens to be online. In a perfect world, it probably wouldn't be.

It's never had a lot of readers, but I tried not to ever get too upset about it, because I knew from about two days into the process that Sterling was completely unsuitable for the webcomic format: I did not care. Well, I cared, but not enough to keep it from being anything other than what it is: A messy, bizarre, uneven labor of love that would require a huge attention span from readers under the best of circumstances, and my updating schedule could never be considered "the best of circumstances."

However, despite the fact that I'm proud of Sterling and I can't imagine it being any other way, the fact remains that I've never really TRIED to make an actual webcomic. Which is a shame, because I think I could make a pretty decent one if I wasn't shooting myself in the foot from the word go. Furthermore, Sterling is very much a writing project-- the art is important, but it's rare for me to sit down to work on a page and be completely in the mood to draw whatever the story currently requires. In fact, a large portion of the time I would much rather be drawing mermaids and unicorns, but the order of the day is to draw someone opening a door.

Do all comic artists come to absolutely hate doors, or is it just me? I plan to kick my door a few times after writing this blog.

Anyway, Sterling can be fun to draw sometimes; Aeka is particularly fun to draw, and all of the 'gameworld' sequences in Chapter Two represent a rare convergence of creativity where something I want to draw actually works in the story. But it occurred to me recently that if I was doing a comic that involved mermaids and unicorns and all that stuff I always find myself doodling in my free time, it would be a helluva lot easier for me.

So, all of this is a long way of saying that I'm starting a second comic. I won't go into too much detail yet, but just to give you a general idea....let's say it's Naruto-meets-My-Little-Pony-meets-Doctor-Who-meets-Immanuel-Kant. There, now you should have a crystal clear image of the forthcoming comic in your mind-- and if you don't, it's YOUR fault, not mine:).