Kid Oakland, now a frontpage diarist on the Kos, has a bit that references GTA (as well as Biggie and Tupac) to make a point about prison. The usual flamewar about the virtue (or lack thereof) of the GTA franchise ensues.

This is something I'm interested in tracking, not only because I'm interested in politics and the next round of the culture wars, but because I'm fascinated by the continued emergence of videogames as a cultural product, a medium for narrative and for representing myths, values, etc.

I think the reflexive reaction to violence in games is just that: reflexive. People inevitably fixate on the fact that in all three modern installments of Grand Theft Auto you can pick up a prostitute, watch your car rock back and forth, loose some money, then kill the girl when she gets out of your car and take your money back. I remember being blown away by this when I first heard/saw it a few years ago, not because it was so depraved, but because it was so logical. The great advance that Rockstar Games (makers of GTA) have made is to build an unprecidented level of logical consistency into a world founded on comic-book/action-movie violence, which ultimately creates a much more engaging experience for human beings on the playing end.

So while it's just breaking into the mainstream that this game creates a fantasy world wher really awfully brutal things are possible -- and this is bringing around the real possibility that there will be a push for some kind of regulation soon -- I believe the step up in gameplay and engagement will make it a powerful medium for narrative development, leading to Videogaming as a source of positive social values. It's already happening, as per this comment:

Having played "GTA: San Andreas", I can tell you, the one time I sprayed everyone in a pizza shop with bullets for money, I was guilt ridden for the rest of my time in the game. Even in the video gaming world, I felt this kind of behavior was "cheating". I didn't earn my money as I should have...and innocents died because of it. I think these games are very interesting and open up parts of your brain which wouldn't be touched otherwise...

I'd point out that San Andreas is decidedly anti-crack, and points out the geopolitical relationship between the soviet union's collapse and the massive rise in street crime in the early 90s. That's a long way to come from Space Invaders and Pong.

A nice americanized re-packaging of the Policial Compass, here's OkCupid! Politics Test:

You are best described as a:
Socialist

OkCupid is cool. I took their relationship test a while back and found out I was a Playboy. So now I'm a Socialist Playboy.

Nice.

From the seester:

lohanfreestyle.com

make sure your sound is up

Just do like the lady says.

Gunner Palace has a release date, March 4th 2005. This is a movie that actually is about the acutal people who are actually fighting the actual war actually in Iraq. The clips I've seen are fascinating and amazing.

Here's the latest. This video dates from 2003, I believe. I think they pulled it because Rummy got nailed on the HUMVEE armor question, but it really makes me want to see more. With all the bullshit, there's a deep hunger for some real stories, and seeing the kids who are all around my age get to tell them is something I wouldn't miss for the world.

You can also peep the trailer, which should get you pumped.

The human world thrives on personality, mythology, narrative and story. This doesn't mean that only people with ingratiating personalities are successful, only that someone with an authentic personality will often win over someone lacking or with an inauthentic one. It means that someone with a myth, a tale, a legend will have more social gravitas than someone without.

We often forget these things in our highly marketized world. The realm of commodities and products is often inhuman, powerful as it is, and that makes it weak. Don't forget that.

Once again I find myself cheering for Jessie in his latest post on the GTA thing o'er at Pandagon:

I know we want to get in on the moral values debate like the nerds of Zeta House want to get in on Kappa Omega Kappa's kegger, but if we need to disingenuously stand up to a videogame marketed to adults in order to find our moral backbone, we might as well just start screwing the sheep and giving the kids heroin now.

His reasoning was near and dear to mine. To wit, we agree that it's disengenuous to grandstand against a problem you're not really going to make an attempt to solve. However, Ezra also weighed in again, making more clear his point that there are people who are concerned with violence in culture, and in videogames, and that the Democratic party would be well adviced to somehow address their concerns. To my mind his advice remains tactical:

I'm tired of ceding all cultural ground to the Republicans. We have our demoestic message, we have, unfortunately, our foreign policies. But we don't even enter the cultural conversation, except to tell people to turn the channel, or not play the game, or not get the marriage. It's laissez-faire morality, and it leaves our party looking spineless and remote in the affairs that, rightly or wrongly, occupy much of the mental space in America. And it helps us lose elections. And that is why we should care.

He's right that the complete and utter lack of cultural message on the part of the Democrats is an issue. I just think he's coming down on the wrong side of the debate. While saying "video games where you can fuck and murder prostitutes is something we should find offensive enough to oppose" may be an ok soundbyte, it's essentially spin, and the direction it takes you will lead you away from what you really believe and cost you more votes than it would win.

What the Democrats should do is develop some culturally-relevant message that goes beyond laissez-faire morality but doesn't establish itself by condemning certain cultural products. This is more difficult, but more broadly appealing as well, not least of all because it will help distinguish D's from R's on the cultural issue. You don't win the culture war by being Republican lite...

Just occurred to me as I was making some coffee at noon -- I got up at noon this Monday, and why not? -- that not so long ago sugar was a major part of the commercial engine driving Western expansion into the rest of the world. Now it's so common you can buy five pounds of white sugar (once the most prized variety) for the same price as a loaf of moderately-expensive bread, and we have a national epidemic of childhood obesity because high-calorie sweeteners are added to so many things that remain so cheap, many of which are sold in our schools.

In the heyday of colonialism, people were enslaved to plant, harvest, process sugar. Now we have a different kind of economically-driven domination. People ruin their physical lives in order to consume.

This is part of a general trend in the post-industrial era, the transition from production to service and consumption. We really don't need 6 billion people making things with the most advanced machinery possible. It would be thousands of times more than the world needs. I mean, the industry of fashion had to be invented from whole cloth to keep the textile industry alive. Fashion is an information industry, mostly design and marketing, which informs the masses that old clothing (the last style, the last year, the last season) should be thrown out and new attire purchased on a semi-regular basis.

I'm not opposed to fashion as a concept, but it's interesting how it's been put to work by the profit cartel to harness the Westernized human being's desire for identity in the service of consumption. The supreme irony is that because this consumption is meant to justify the output of our mighty engines of mass production, people's hunger for identity-bolstering products, things one would think would set the individual apart from the mass, tends to be sated in a rather uniform manner.

This has been generally true across the cultural board for some time -- "I'm going to be alternative, just like everyone else" -- and there are fascinating questions to be investigated about the nature of identity vis-a-vis individualism. It's coming to many people's attention that there is no such thing as an individual; neither man nor woman can exist as an island. So you need a tribe, people you belong to, etc. But still, the way in which the corporate market has been able to co-opt the notion of rebellion against the corporate market is really quite something.

This phenomena feels prescient to me because I went through adolesence at the onset of Grunge (soon followed by Punk) as a marketed culture. I can recall watching "Smells Like Teen Spirit" debut on MTV at the age of 12 and being vaguely afraid of what I was seeing, similarly to how I felt when my friend Ramen made me a tape-copy of Ice Cube's seminal Predator. Now I recognize it as the tipping point where a cultural style went from being an indigenous set of rituals and products to the primary product of a massive marketing engine.

No matter how personal that feels to me as someone who had it wrapped up in their early adolesence, it's not a new phenomena. The story of Alternative/Grunge and Hip Hop are just semi-recent examples of a cultural cycle that's gone round several times in the late 20th Century. It's the story of Rock and Roll, a fact which not even Elvis or The Beatles or either of their cunning management teams fully understood at the time. It's the story of the "Hippies", a cultural term which started as semi-derogatory, not something the denizens of 1960s counter-culture created or owned.

Today I think something new is emerging. Due to the democratization of information, the ability of centralized and established power centers to influence the development of culture is decreasing. There's a growing amount of factionalization within the cultural sphere. One need only look at the array of musical genres which are bandied about seriously (at least by their practitioners) to see the movement. Everywhere that culture has slipped out from under the corporate thumb, an explosion of innovation has occurred.

The critical change is that the democratization of information allows for a much different kind of power relationship between cultural producers and audiences, and in fact eliminates the need for people to be permanently tied to one class or another. One night I may be a producer or a performer, the next night I may be an appreciative member of an audeince or even just another mindless consumer. You can play a bunch of roles in life; it's the cosmopolitan way, and it's more fun than being a starving artists or a couch potato.

More and more and more of this to come.

About a year ago, back when I thought that Howard Dean might win, I wrote this. Outlandish Josh :: The Big One:

Struggling with the opposing pulls of the professional and the radical. There's something inside me that's holding back. Ginsburg (who posthumously turned me on to the Ohm) said that the only way he had any indication of whether or not what he was working on was any good was when it scared him. My job scares me....

How radical are we? Are we for the elimination of poverty? Global equality? Are we for a cultural shift that moves away from television, fear and blind consumption and towards something else?...

Maybe we can end up in some emergent utopia. Maybe we'll build spaceships instead of bombs, an exploratory/industrial complex. Maybe we'll make reaching out to the world, to the universe, a central part of how we live; quit dwelling in caves, you know? It might be really grand fun. Wire (or rather, unwire) the world, make it all equitable and efficent, an end to meaningless toil. Forget opening new markets to Wal-Mart; let's go build fuel-cell powered internet hookups in Africa, start a whole new thing.

And it goes on like that for some time. Still Good Stuff, I believe. One thing to note is that my job stopped scaring me a long time ago, and that's one of the reasons I'm glad I'm not doing it any more.

What scares me in that good good Ginsburg way these days? That's a good fucking question. The idea of this big summer road trip inspires some fluttering, as does the idea of trying to write something for real-live publication, and the notion of performing again. We'll wait and see what avenues open up in Politix and whether any of them spark that kind aprehension.

Ezra at Pandagon -- charoming off Ygelsias -- is recommending that Democrats come out and denounce Grand Theft Auto to present a stronger moral front:

Groups establish boundaries by articulating what lies outside them. It doesn't mean we have to do anything to throw the offenders out, but we should make it clear that, indeed, Democrats aren't so culturally relative that the virtual banging and murdering of prostitutes should pass without a peep, or worse, with protestations of laissez-faire morality.

This is a Really Bad Idea. You make a terrible faustian bargain with the notion of having Dems bash video games to win the approval of existing "morality" voters. Danny Goldberg's Dispatches From The Culture Wars: How The Left Lost Teen Spirit explores how this worked in the 80s and 90s with the music industry. The cost will be paid out by loosing the kids- who will (correctly) see Democrats as wildly out of touch with their cultural values if they launch into a high-profile rhetorical battle with RockStar Games.

Why correctly? Because Democrats will be taking cheap shots at a politically defenseless (but emperically harmless) culture to score points with certain voters who do not understand or value that culture. This is intrinsically a bullshit move. As a political tactic it's the ethical (if not moral) equivalent to race-bating. While it isn't expoloitative in the same way, it is similarly dishonest and immoral.

Attacking emerging culture (of which violent video games are a part) is sinking your fist into a great big tarbaby. The idea that you could get a bunch of people in the business of running the State grandstanding about morality and not have massive pressure from the right to enact some kind of legislation (which would spark massive pushback from the Gaming industry and trigger a hard turn among its cultural adherants) is terrifically naive.

Remember, the kids ren't solid in their political beliefs; it's a mistake to count them in just because you yourself are 20 years old and convinced. A replay of the Parental Advisory battle with the Dems out front will turn a lot of people off, and I would be shocked if Republican strategists failed to work for that result.

Check out the scenario. Republicans to Democrat videogame-bashers: "Prove it! Let's have some hearings, start talking about how to clean this mess up."

Whoo boy, then you're in a bind. I'm not willing to bet that the electorate's fondness for the ACLU will stop that rough beast from slouching towards Washington to be born, and Dems will either end up in a fight they don't want, or else look like wimps and poseurs for failing to back their moral rhetoric with any sort of action. It's a big old loose-loose scenario.

A better idea would be creating a persuasive message around the nature of morality and virtual representation that's more broadly appealing and has a stronger ethical grounding as compared to simple relitavism and laissez-faire. This is more difficult for sure, but it's the only ethically/intellectually honest way to proceed, and the only way to build a solid future majority.

Welcome back,

Here's how I spent my last few days. 1900 words or so. Just autobio.

Thursday I worked a bit, corresponded, read the blogs, tinkered. In the late afternon I played some Civilization III -- an integral refresher for western history -- and then went out to the grocery store to pick up supplies to make Grandma Madeline's Iowa Beef Stew. It's simple stuff, but really righteous, and a good pot of it can feed quite a few folks, or one person for quite a few days, quite sumptuously and economically.

Luke came on over to have dinner, and along with Dan we had a little meal of it, toasting with a quart of Miller High Life each. Dan and I showed Lucas Halo 2 and Xbox Live, which represent another frontier in gaming and kind of freaked ol' "Straight Arrow" Dauter out a little bit. After eating and visiting with Dan, Luke and I headed back to the East Bay to hang out and talk and meet up with Luke's friend Sid.

We got pretty high for the BART ride -- oh yeah, get a little paranoid on the BART -- which helped to drive a lively chat on the walk through North Berkeley about the nature of existence and whether or not Domination was a fact of life. Luke maintains it isn't necessary, but I disagree. However, I qualify this with my belief that properly contextualized and balanced, there's nothing necessarily malignant about Domination. I just think you have to pass the conch shell around enough to keep everyone honest, and it'll all work out from there, at least as far as the rules of the State are concerned.

But then that gets into this whole other business of when power is being exercised, and all the forms domination and power-poverty can take; from outright physical deprivation to the kind of mental slavery that exists today. So yeah, that's true, but I'm with Bob Marley when it comes to emancipating ones self from mental slavery: "none but our selves can free our minds." It's not up to the State to Prohibit any and all forms of Domination. It just wouldn't work.

Anyway, it was a good vigorous philosophical debate -- heated at times, but essentially friendly. I'm into philosophy, you know. Like most things academic, I think it's gotten to be a bit out of touch, but I believe in the discipline, whether or not it's being very aptly applied at the moment. I believe I can make it my own. See, we're getting to a new stage in human development. The development of scale-free community is going to shake up the whole nature of society, sure as the cottin gin did.

A brief flashback; I remember the room I had at Rubin hall my Freshman Year at NYU. How innocent. How full of life. How shabby and gorgeous. Back when my life was light, entirely my own and at the same time entirely supported by a vast institution. "Everything's gonna be allright; Everything's gonna be allright..." It was a much more brilliant if significantly less focused time. I think my fond recollection has something to do with the current bout I'm having with the ever-present crisis of meaning.

Anyway, we drank beer and whiskey and got high from the Sobe Bong -- a neat little hack of engineering made by Kim's little brother -- and shot the shit for a while. Sid showed up, and he and Luke tore a brilliant sociological streak that I was happy to mostly observe and pick up bits and pieces from. Sid's a little older, doing grad school as well. He studies interracial violence between Latin and Black gangs in Los Angeles, a serious sociologist.

I started fading after a massive attack of munchies hit as I spectated on Luke and Sid's discussion of these wild academic times. They're onto some rebel shit, all obsessed with Foucault and fired up about alternate theories. For my part, I hadn't gotten much sleep the night before because I was having a wild tumble with this really fantastic woman who I met dancing last weekend. More about that in a while. The point is, Luke put on The Big Lebowski and I fell asleep at some point.

The next day we lazed. Luke had to go proctor an exam for about an hour, but other than that there was nothing on the schedule. Luke showed me where he was at in San Andreas and I played a mission or two on the saved game I made when I was hiding out at his place right before the election. It's a fun game; verging on role-playing in its depth. Having only played a fraction of the game, I don't really know how strong the plot is -- starts out pretty good -- but if those people at RockStar keep working on it eventually they'll hit some kind of jackpot.

There was a little shenanigans with the test because the professor who was nominally "in charge" had gotten drunk at the Sociology Department Party the night before and forgotten to photocopy the questions. So while Luke was out dealing with that and making sure kids didn't cheat, I picked up a sequel to Hitman, which I'd enjoyed playing once. It was interesting. Very adult in terms of the lack of twitchy action (though that's always a possibility) and also in terms of the disturbing darkness of the plot. It was a twinge of what my friend Chris calls Survival Horror.

I play for a bit, and eventually Luke gets back from his exam. We talk about the game and some other things a bit, and soon Kim comes over. Luke and Kim have been together for a couple of years now, but last week they broke up, at least as lovers. They're still really close friends in terms of being mutually supportive and hanging out pretty often, and they'd had tentative plans to go see a movie, so I tagged along. We decided on Blade 3, because why not. It was a matenee, and we figured we could get high over at Kim's North Berkeley House of Bachelor-Degree Holding Graduate Women and make a go of it.

It was allright. The walk over was quite nice. It's good to be high in Berkeley on a relatively warm late afternoon in December. School is getting out and it's a Friday and the energy was bright. The movie had its ups and downs. I think it might just be the first consciously ironic but still serious action movie, another sign of how comic books are coming to inform the media of film. The casting of Parker Posey is the icing on the cake. I recommend it on video if you enjoyed the other installments; wonder how this kind of film pans out as an investment.

After the movie we talked about food and Luke and Kim exchanged some DVDs at Blockbuster. They watch a lot of stuff, have that pass where you can just keep a certain number of movies out. It turned out Luke had had a bit more than me to drink last night and was suffering from a hangover, so we decided just to chill. Kim and I went back to her house where I took a shower listening to Sammy Hagar on 107.7 The Bone via her antique bathroom radio, which has great sound. It was fun, especially since I'd been wearing the same clothes for quite a few days.

When my shower was done and Kim had had a small sandwitch, we went back over to Luke's (they live like three blocks from one another; it's cute) to get Brazillian pizza and watch Shaolin Soccer, an entertaining and worthy -- if somehow distastefully Disney-esque -- attempt at creating a Chineese film with some western crossover value. After that I hoofed it back to the BART home.

Finding myself still with energy to burn and it being Friday night, I took a bike ride to the top of Twin Peaks. I've been doing light yoga, pushups, leg bends and situps this past week, slowly waking up my body. Adding in some good cardiovascular bike riding is the next logical step.

I did it up right with the longjohns under the torn up black cut-offs and the Neal Young-flavored mp3 mix; sweated my ass off, getting in some good uphill attacks and some solid projing on the shallow rises. Downhill I took the twisty backroads route rather than bombing down Portrola; there's this great smooth two-block downhill that leads into a shallow one-block uphill. You can really pump and lean into the downhill, because you know the return curve at the bottom will catch you and let you bleed off the speed. On other downhills it's generally 15-degree slopes broken by flatland crossrodes and you have to take it easy, pump those breaks, don't want to go flying off the edge or slamming uncontrollably into oncoming traffic 200 yards down the line. But this one little lazy half-parabola, you can soar, and I know how to hit it really good. Cheap thrills.

After getting home and stretching/pushups, I took a bath and relaxed. Slept late.

Saturday I had a date. The night before I'd traded voice messages and quick conversations with Carrie, the girl I met dancing last weekend, setting up the plan. She was going to come to my neighborhood and we'd get a drink and see what happened next. I was excited. I spent the day cleaning up the house and my room, then late in the afternoon I fixed myself a little leftover stew, and then headed to Ryan's house, a friend of Nicks, where we were watching Vitali Klitchko defend his heavyweight belt on pay per view.

Nick's a pugilist -- a longtime fan of boxing and now taking lessons himself -- and he does a great job of representing and trying to spread interest in the sport. It reminds me of the people who consciously tried to promote soccer when I was growing up, except somewhat less wholesome. It's sometimes a little weird, but I generally enjoy having a few beers, watching some fighting, eating some chineese food or whatever. It's a good masculine ritual to have.

And then the date, which I thought I would be late for because there were three undercards, and most of the fights went into the late rounds. I cut loose back from the Marina-area to the Mission along Fillmore, slicing through the taxi and SUV-heavy traffic in grand Manhattain fashion. There's something about making a mockery of automobiles with my superior agility that's especially satisfying when you do it to yuppies. I arrived at The Attic, where we'd set to meet, pretty sweaty but generally charged up. Turned out Carrie was stuck up on Twin Peaks because of a public transportation mix up and was waiting for a cab, so I waited, had a beer and listened to some great old reggae music.

She came in good time, and we sat for a bit and caught up. My plan had been to go look at art for free at some of the nearby galleries, but they were all closed because it had gotten late; so we just walked around the mission and eventually came back to my place, which was all right and then some.

That pretty much brings us up to speed. I had breakfast with Carrie at Big Al's. I definitely dig her. She's really funny and really good looking and she really seems to enjoy being with me, and that makes me feel fucking great to be honest. After that I just whiled away the afternoon and evening.

I'm thinking more and more about this big road trip and just how exciting it all is. Maybe it's all the biking and sex and reefer, but I'm starting to feel loose, like I might actually hit a good groove again sometime soon. I think I'm over the election, and I think I'm going to be fine with my separation from Music for America. There's going to be a lot of stuff still to sort out, but I'm starting to feel confident about myself in terms of my ability to set and follow some direction. We'll see how this plays out in this week, if we can actually get some Praxis going.