The Dodge Game, Corvettes, and Personal Validation

During my 6th grade year my family took a lot of road trips. And by a lot of road trips, I mean that almost every weekend we were driving to a different city in the American Midwest to accompany my dad on his church visits. Each trip was usually over 50 miles one-way, so, for my brother and me, two rambunctious elementary-aged boys, that usually amounted to between two to five (and sometimes upwards of ten) hours of sitting in the back seat of a car every single weekend. Pestering our parents about our geographic proximity to our destination was quashed rather quickly, so we had to find other ways to pass the time. Car bingo (red Mercedes! Bingo!) and punch-buggying got old pretty fast, which led my brother, in a rare stroke of fourth-grade brilliance, to create the Dodge Game.

The basic idea was pretty simple and allowed anyone who wanted to play to catch on rather quickly. My brother had decided that Dodge Ram trucks were Cool, Dodge Dakota pickups were Really Cool, and the Dodge Durango SUV was Super Cool, so he assigned point values to the sighting of each car - Ram +1, Dakota +2, and Durango +3.

This game kept us occupied for several weekends, each of which was passed with pen and pencil in hand and eyes peeled. The game abruptly (and sadly) came to an end, when, while traveling alone with my dad, we passed a Dodge dealership. I returned home trumpeting my “insurmountable and decisive victory”, to which T.J., while no doubt initially disappointed, kept his composure and resolutely informed me that 1) the game was already over, and 2) Dodges were never that cool.

Well, maybe it didn’t happen exactly like that, but it was pretty close.

I was left to my own devices, but soon recovered and went lusting after Chevy Corvettes because, when you’re eleven, they are pretty much the coolest car around, regardless of year or body style. Before long I had a mental picture book of every Corvette I had seen, and enjoyed calling our the year of every Corvette that sped past. This was a win-win-win situation for me, because I got to feast my eyes on fast cars, yell, and sound knowledgeable about things on which no one would take the time to challenge me, all at the same time.


This (annoying) hobby, though, had another function. It wasn’t just about keeping track of all the cool-looking cars I saw. It was also my way of affirming my American-ness. If spotting cars was cool, then spotting the quintessential American car topped everything else on the road. With each additional Corvette I spotted, I felt more American. I felt that my participation in identifying a cultural icon somehow validated my blond hair and white skin.

I look back at this now and think, “What was the goal I was aiming to fulfill? What did I think this activity would solve.” But that is the wrong question. If fact, that question is unanswerable because the activity of spotting Corvettes, to me as a scrawny sixth-grader, was self-fulfilling. Corvette-spotting made me feel like I belonged. There was certainly some “If I spot one more then I am 5% more American.” type of thinking going on, though one wonders what would happen once I spotted Corvette #25. Maybe I would’ve tattooed a barbed-wire ring around my biceps and or eaten a whole apple pie without chewing it. Who knows. But the point stands that I still felt that I had to, for some reason, validate my whiteness. I could have listened up and piped down, and probably fit in in America and done just fine. Instead I spoke up and acted out.

The Dodge Game turned me on to a preadolescent need that I didn’t know I had. Spotting cars may have been good for my short-term self-esteem, but it certainly didn’t help me realize what the underlying problem was. It was a quick fix, and, like most quick fixes, it didn’t last. I didn’t need validation of my being; I needed reinforcement that who I was, a multicultural kid, was OK and acceptable.

So who’s at fault? I mean, there has to be someone to blame, right? Perhaps, but I can’t think of anyone. Maybe the whole system of missionary home assignment is to blame. Maybe my peers or neighbors are to blame. Maybe God just put me in a strange situation. Whatever the reason, I’m OK with it, because it made me who I am now, a man who knows that personal validation isn’t something that things, places, or even people can give you.



_DZ

The Sims 3 is Leaked! (On Purpose?!)

I don’t know about you, but I am becoming increasingly wary of the legitimacy of “leaked” content these days. Ever since Radiohead’s Kid A was leaked, resulting in the popularity of the band skyrocketing, it seems that these so-called “leaked” albums, movies or video games always end up selling pretty well. Better, perhaps, then they might should have.

Take the latest Wolverine movie, for example. It was leaked, albeit in unfinished form, a full month before it hit theaters. The leak was highly publicized across the Internet and news media and, in my opinion, probably boosted Wolverine ticket sales a tremendous amount. Actually, I saw the movie and that’s the only reason I can come up with as to why it did so well at the box office. It wasn’t a good movie. This begs the question: Was this leak planned just to create hype for the movie? If, by releasing a half-assed version of the movie for “illegally”, the studio could boost public awareness and thus sales, would they? I think they would.

The Electronic Arts game The Sims 3 is another example. An article (via Slashdot) over at Bloomberg.com on May 22nd documents the “leak” of The Sims 3 a full week and a half before its release, scheduled for June 2. I wasn’t even aware that the game was coming out and, now, thanks to media headlines, I know that the game is being “Hit By Piracy Ahead of Sale.” But wait! Is it the full game being pirated? Not according to company spokeswoman Holly Rockwood.

“The pirated version is a buggy, pre-final build of the game. It’s not the full game. Half the world -- an entire city -- is missing from the pirated copy.”

Yet this copy has been downloaded “an impressive” 180,000 times! To me, that’s a huge amount of free publicity for EA. The downloaders are, of course, using BitTorrent, so EA pays exactly zero distributing costs.

And consider the hype over downloading it!

It’s illegal! It’s exciting! You’re a PIRATE! You lawbreaker, you!

I didn’t even know the game existed, and now I desperately want to try it out!

EA would normally have had to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for this publicity, but by intentionally leaking (according to me) an incomplete version of their software, they get all of the publicity - by way of calling “foul!” - and almost none of the negative effects of actually releasing the full thing for free. People are still going to line up to buy the game even if they downloaded it because no one who actually likes the game will settle for less. I’m guessing a huge percentage of those 180,000 will not be playing the leaked copy in two weeks’ time.

What, then, should we as the consuming public do if indeed my theory turns out to be true? Will we tolerate this underhanded marketing technique? After all, if EA did indeed leak their game on purpose, their crying "foul!" would be lying and misleading - a mere stunt to get their game featured in headlines. And that’s really what it’s all about. With so much news and information saturating the Internet, it’s amazing that anything important gets prominently noticed at all. Unless your video game is either incredibly offensive or Duke Nukem Forever, it will almost never see any mainstream press coverage. These companies are desperate for anything, and this just might be the ticket. If it is, though, and this kind of secretly-leaking-incomplete-games activity keeps up, I’m the one who will cry “foul!”



_DZ

Samson: Unbelievable He-Man and Also a Closet Poet!

About a week ago I flipped on NPR and heard a guy talking about his new book. He, a non-practicing Jew, decided to read the Bible cover to cover from the perspective of someone who had never read it before. He wanted to give the general public a fresh look at what was really inside the Bible. From what I heard him say, it was evident that his reading comprehension wasn’t that great, but it did make for an interesting idea. I have been learning about the Bible since before I could read, so such a task is considerably harder for me, but this year I am also reading through the Bible, cover to cover, and a few stories have shone in a different light for me.

One of those stories is the one about Samson in the book of Judges. Every little kid who has been to Sunday School knows that Samson is one of the strongest men in the Bible and a “Bible hero” that people love recounting stories about because it makes good narrative. But have you actually thought about the stories told about Samson? I could recite them all to you, but I had never actually thought about them and considered the implications.

Samson is a dude whom God appoints as one of Israel’s judges but in reality does a lot more of beating Israeli enemies down than he does judging Israel. He’s a violent guy who goes on destructive temper tantrums brought on by grievous Philistine actions. One famous story involves him killing 1,000 Philistines with the jawbone of a donkey.

A thousand people! Dead!

I always had the mental picture of Samson using a half a jawbone instead of a whole jaw assembly, but he could have used that too. Either way, that’s a lot of people bludgeoned to death with a piece of bone.


Several questions immediately pop into mind. The first one being, “What were the last hundred Philistines thinking?” I mean, they just saw Samson destroy 900 of their comrades. Did they think they had a chance? They probably had to climb over their own dead just to get to him!

Secondly, how long did this take? Maximus (from the film Gladiator) can win at hand-to-hand combat in about seven seconds, but he has a sword, so let’s say that Samson dispatches these guys at a rate of 1 every 25 seconds. That’s 25,000 seconds, or about 417 minutes for the whole lot. About seven hours of slaughter, though probably much longer. Did this become a spectacle event? Were there shepherd boys sitting on the hills cheering and keeping a running death tally?

And what does Samson do after he kills all these guys? Does he loot them for stuff? Does he take a drink of water? Does he spit on the corpses and walk away? No! He sits down and thinks, “I’m pretty frickin’ awesome. Man, am I awesome! I need to write a poem about how awesome I am.”

And he does!

After seven hours of bludgeoning grown fighting men to death, he sits down and writes, “With the jawbone of a donkey, I have made donkeys out of them / With the jawbone of a donkey, I have killed a thousand men.”

Truly there has never been a finer example of brazenly self-centered, raw, masculinity.

I wish I had thought about these stories in this type of way much earlier! I wonder what else the Bible has in store?



_DZ

A Wave of Psychologically Distressing Entertainment On The Internet

In the 1930s cultural and literary critic Walter Benjamin penned his observation of mankind”s “self-alienation [having] reached such a degree that it [could] experience its own destruction as an aesthetic pleasure of the first order.” He was referring to destructive practices that we find commonplace today; things like building a full movie set only to blow it up in a stunt. It was waste, pure and simple, but the moviegoers loved it. And because it was profitable, it stayed. Nowadays we don’t think twice about chase scenes in which hundreds of car get totaled - it’s just good cinema!


But I think he was onto something, and I want to take his observation and apply it to a new, disturbing phenomenon that is growing in todays Internet culture. It seems to be everywhere you browse, and thanks in part to the anonymous and unfiltered nature of the Web, is growing quickly. I’m referring here to the trends of scathing satire, celebration of deviance, a pathological focus on negative events, and dark humor. The glamorous trivialization of the depraved human condition that looms over our psychological well-being.

Now the content of this wave is not new per se. Throughout history we have laughed at one another’s misfortunes, enjoyed violence as entertainment, and in general indulged in activities that were not helpful in our development as a loving, caring race. Dead baby jokes are still told. What has changed, however, is the way that this content is distributed, the scope of its reach, and the way in which we as a(n) (internet) culture participate in it.

Before I start listing examples, I want to emphasize that all of the content that I will reference is available for free, online. There is no cost involved other than a computer and an Internet connection. This is a major point, because before the Internet the only way that someone could reach a large audience was to publish in some way or another, whether it be books, magazines, film, or syndication. This not only involved some degree of scrutinizing censorship, but it cost money and, accordingly, consuming it cost a person money. Before indulging in any material, the consumer had to judge whether or not the entertainment he would gain was worth the value of his money. This was an important step that is now bypassed thanks to the Web. Social site-aggregator sites like Reddit.com and Digg.com help to popularize this content, making it easy to find for people who are looking for a quick laugh.

Dark Humor Comics

This genre of comics has exploded in the past couple years, with sites such as garfieldminusgarfield, Perry Bible Fellowship, Saturday Morning Breakfast Cereal, and Cyanide and Happiness quickly gaining thousands of subscribers. These comics focus on themes such as depression, isolation, death, mental illness, suicide, often portraying their depiction and satire of real life in the light of extreme irony. They are colorfully drawn, and hide their disturbing content behind the smiling faces of their characters. They provide the reader with his or her daily dose of dark humor derived from the dysfunctional areas of daily life.



Dark Humor Cartoons

These aren’t as popular as they used to be (at least I think so), but they are also along the same lines, in terms of subject material, as the dark humor comics. These animated shorts on sites like HappyTreeFriends.com and Killfrog.com feature slapstick violence way above the level of Tom & Jerry and often surpassing controversial cartoons like South Park. Explosions often result in maiming, dismemberment, and death of small animals or humans. Again, these are cartoons that would never be able to turn a profit on TV or even straight-to-DVD releases and can exist only on the Internet, where teens and college students can watch them and laugh. The YouTube channel of MondoMedia, the creators of Happy Tree Friends (whose videos are too disturbing for me to embed here), has been viewed over seven million times, with their cumulative video view count no doubt in the twenty to thirty million range or higher.

Satire/Fratire

Sometimes people get really drunk and do stupid things. Most of the time those aren’t things you want to talk about, unless you are a “fratire” writer. This is a genre of prose in which the writer is dedicated to getting really drunk and recording every outrageously socially insensitive thing he (they’re almost always male) does (thanks to a tape recorder he takes with him). Thanks to blogging, these writers’ sites become popular destinations for college-aged guys who need a partying role-model of sorts. A guy named Tucker Max, a self-proclaimed asshole, is undoubtedly the most popular writer of this genre, even producing a book entitled I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell. Max knows how to write a funny story, and uses his relationship blunders and drunken sexual escapades as “good” subject material. Fratire is excellent example in which a writer gets famous only because of the nature of the Internet. Tucker is now a prominent New York socialite, though new stories have been added to his site less and less frequently. The aim of these sites, such as TuckerMax.com and SlowChildren-AtPlay.com, is never to educate anyone - only to shock and “impress” the reader.


At-Least-My-Life-Isn’t-That-Bad Sites

Complaining to friends about how life seems unfair at times is something we all do at one time or another. We all need to vent and be comforted. Most of the time these stories of woe are not particularly humorous, but when then are, we laugh at them. And when the Internet comes into the picture, thousands of people can laugh at them. Enter FMyLife.com, a site to which people can upload short stories of how their day went wrong, ending each story with three letters: FML. F*** My Life. A site that people can visit in order to laugh at the misfortunes of others and even rate those unfortunate experiences (“Did the subject deserve it or not?”). A site that, thanks to the anonymity and impulsive nature of the Internet, allows people to publish how their professional lives, personal lives, relational exchanges, and sexual escapades went awry. Each story is meant to evoke a “Haha! I would hate to be that guy!” type of response from the reader. And there are over 2200 of these stories, with about 15 new ones being added every day. It used to be that teen and gossip magazines had a monopoly on these tales of rueful woe - now they’re everywhere.

Another site in the same vein is the aptly-named Complainary.com, which touts itself as a place for people to vent. Not content to merely feature paragraph-length stories, the Complainary actually hosts whole articles and blog entries dedicated to ranting about how much things suck. Very little of the material is even remotely constructive, and Complainary is actively recruiting people to write for the site, clearly trying to push the complain-anonymously-online movement along.

These examples are just a taste of all the distressing content that is out there; a mere drop in the digital bucket. Economics would tell us that the market is just catering to the needs to the consumers, i.e. where the market senses a demand for a service or product, it will create something for the demand to consume. So, in a way, the blame could be placed on the people who supposedly desire this kind of entertainment. The resulting dark humor must be just a passive product of the masses wants and desires. I don’t agree with this, because I don’t believe that traditional economics apply here. The Internet is the first place in human history where people can reach a mass audience for next to free. Consequentially, this allows them to do their own thing and make content that they want to make. The argument becomes, “Because the audience on the Internet is so expansive, if I put out content, surely someone who likes it will find it. They will then tell their friends, and the chain continues.” Thus, someone who makes (subjectively) decent content, like dark humor comics, can effectively create an artificial demand for their service with no risk involved. If they become popular enough, then they can branch out and actually try to make a living off of their site, whether that be by selling advertising space, clothing, or other merchandise that relates to their site. Truly this is entrepreneurship at its finest.

And this is not going away. For perhaps the first time, artists who were told, “You will never make any money drawing those silly comics,” actually can. Being paid for doing what you love is incredibly enticing, and people will flock to this opportunity.

But, nonetheless, I worry about our collective psychological well-being. The rise in depression and isolation in the past several years is brought on, I think in part, by our attachment to our machines. It’s no secret that art is reflective of the time period in which if was created, and as print comics die and webcomics flourish, their gravitation towards the dark themes in life, and our derivation of pleasure from it, is just a natural byproduct of our society. And thanks to the Internet, it proliferates rapidly. And what about fratire, FML, and The Complainary; trends that celebrates human deviance and misfortune? Will they continue to grow?

I certainly hope not.




_DZ

Making The Most of Experiences Both On & Off-Line

On 2/28/09, the Baby Blues syndicated newspaper comic depicted a scene of a man and his young daughter in an ice cream shop.

“I want two scoops with gummy worms, Oreo pieces, M&Ms, chocolate sauce, and sprinkles,” the girl requested.

“But what flavor of ice cream do you want?” asked her dad.

“Does it matter?” replied his daughter.

Does it matter, indeed.

The practice of adding more and more extras until the original item, the fundamental part of the experience, is irrelevant. Does it matter, indeed!

Comics are meant to mirror real life, aren’t they? They’re a great way of bringing out the idiosyncrasies of society; an effective medium for revealing the underlying behaviors that we all practice. So in what other areas besides ice cream selection do we do this? What other experiences do we dilute with extras until the original activity loses its significance?

The first one that came to mind is relationships. In a youth culture in which individuals like to relate to one another through bits of trivia and meaningless connectivity, it becomes easier and easier to objectify people and sort them by their characteristics, their likes and dislikes, and their perceived personality. Someone’s actual character, a thing distinctly separate from personality, becomes pushed further and further into the background. When this happens, finding a potential spouse becomes as easy as making a checklist of attributes, and once you meet someone who fulfills all of them, marriage is not far behind. You don’t want a real relationship with someone who shares your values, beliefs and personal convictions; rather you desire someone who “you can laugh with, someone who appreciates music, the arts, and who is just as at comfortable with a slow night at home as going out and hitting the city night scene.” You’re looking for the extras, the add-ons, to make the experience worthwhile.

Other times, it’s the extras that make the activity even tolerable at all. Would you buy a car with no CD player or cruise control? What about power, heated, leather seats, an iPod hookup, or a video entertainment system?

Because a car doesn’t need any of those things.

But, unless you’re going really really fast, driving is an inherently boring activity. It’s monotonous, not particularly mentally or physically stimulating, and sometimes very nerve-wracking. For many people, driving without being entertained would be interminable. Hence we now have all of these options available on our cars that help us relax and be more comfortable and entertained. This is also, I think, a big part of why we like to talk on the phone and drive.

I’m sure there are more examples of this, but for now we’ll just leave it at driving. The point is that inherently boring activities lightened by extras make them bearable.

Obvious questions arise here. Firstly, we know that this happens - so is it a good thing or a bad thing? If driving is seen as a necessary evil, are things that make it more tolerable acceptable even if they detract from the experience? Most would say yes. Some would even argue that in the case of driving, the add-ons make the experience what it is - i.e. driving IS listening to music. What about in relationships? Is it too much of a stretch to say that the US divorce rate is at 50% because we rush into relationships based on how well our checklist matches the people we meet? This is slightly problematic at best and pathological at worst. And what could this trend hold for he future of society as more and more of it moves online?

The practice of adding extras to enhance boring activities is almost a given in the current state of online universes such as World of Warcraft and Second Life, where something as basic as existing is already boring. Online life, i.e. being a digital avatar in an online world, is without the element of outside forces and randomness that is a innate part of our earthly universe. Things don’t “just happen” to you when you’re in an online world. (And when they do, as in the case of "random battles," they quickly get annoying and we wish them gone.)

Consequently, any enjoyment that you derive from being in an online world is a direct result of the experiences that you initiate. What you get out of acting in an online world is a direct result of what actions you undertake and, accordingly, you almost always get an expected result. You reap exactly what you sow. This set up allows for very little experience to have value, if value is defined as getting more out of something than what you put into it. (For example, if you buy a computer from a liquidating electronics giant for half of its original price, that is a good value - you received a computer that is worth more than you paid for it.)

If you ask people what they most value about life, I think you will find that most people will talk about the little things in life. Things like watching a sunset, staring at the stars, feeling a warm breeze, walking through crunching leaves, getting a hug, or eating a juicy bunch of grapes. A lot of these things are not affected whatsoever by human actions. Some of them are, yes, but a lot of the great things about nature are things that we cannot control. Since we reap the benefits but invest nothing, these are valuable experiences. And maybe more importantly, these actions are unquantifiable.

There are very, very few of these experiences in a controlled online universe as it exists now. Random nice things seldom happen to you, and you must search long and hard to find anything of true value. As more and more interactions take to the online world, and if the digital frontier is the future of human society (and it is) then this problem of lack of intrinsic value will have to be fixed. We will have to find ways to make simply existing in the online realm a valuable experience.

So now not only do we have to scrutinize our off-line lives to see how we can put meaning back into experiences but we have to figure out how to do so in the online world as well. What seems to be a learned behavior off-line is a fundamental part of the online experience. Either we as a society find a way to fix it in both realms or we learn to live with it and thrive off of it - an option that I think is less than ideal. Either way a lot of change is in order, and the sooner we get to work on it the better.





_DZ

Buying a Powerball Ticket - The Key to Happiness, Fulfilled Dreams, and Camaros?

My local paper, the Pioneer Press, ran a syndicated article today telling how, even in these hard economic times, people are buying lottery tickets. In fact, they are buying more lottery tickets than they normally do. I thought that this was only true of alcohol sales during a recession, but I guess I was wrong. Perhaps, even, the two are related?

I can, however, attest to booming Powerball sales at my station, though this might have more to do with the recent improvement in odds and the Chevrolet Camaro giveaway promotion than the poor economy.

The article goes on to interview a Tennessee man who concedes that, yes, the money he spends on the lottery ($100/week) would be better spent elsewhere, but “everybody has dreams.” This is how this man copes with life - by entertaining his dreams.

I like dreams. I think that, sometimes, dreams can generate increased productivity. But not these kinds of dreams. Not dreams that only exist to help release dopamine into you system - that help you ignore what’s going on around you.

A few fortnights ago, I accidentally bumped by elbow in to the touch-screen lotto machine and bought myself a $1 Northstar Cash ticket. What followed was the worst Friday night that I can remember (other than St. Patty’s Day, 2007. But that is another story entirely). My entire evening was spent fantasizing about what I would do with the money, in this case $62,000 before taxes, if my ticket happened to be the lucky one. Would I give it away? Invest it? Use it to go back to college? Donate it to charity? Move somewhere else? Go on another roadtrip? The possibilities were so endless that I could not concentrate on my job, ideas to write about, or even sudoku in the paper that day. I was completely lost in la-la land, and I hated it. I hated not being able to focus, not being able to concentrate on the present.

Two things resulted from this experience. The first was any lingering temptation I had to play the lotto was completely annihilated. The second was that I now understood why people played the lottery even though the odds of winning are so miniscule. They don’t buy to win, though that would be a nice bonus. They aren’t throwing money away - rather they are buying a positive psychological effect, a ‘high,’ as it were. They are buying the opportunity to fantasize for a day, or a week, or however long it is until the next drawing.

So what is the point of explaining this? After all, if you already play the lottery, this is all familiar to you. If you already refrain, chances are that this article isn’t going to change your mind in the slightest. I’m not condemning those who play the lotto or saying that it is somehow “below” me. Everyone has his or her vices. Heck, if you live in Minnesota, I encourage you to play the lottery. After all, that money is going straight to the state, and the state is the one who’s going to be paying for my health insurance in a few months. Buy all the Powerball you want, and I hope you win that Camaro, too.




_DZ

Military Bases: A Caricature of This American Life

The United States is very proud of its military. They of course boasts the largest and most advanced one in the world, but I feel as though they often misrepresent it to the American people. Being a soldier is oft seen as a glamorous servant lifestyle - one that is elevated to a high level in the public consciousness. Billboards, TV campaigns, and other advertisements that the military creates and targets at young men and women portray the American soldier as selfless, heroic, and unashamedly patriotic. There is nothing wrong with these qualities, of course, but I think that the ads work more towards stroking the egos of American teens than actually being informative about the US military. Practically all of my experience with the military comes from my interactions with military kids through extracurricular school activities such as wrestling, track, soccer. Participating in sports and other activities at an international school in Japan, a country with significant US military presence, gave me the opportunity to not only compete against the high schools on base, but also allowed me to get a glimpse into the lives and lifestyles of those living on a military base.

US Military bases often hosted sporting events, so it was not uncommon for me to visit a base five of more times a year. Japan has several of them, all with their own high schools. Yokota Air Force Base is home to the Yokota High School Panthers, Camp Zama (Army) is home to the Zama Trojans, and Commander Fleet Activities Yokosuka hosts the Nile C. Kinnick Red Devils. These three were the main competitors in the Kanto region, of which my school, CAJ, was a part. There were other base high schools teams, of course - including the Kadena Panthers, Kubasaki Dragons, Edgren Eagles, E.J. King Cobras, and Seoul American HS Falcons, but we usually only saw them at large regional events.

Getting on a base is a chore in itself. A list including the names of athletes, drivers, any parents or fans who are attending, and the license plates of all vehicles wishing to get on must be faxed to the main gate ahead of time. Even with this list, it usually takes about 30 minutes to clear the gate, after which we drive past the guard house patrolled by servicemen with M-16s. Raisable spike strips lie on either side of the gatehouse in conjunction with large concrete barriers. The entire perimeter of the base, often more than ten miles, is lined with razor wire-topped fencing.

The actual base itself is a crude caricature of American suburbia. The streets are wide - a direct contrast to Japan - there is lots of green lawn, and American flags fly from poles in front of houses. Driving down the street feels much like down an American street, only of the wrong side of the road. Almost every car you pass on the street is an old beater - not many soldiers invest in cars when they could be shipped out to anywhere else in the world with two weeks notice. Most bases still boast a small dealership, however, should a few soldiers decide that they want an American car like a Mustang. Every single building on a base is painted the same color, cream. I assume that this is because a) it is easier to order just one color of paint, b)the American taxpayers aren’t paying for different color paint, c) it is somewhat confusing to potential terrorists, and d) it makes it really hard to tell one building from another in an aerial photograph.

Commerce on base is always a big attraction to American visitors. Most shopping on base is done at the commissary, the military (and oddly enough, prison) term for a store equivalent to something like a SuperTarget that stocks everything from American foods to computer systems to clothes and CDs. Military personnel are of course allowed off base, and I’m sure many did grocery shopping off-base as well. The commissary boasts tax-free merchandise and is normally off-limits to civilians. Only if you were very lucky and knew people could you get into the commissary.

For the rest of us, the restaurants were usually good enough. Most bases have a food court that is home to several different American fast food joints like Taco Bell, Burger King, Sbarro, or Popeye’s. The four that I just mentioned have no franchises in Japan, so on base is the only place you can enjoy them. All of these restaurants, and indeed, most base commerce in general, is run by native people, in this case Japanese. I assume this is because the turnover rate is so high that in order to not be constantly retraining people the shops and restaurants hire locally. Ironically, ordering a Whopper from a person who speaks broken English no doubt aids in reminding the service men and women of their American homeland.

When it comes to dining off-base for American servicemen and women, though, there can be some hiccups. Unless they have been stationed there for a long time, most soldiers don’t bother to learn the local language. Bases of course offer Japanese classes that teach you how to interact on a very basic social level, how to order food, and some phrases that are useful should you choose to travel. Despite these allowances and opportunities, there are still some restrictions for soldiers even when they travel off-base. There is a strip of bars, called Bar Row, near Yokota Air Force Base that soldiers are forbidden to frequent between 2 a.m. and 8 a.m. Local customs, language barriers, and base restrictions discourage many soldiers from interacting with the Japanese community around them, leaving them only the entertainment found on base.

Of which there is very little. Most bases do have at least one theater that may show three or four different movies, a community center, an Officers Club, and maybe a bowling alley, but for the most part are devoid of the usual American hotspots that one usually associates with nightlife.

All of this melds to create a singly depressing on-base experience once one gets over the initial excitement. There is really not much to do, and since freedoms are rather restricted on-base (such as a civilian dress-code), unless one learns the local language, activities become severely restricted. I’m sure that this is not the type of lifestyle that the Army recruiters like to highlight.

There are of course perks to military life such as free medical, dental, and almost zero living expenses. But based on the people I have talked to, this does not make up for the strictly regimented lifestyle pervasive on many military bases. Based on the experiences I’ve had, I would not want to join the military, nor would I advise anyone else to. Living abroad in a caricature of the American life is not an experience that I would like to have.


_DZ

Slow motion for all

I close my eyes and relax as the car pulls up to my house. I step out, and the car leaves me in the dust. The house is a familiar sight, a comforting place. I often find myself retreating into its closets and dark pantries in search of a quiet distraction from the bustles of daily life.

         The exterior of the house is a light grey, fading with age. Its two stories are complemented by huge wrap-around porch, complete with a rickety wooden porch swing. The banister poles are from France, hand crafted. The entrance to the house is a single screen door that swings on a hinge coupled to a spring. It opens in, swinging to the right. Inside is a large lawn surrounded by four walls. The bright green grass, healthy and sweet, invites you to take your shoes off and frolic about. In one corner sits a marble mahjong table with tiles set up, ready to play. A half-full pack of Marlboro Reds sits open on the table. Next to it is a Zippo emblazoned with an image of Aladdin Sane, vintage 1973. Against the far wall is a fireplace, a real one, with a real stone mantle. Sitting in the opposite corner is a marionette, painted completely black, playing the theme of Beethoven's Ninth on a cello with only one string, the C string. In the middle of the lawn is a cup of fur, emanating heat and light, and casting deep shadows across the room. Arranged around the cup are comfortable leather armchairs. It is here where religion, art, politics, love, and other topics of passion are discussed.

         Passing through the lawn, we come to a room completely covered in tan linoleum. The floor, walls, and ceiling are covered seamlessly. The room absorbs all sounds, rendering any shouting useless, reducing it to nothing but a whisper from a four-year-old. Volume is not a currency here. On top of this tan sheeting is the most vibrant graffiti you can imagine. Beat poetry, homegrown recipes, passionate propaganda, and creative Japanese puns all adorn the four walls in black, sprayed-on fashion. A fifth wall in completely covered by a massive mahogany bookshelf. Perusing the shelves one will find ancient books. Classics, unmolested by nosey librarians, retain the crispness and quality produced by a master printer and his press. The books speak life into those who read them.

         Moving on we come to a wrought-iron spiral staircase, built purely in defiance of building codes, ascended and descended at will by all who wish. It leads to the second floor, a trip we shall make slowly. The triangular steps do not provide an easy journey; the loud, resounding CLANG! made as each step brings us closer to where we journey or farther from where we are most comfortable. As our eyes clear the second floor we are allowed time to reconsider. Our feet are still several steps from the top; we can choose to spiral backwards, back down to solid ground. But this time we continue. We cannot ignore what our eyes have now seen. We must ascend.

         My foot makes it to the top, a deep breath punctuated by a soft thud as my foot rests on the wooden floorboards of the second story of this Victorian abode. The room is vast, with off-white walls and a single chandelier in the center of the vaulted ceiling. My face softens; this is the place I adore. Under the chandelier sits a lone wooden desk. The wood is dark brown, the desktop smooth but imperfect. The desk has four drawers. One is shallow and wide, right above the space provided to occupy a chair and a pair of knees. It is filled with gold-gilded fountain pens. To the right of it are the three other drawers. The bottom two drawers hold nothing. Empty. The top drawer is half-full with blank loose-leaf.

         It is here where one can write uninterrupted, away from the voices, the demands, the obligations and hassles of daily life. One can bring whatever inspires them up to this room and stay however long they want, providing that they add nothing to the room then they once again descend the spiral staircase. I sit down at the desk and write page after page of poetry dedicated to the most beautiful girl on earth. The words flow, abounding from my pen, jumping on to the paper and smiling up at me. I create for hours on end, filling page after page. As I conclude each page, I fold it up carefully into the shape of a paper airplane. Then, taking aim at the window directly ahead of me, the only window in the room, I launch the paper plane, laden with my words, across the room. The aim is always true; indeed, it is as if the folded poem is walking on air. It glides out the windows, over path and pasture, coming to rest wherever the butterfly's wings dictate. What a fantastic death abyss. It waits for that someone, I know not whom. That someone who needs to feel loves, who needs to be reminded that there in joy in the world, that they are loved, or that there will never be greener grass than that beneath their feet. They are free to love, and be loved in return.

 

I, in the room, close my eyes, kick back, and smile.

 

I open my eyes and here I am, liberated, ready to continue my day.

 

The car drives away.