The Seeger Family Christmas Letter (1st Draft)

Dear friends, family, Romans, and countrypersons,

What a year it has been, eh?  Or what a decade - or month (hour?)?  I don't have a good sense of time...

Allow me to introduce myself: My name is Keks, and I was born on 11 December 2018, so I've just recently turned 14 years old.  I am the smallest Grand-Dog of Donald and Hope Seeger (P.O. Box 304, Clinton, WI, 53525), and I currently reside in Milwaukee, Wisconsin - near the lake (which is awesome if you haven't been!!).

As most of you know, this year - 2020 - especially since mid-March has been unlike any in all of our lifetimes.  Hasn't it been great!!??  Humans at home ALL THE TIME!!!  They never leave, never have to put you in the kennel, are around to take you for walks all day long!

Anyway, it's been quite the wild ride has 2020.  As I mentioned, I live in Milwaukee with my humans, Joel and Brooke.  Since coming to live with them in February 2019, I've also spent a good deal of time visiting Don and Hope - who I get a real kick out of.  

*  *  *

the next morning...

I've been told - numerous times today already - that after making the request last evening that Keks draft the annual Seeger Christmas letter that Hope herself has started a draft of a letter, so we'll have a letter full of greetings and introductions* (beginnings are the best!) with the following uber-intro...

*  *  *

"In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God and the Word was God"

"The Gospel according to Saint John (1:1)" 

"My line comes down from Queen Ada, the sister of Malcolm IV, descended from King Duff, the first king of Scotland."

from Cash: The Autobiography of Johnny Cash, by Johnny Cash

"The terror that would not end for another 28 years, if it ever did, began so far as I can know or tell, with a boat made from a sheet of newspaper floating down a gutter swollen with rain."

- Stephen King, It

"It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness, it was the epoch of belief, it was the epoch of incredulity, it was the season of light, it was the season of darkness, it was the spring of hope..."

- Charles Dickens, A Tale of Two Cities

    The beginnings are always the moments with all of the promise, indeed, all of the hope.  As we enter in to the start of a brand new year, 2021, which we may all remember best as the first year after 2020!, I thought we might do something a bit different, and offer you a sampling of beginnings of Seeger Christmas letters (we all know the beginnings of letters are the best part anyway!).  So without further ado: 

(submitted by Joel Seeger)

* If you would like to submit an introduction to be considered for the annual Seeger Christmas letter you can submit it to the comments below by 5:00pm CST on Saturday, December 19th, 2020.

State of Shame

Source: jsonline.com (feat. 11/11 when Mr. Stoli* & I
represent 2 of the 7,048 cases in WI)

I received a positive COVID-19 test result a little while ago.  As of this writing, I am only experience a couple of very minor symptoms (knock on wood), and I am now quarantined and have alerted everyone who has come within my zone of monstrosity in the 72 hours prior to first showing any symptoms at all.  I've done, in other words, everything I'm supposed to as far as I know (thus far without a promised call from a contact tracer, although I know they're quite busy). In fact, I've done pretty much everything I am supposed to the whole time - stayed home, kept our bubble limited, worn a mask when I do go out - and still contracted it...  

I only got a test on Monday because we were told that afternoon that my dad had tested positive when he was admitted to the hospital that afternoon (for non-COVID reasons).  My symptoms didn't develop until the subsequent day Tue (11/10), and I immediately started putting the timeline/storyline together in my head:

1. I contracted COVID from Brooke who picked it up from Papa when we were there a month ago when Andy went to Omaha.
2. My dad, who I now suspect is in the midst of a case of Long Covid, has had it for at least 6 - 8 weeks, thus leading to some of his underlying problems of late. 

My mom has been working the phones since Monday, talking to anyone and everyone who has been in contact with them (again, they've been limited in their contact, but with a more old people approach of people occasionally dropping off baked goods or casseroles, etc.). Her experience in making these calls, and my own as well in sharing with people my test result, has been one of immediate concern (with a pinch of accidental self-concern in the cases where there might have been minimal contact wit the callee) and then interrogation of blame (where did you get it / did you give it to _____?). In fact in Clinton there seems to be social phenomenon going on of people expressing some surprise when they learn of a case, because, it seems, so many who get a positive test tend to keep it under wraps if they can. It's better, it seems, to avoid becoming known as a spreader than to, in fact, limit any possible spreading you've done. 

In addition to my positive test, I am also currently unemployed - another badge of cultural shame I am wearing at this moment. It's not surprising, given the fact that I have either been fired or asked to quit by this boss in each of the past four presidential election years, but it is a condition I have had recommended to me that I mask, lest it make me undesirable. And so, Seeger Enterprises, Inc. (SEI) was born in October 2020 to little fanfare. Although it's activities are quite varied, if you want a free stock, you can sign up for Robinhood using this link, and support SEI's investments arm while getting yourself some free money (no deposit required, you just have to link a bank account).

To be clear, I am not actually ashamed of either of these current status, but it has made me painfully aware of my underperforming in the vast game of Anti-Shame that we are requested to take part in. As an active job seeker, I spend an inordinate amount of time on LinkedIn these days, and it is appalling (at least meinetwegen).  I realize not every working person is living their Office Space endless nightmare, and yes... somepeoplereallyliketheirjobs... but the performative nature of people singing the praises of aspects of their workplaces or their companies achievements is gross. It has close parallels to the toxicity of Facebook's personal vacation posts, etc. and yes this is all well discoursed (a la The Social Dilemma etc.), but when it gets to (semi-)forced fawning over your workplace it's borderline Corporate Fascism territory.

We need to work to decouple shame from status, but the capitalist social fabric we are all born into today makes that very difficult. There is no shame in being sick or poor or unemployed; no shame in being anything, really. Shame should come from actions (or inactions) - I do not want to dismiss the redeeming societal qualities of shame. If you actively work to 'cut labor costs' in your work or industry (i.e. work to pay people less): you should be ashamed of yourself. If you knowingly (or suspectingly) promote false narratives (e.g. herd immunity, voter fraud, etc.), which will result in more folks in your community getting sick and dying, you should be ashamed of yourself. When you (inadvertently or intentionally) perpetrate an act of dehumanization (and honestly, I think we all can be guilty of this from time to time - with folks of differing political or cultural views on Twitter or service employees irl) small or large, you should be ashamed of yourself.  

But that's what's so great about shame, when properly administered. When it targets an action and not a status (or a being), even our own, we can learn from it and adjust our behaviors in future. The political chant of repeating "Shame! Shame! Shame!" at legislators (or any action-takers who need to be held to account) works because it is objects to the action and not the actor (we chanted this at them not because they were Republicans, but because they were working to take collective bargaining rights away from unions {which is, like, what unions do!}, or forcibly separating children from their parents because they were attempting to cross a border, or trying to take away health insurance protections for pre-existing conditions from our nations most vulnerable). If they simply cease the shameful action, and take on another course, their shaming could end.

That's it, do good, be better, that's the post...

* I've long followed Mr. Stoli's Twitter feed without ever knowing who it was that I was following. Not, I assume, someone I know personally, but a kindred Milwaukee spirit who shares many of the same views and interests and haunts. So similar, in some ways, that when we were diagnosed on the same day i briefly suspected that he actually was me, and my anonymous Twitter account (then I shamefully remembered that my anonymous Twitter account has only managed 17 followers to date, while my friend here hovers around 1,000) 

A steady diet of red round things...

 

A pre-lunch snack (or perhaps it's elevensies), I have started in on Rage, which I am not sure I have ever read after first reading The Running Man a couple of weeks ago (again, a first for me, I think) so I could listen to the corresponding episode of my new favorite podcast, The Kingcast: A Stephen King Podcast for Stephen King Obsessives (their patreon page).  I've listened to half a dozen of the episodes so far, and really enjoy the fact that I may have found a couple of people who are as deeply enmeshed in King's oeuvre (and especially The Dark Tower stuff) as I am...  Almost.

Overall, not terribly inspiring... some radishes from Sendik's and some not-so-thrilling cherry tomatoes from the South Shore Farmer's Market.  Filtered Milwaukee tap water and a few chapters of Richard Bachman.

I've actually been on something of a Stephen King bender as of late (these are different than SK's benders from the old days), having finished his latest book of novellas, If It Bleeds, just this morning.  (This is actually how I usually read Stephen King, all at once for a few weeks or months, and then I leave it alone for a couple years while he builds up a new arsenal).

It got me wondering about his "Books of Four" habit (collections of 4 long short stories and/or 4 short novels/novellas/novelettes), but he really only has 3 of them now (or 4 if you count The Bachman Books), so perhaps it's not actually a pattern... Yet.

Terror | Terroir

 I've recently watched the Jordan Peele produced The Twilight Zone, and thoroughly enjoyed Get Out when it came out a few year's ago.  I've long made the case that horror is as (or more) necessary as terror, in our daily lives, and I think Peele's horror ouvre, as it continues to unfold in front of us, will provide an object lesson for my argument.

The other night, I watched Us, and was profoundly moved by it (and close to bowel-moved as well it was so freaking scary).  It is the story of a fear of an under-class rising up.  But this under-class is not comfortably something other.  Rather, they are us.

The notion is terrifying (as opposed to horrifying).  I do not love the quickly accessible distinctions between the two (including the one in my post linked to above); a more fulsome account, if desired.  The fear of the revolutionary uprising is something that the progressive / liberal-defining bourgeoisie want to mask.  We support (in principle at least) the overthrow of power, and watching these upper middle class families get their come-uppance is, I would argue, a terror movie rather than a horror movie.

But then, Peele does what he has done so marvelously in much of his recent genre work, he extends.  If you relish the terror of bourgeois families at their vacation houses getting terrorized and chased around by unknown baddies, then by extension you will cheer to yourself similar harassed and displaced.  Of course this (generally) does not hold true, and becomes where we enter the horror genre.  The apocalypse for everyone else and adventure / free to wander tale for ourselves is at the heart of the good old 'merican terror story (The Stand, The Road, Revolution, The Postman, et cetera et cetera).  We love these tales of terror as long as we are in the less than 0.6% who get to survive Captain Trips.

In Us, when we begin to see the masses of underworlders holding hands in lines across streets, in and out of buildings and over mountain roads, forming an echo (but what's the word for an echo that's louder - more heard!?) of Hands Across America, the implications begin to be horrifying.  They are coming for all of us: children and adults, black and white, rich and poor.  

For me personally, Hands Across America was already a horror-laden event.  In 1986, my two brothers and I piled in to the family station wagon with my dad, leaving my mom at home, and drove south toward central Illinois to join in the not-so-nationwide chain of humanity.  On the drive down, the three other boys in the car (7, 14 & 40 years my senior) were discussing apocalypse as some kooky preacher on the radio (and billboards I seem to recall) was predicting Armageddon in the coming days or weeks (evidently it wasn't high-profile enough to make this list, unless perhaps my memories are conflated).  My brothers and dad were discussing the concept academically (or at least the childish version of academically; my family, and in particular my dad, are textualist bible-y people, and while they didn't go in for specific predictions of any moment, I do have the sense that they all kind of generally believed in it 'eventually'), and my 8-year-old mind was swallowing it whole, and I was terrified that the end of my existence was mere days away (hours of it to be wasted in the way back of this damned car!). 

I don't believe that Jordan Peele tailored his horror story specifically to me, but I am curious (and it's probably too late to note, spoiler-alert) as to what the implications of the film might have been had it not been for the twistNotSoTwist ending.  Would Adelaide's (Lupita Nyong'o) doppelganger (Red), who in fact was Adelaide, have seemingly led the uprising had she not come originally from the top side. Revolutionary artists (or perhaps it's more often horror makers) often wind up creating works that actually make arguments quite the contrary to what they themselves believe or would espouse in the real world.  

• Thus, is the argument of Us that in order to make revolution, the underside need a spark (inspiration or perhaps permission) from a member of the ruling class?
• Just as the hippie horror-makers (Wes Craven, Tobe Hooper, John Carpenter) wound up making conservative arguments warning about the dangers of teenage promiscuity...
• And a work of horror fiction as seemingly revolutionary as Mark Danielewski's House of Leaves winds up making a very very conservative argument (albeit circuitously).

It's not to say that it's the fault of these brilliant creators that their works wind up making conservative arguments that they'd rather not be making.  Rather it's the tricksy nature of working in the media of terror and horror and trying to bridge the gap.  It's why a filmmaker like George Romero was less susceptible to falling into the same trap, because he started with the horror and embraced it for its own sake, and the meaning came afterward.  When you try to wield the ephemeral (which is what you're doing when you're creating a work of art), it gets slippery, and doesn't always go where it wants.

It's why when the artistic mockery of religion that is televangelist doomsayers like Jack Van Impe and publishing powerhouses like Joel Osteen and religiosity-based "university" educators like Jerry Falwell Jr... 

• Ply their craft, they wind up arguing against their personal ownership or understanding of church doctrine, and their political and moral arguments (not to mention their continuing calls for their own personal enrichment) wind up making the case for exactly the opposite of their intent.

Star DNP

On this date in 2007, I reported to my first day of (temp) work at my new job at Mahler Private Staffing (MPS).  I had been given a 3 - 4 week assignment, through Manpower Group, to work as an Administrative Assistant to a private service search firm.  When I took the job, I didn't know what "private service" was, and I have to say, it seemed all pretty weird.

In those early days, I was writing ads and candidate profiles and conducting strange specialty research projects (I'll just say that I know a lot more about ornamental gardening than anyone who has a yard like mine!).  I was invited to stay on in a permanent* part-time role, and spent a few days a week at their office, which became the mid-point of my normal bus commute (in those days it was the pre-Green Line, which I think was #11) from the Colonel to UW-M.

I spent that first school year back in Wisconsin alternating between my academic/teaching brain & my officeTeam persona, and I wasn't too terribly disappointed when May came around, and I was summarily dismissed with no reason given - I just went and found another temp job - first as a receptionist at a home health care company (where I was able to stream much of the Euro 2008 soccer tourney during work), and later as the global economy crumbled around us, at Northwestern Mutual (where internet surfing was restricted, so I read the company's financial newsletter and had a front row seat to the inner workings of the financial crisis, in between planning corporate events such as baseball-themed ice cream socials and 5-, 10-, 15- & 20-year service honoring ceremonies).

When I was called back to MPS in August 2010 to work on a project, and later invited to take on a permanent** role in November as the "Candidate Librarian" (my invented title - never over the course of the subsequent decade was I ever clear about what my title was), I was intrigued and also delighted to see how much had changed.  What I loved most about my work over the last decade, other than the people I got to know and work alongside, was the commitment to quality.  Doing all aspects of the work well felt like a fundamental shift from 2 years earlier, when the whole company felt very transactional.  A client of ours, who I met in Manhattan in 2013, perhaps said it best: "MPS is the best, because they actually give a shit."

There were some new faces, and some old familiar folks, and in my first year back in the role a lot of sweeping changes occurred, which thrust me more to the fore, and I began take on significant search and recruiting work, in addition to my continuing librarian role.  In August 2012, shortly before starting my final school year of teaching at UW-M, I took my first work trip.  I was working on a housekeeper search for a client with a home in Palm Beach, FL, and we decided I would travel to South Florida to meet the finalist candidates.  I stayed at the Brazilian Court Hotel, and 10 minutes after my arrival it was clear that I was an impostor... but it was was fun to be so.  I'm not monied, and will never be so no matter what fortunes the future permits.

More than anything, what my decade plus at MPS has shown me is that the presumed distinction that the monied believe in is a last desperate charade.  Not all of our wealthy clients (UHNW - as in ultra-high net worth) were, in fact, monied.  They had money, of course - obscene amounts of it - but some understood the arbitrary stupidity of it.  Most, though, prefer to construct mythologies wherein their privilege is anything but.  Their wealth was worked toward, earned, a just reward for the cleverness and astuteness and wherewithal of them or their forebears.  What I learned was that this entitlement most often took the form of elaborate narration.  

We construct the world around us by telling its story - to ourselves or anyone else who will listen - and my time at MPS helped me develop the skill of listening to those narratives and finding ways to accommodate them.  There was a more sycophantic version of this accommodation, where it is largely accepted, but my method was more to understand it, act as if it were normal, and then find the right people who could fit into the story that was being told. 

And so I spent the next decade of my life at work trying to be a part of building something.  I remained myself (which was fundamental to my undoing in the end... and in the middle), but also came in to myself, and when I started running most of the East Coast search work in 2013 I had to opportunity to begin creating and inhabiting my own mythologies.  When I would walk into the UES apartment of a client of ours (say the founder of a company that is a household name), and they would often look at me and wonder just what, precisely, I was doing there.  (On only one occasion, though, did the client actually voice this question).  

Mostly, we would shoot the breeze - on the more enjoyable occasions finding common ground (a connection to Wisconsin, or an interest in my dissertation work on Haiti), but more often than not, they would talk about themselves.  (Not terribly surprising, as I was there to learn them, but it was equally easy to learn them regardless of the topic of conversation).  There were a lot of variations on a theme, but mostly they all wanted someone to take care of them.  The idiosyncratic part was the matchmaking, the fit and feel of who they would want around them - in their homes or sitting right outside their office.

That's the part that I am best at.  I can do all the rest, but offering bespoke assistance in the form of people and advice.  Maybe this is what my new company does... Seeger Enterprises?  It's motto (or mission): Do Good.  Be Better. (DGBB Enterprises?)  Offering Consulting and Coaching, Bespoke Search, and Project Management and Development.

"It might be nice, it might be nice..."

* It was not news to me, but I was surprised in May 2008 to receive an object lesson in the truism, "Nothing is permanent," when I was let go for the first (but far from last!) time by MPS..

** Among the strangest phenomena of working at MPS is that fact that every 4 years (2008, 2012, 2016 & now 2020) I was fired from my post.  In 2008, it felt fairly arbitrary (in fact wasn't!), but by 2012 and thereafter, I have come to realize, my penchant for speaking my mind, even when it is outside the norms for the room, was not well received by leadership.  My skeptical mind was in fact the greatest strength of my tenure, because it was precisely counterpoint to leadership's tendency toward mythological thinking, but it was rarely well received, despite its proven effectiveness.

first!

I've been a fan of the Chicago Bears football club since nearly as long as I can remember.  But not quite.  I remember very early in my life thinking that Franco Harris was the awesomest football player ever.  I also remember declaring at some point early on that the Tampa Bay Buccaneers were my team (I think because of the sweet creamsicle color featured on the magnetic helmet that generally sat in last place on the standings board on my wall.  I was actually wooed some years later by the same phenomenon when I briefly decided that the Florida Marlins would be my baseball team as I hadn't been much of a Brewers fan since the early 80s Ben Oglivie days).

I've come by most of my fandoms earnestly: the Bears were selected when I was very young because we got to go and see their training camp in the summers in Plattville, WI where my mom was completing graduate coursework between school years.  Their winning a Super Bowl in my formative years helped, but that bandwagon jumping has been paid off dearly for suffering through decades of painful disappointment and false hope.

Being a fan of the Chicago Bears is (what I long thought was) a uniquely painful experience.  It's not the perpetual basement dweller syndrome of someone like 20+ years of Brewer's baseball (until the playoff drought ended in 2008 in our first season as 10-pack ticketholders and actually once more becoming a Brewer's fan).  Rather, the pain of the Bears is that they consistently show promise and hope - brief spurts of success, only to come crashing back down and making you feel dumb for even getting engaged in it all again.  As I said, i thought this fan experience was unique to the Bears, until I found it again taking up a fan interest in my now favorite sports franchise: Nottingham Forest Football Club.  

A few years ago, I made a very conscious decision to 'get into' club football.  I've watched a lot of international soccer over the years (World Cup, Euro tournaments, US National Team qualifiers and tournaments), but beyond vaguely "choosing" the Chicago Fire as the closest MLS team who I've gone to see a couple of times at Soldier Field and Borussia Dortmund as the "local team" I chose when studying in Germany, I had no loyalties.                  

*   *   *

26 July 2020 - 11:07am CDT

As loyal readers and frequent checkers of this site will know (I see you when you all drop by!), I frequently 'post-date' the most recent post.  Whereby, I start to write a post, and set the date and time of publishing the post at the moment I started writing it, even if (as often happens) I don't finish the post until days (or sometimes even weeks) later.  My thinking with that is that I want to preserve the moment of the original idea, and generally when I finish the draft the post is still the newest on the site (because I don't write here that often).  On many occasions, I don't ever finish the post, and may years later publish and add a dated post script like this one.

The reason I needed to add one to this post is because, like the posts where several years have passed before I get to publishing them I have fundamentally changed between their writings and I no longer inhabit the same world I did when I started writing this post.  I started this post planning to write about fandom, elective, absorbed and inherited.  For the last couple years, my favorite team in all of sports has been Nottingham Forest F.C. 

The post was going to be about how I had selected a team who managed to supplant the lowly Bears as purveyors of heartbreak.  Best described, I think, by Nottingham native, Phil Juggins, who I met a couple of times back when NFFC were last in the Premier League when I visited Nottingham on my spring break from Uni Muenster.  As I dug in to the history of Forest, I found them to be a team that tended to break fans down with flashes of promise and success followed by epic failure.

And then it was Wednesday, and omfg, I've never felt so broken from a sports result.  The Double Doink was nothing compared to Wednesday.  Wednesday will be a historical moment... but it will pass, and will become a part of the groundwater of being a Forest supporter.  I'm sure I am not the only fan of NFFC and the Chicago Bears, but we few are loyal union members of the factories of sadness that are City Ground & Halas Hall.

But maybe next season will be our year...

This or That

On this date in History - 13 years ago Today (frack i am old...) - I was That Guy (or possible This Guy, the record seems not entirely clear).

It's approaching high summer, and in any other year Milwaukee would be looking at the SummerFest lineup each evening and choosing which nights to dive in to the crowds and see some cool new (and old) bands.

Instead, today, i googled (and learned) the definition of comorbidity.  Which sucks.

I have no wisdom or insight for us today, but only that we are breaking, my friends.  Our whole civilization.  And I think it's easy to blame Republicans (or leftists, if you're of a certain persuasion) or anyone else, really.  And there are plenty of people who are on the right track, but our problem is all of it.  

Those of us who are good liberals, but have some nice stuff, we want to keep having it - eating out and having nice cocktails and gym memberships (or spin classes; i think i mentioned earlier that i am so old) and cars and frequent flyer miles and dogs... all good stuff for the dogs.

We are the next #okBoomers and we like to pretend that we aren't.  Our refusal to be radical and rail against (and ultimately give up what we have) is kind of the problem.  I do not mean that middle class folks are the real problem in the face of billionaires (and multi-millionaires), but we are enablers.  No matter how much we don't want to be...

Happy Syttende Mai! - Happy Every Day!

Today is Syttende Mai (17 May), which is the founding day of modern, constitutional Norway (officially Constitution Day).  It feels like a super-arbitrary day most everywhere in the world except, perhaps, Scandinavia and Northern Minnesota where my people hail from.

Every country has their day - as I started this post, it occurred to me that Haiti's Independence Day is January 1st (1 January 1804), the official end of the Haitian Revolution.  Starting on January 1st, I figured I would start another perpetual post* which would function as a calendar outlining founding dates of the countries of the world.  I'll start with the one's I know and think of off-hand (which is these two, plus the 4th of July^), and build from here (I'll appreciate anyone's input in the comments section!, or I'll add as I notice them going about my daily life):

January

1 - Haitian Independence Day

May

17 - Syttende Mai (Norway's Constitution Day)

July

1 - Somalia's Independence Day

1 - Canada Day (formerly Dominion Day until 1982 - which sounds much more bad-ass, Canada and you may want to consider switching back)**

4 - United States of America's Independence Day

September

16 - Mexican Independence Day (Celebration of the Mexican War of Independence with this date marking the start of the Hidalgo Revolt in 1810)

December

1 - Romania's Great Union Day (marking the 1918 unification of Transylvania, Bessarabia, Bukovina & The Romanian Kingdom)

* a perpetual post is one on Roman Numeral J that gets updated over the course of months & years, and may never truly be finished, but is a work in progress toward some declared end goal (e.g. the Lost Last Fives, the Vodka Ranking, and the Star Trek Chronology).

^July 4th feels significant - until you spend an American Independence Day outside of the United States.  America does a pretty good job of lampooning itself most of the time, but that's nothing until you experience a bunch of people from all over the world throwing you and your American friends a party that is heavily sarcastic (and always features a sparkler, which i think is the only firework that is partly legal in most sensible countries)

** it's a small sample size thus far, but on discovering that both Canada Day & Somalia's Independence Day both occur on the same day, I wonder if we will come to discover that a disproportionate amount of founding days will be on the first of the month.  Like the start of a month feels like a good 'reset button' when you're starting up a new country (as opposed to most countries "happening" on some random date).

"do you like puzzles?"

As the Great Quarantine of 2020 was about to get underway, my brilliant wife bought a jigsaw puzzle on a whim during a Target run (back when Target runs felt normal and less like "missions").

Her choice of images on that (first, as it turned out) puzzle was absurd - and also perfect, as it turned out.  Killer whales, a diverse underwater scene along with a sky full of skies and fireworks and two sailing (pirate, right, they've got to be pirates) ships passing by a coastline lit by a rising full moon.

Some years ago, JP asked me the simple question: "Do you like puzzles?"

My mind went straight to jigsaw puzzles, and, never having been too fond of them (or probably never completing one beyond the toy versions of 10 or 50 or 100 pieces of my youth), I told JP, "not really."

He was disappointed, I could see it - and shortly thereafter, I discovered why.  JP had created an elaborate and immersive experience for us in our home and neighborhood.  It started with a message - I think it was a long letter, and contained the name (an old-timey name, which i do not recall) of an early code (16th or 17th Century?) written in letters from a prisoner.

Using this code, we discovered a message: Tippecanoe ISBN 9780452275003 with each number spelled out fully (or some number, which led me to the book Zombie, by Joyce Carol Oates).  This brought the search to a temporary stand-still, because Tippecanoe is the name of my neighborhood, and I happened to own the book in question (i suspect JP may not have realized this, or was increasing the challenge).  At the same time, we had begun to discover a number of odd items around our house - a plastic pencil sharpener & a Bierdeckel that we weren't familiar with.

Once I had solved it (perhaps with a hint!), i went to our local library (the Tippecanoe branch!), and pulled their copy of Oates' novel from the shelves.  Slipped under the cover, was a receipt - a Walgreen's Photo receipt, which was pre-paid.  I took it to our local Walgreen's, and turned it over for a roll of photos - 24 (remember when pics came in sets of 24!?) pictures of items that had been hidden around our house.

And so it goes... I do love puzzles.  I love to play the game, and the total immersion game - where you literally walk around the earth and un-earth it is the ultimate iteration.  Jason Segel has created for us - i think in part from his own struggle - Dispatches from Elsewhere, which at its core is an immersive game experience.  Dispatches is a team game, and a game played outside in the world.  It unlocks a narrative, and you get to choose how deeply you want to play (just dancing with Bigfoot & along for the ride or taking the deeper game behind the game approach that our heroes take).

I was a late adopter of Myst but loved puzzling through it once i had discovered it after starting college.  But i wasn't able to defeat it (not in the Arfives*!), because many of the puzzles in the game are ones that require patience.  My preference for a long time had been the "riddle of the sphinx" type game where a lot of folks had perished at it, but once you came to the answer it was immediate.

As i become old (or perhaps as we are becoming more familiar with the art of passing time, because we're in quarantine!), I have come to appreciate the slow boil puzzles.  Nick Bantock was an author who I adore(d^), and read most of his work in the early Aughts.  Among the collection of books I owned was The Egyptian Jukebox, which was one i had never finished.  It's described as "A Conundrum" on the cover, and it's as beautiful as all of Bantock's works, but one meant to be worked at.

As we have now started here at home on our 4th puzzle, I have become comfortable with the idea that yes, indeed, i do like puzzles and the satisfaction of completion that goes with them.  Jigsaw puzzles are fine, but I enjoy even more immersive the better... 

On another visit to Milwaukee, JP left at our house a deck of cards, and some mode of giving us a specific sequence of cards.  Each of the cards had a small hole poked in it, and there was one outlier card, which had (i think random) letters over all of it.  With the sequence, we were able to decode the following message:

"At the centroid of _________, _____________, ____________ in the sculpture in park."  The blanks were three locations in Milwaukee, and at their centroid was a park in the 5th Ward.  I Bublr biked there one day on a lunch break, and tucked in to the sculpture in a park was an envelope with a gift card to Milwaukee's Public Market that JP had hidden there a week earlier.

Magical.

I don't think Dispatches from Elsewhere could have come out at a better time in history.  While the scenes of sitting in diners, or large gatherings in public parks or old timey theaters feels a bit like porn just now, it's more fringy questioning at the corners of reality that I think is so vital.  Was that all just a game, as the end party contends, or is there something real that the game is a cover for.  The concept / device isn't new (see 1997's The Game or 2018's Game Night), but the idea feels important now, whereas it might earlier have seemed merely fun - a welcome distraction - a bit of whimsy.

As we all going to be re-evaluating (sooner or later) the structures of the systems in place that surround our lives, I would like to recommend that we create some space and some infrastructure for these kinds of immersive experiences, either irl or virtually, a la Ready Player One or "We Can Remember It for You Wholesale".  I'm talking about a major company or companies that begin to work on this.  It will be the next Facebook - i am quite sure of it...

is this what you were picturing? (Source: Amazon.com)

* this is also a time to consider the place of video games (as opposed to other games) in the Arfives, which I have never really included in my listings, because to complete a video game I have always felt that i had to "beat it".  Unfortunately, I've never been all that good at video games and also not very diligent, so it's possible that i've never in all my life actually completed a game (actually, I do distinctly remember defeating Contra - after using the upUpDownDown... trick).  I may revise this going forward.

^ I would like to contend, that we no longer should be held to a standard of loving everything today that we once loved in our past, and yet at the same time need to couch that love in a past-time-i-ness...  I loved Nick Bantock's works for a time in my life, and while i don't find them as compelling today, we should embrace the moments that we loved things... unconditionally. 

Play Ya' Charactah'

All the worlds a stage... 

In my case (and the case of most recovering academics and definitely most bloggers!) that world is more like a podcast studio (and not like a nice one, rather one where one of the participants is sitting on a bed, which is next to an IKEA desk which is also "the board")...

 My DM (and yes, as an old person i urban dictionaried that to make sure i wasn't going to sound too stupid - turns out it's #5!) is a young fella, DM Steve, and as a young white man he has a lot of opinions (as i did {and do!} when i was/am a young white man).

...Among these [is] that Star Trek: Picard is not truly a Star Trek show.  His premise is (i've been taught that the best way to argue is to first state your opponents case as well as they could have ever said it so they can only say, "i agree with that") that Picard isn't Star Trek...  It lacks Gene Roddenberry's foundational vision that the future is bright and the human project (for early Star Trek read that as the American Project) is optimistic.  DM Steve pointed to the fact the Raffi, the only major black (and female) character we've met (or seemingly will meet) lives in a trailer after her Star Fleet career has (been) ended, because she was Picard's right hand and he decided to quit.

Furthermore, the inclusion of swears is highly un-Star Trek (notable fanFeeds notwithstanding).  DM Steve contends that the new show may be quality sci-fi (tho as yet that is to be determined), but it is decidedly not a part of the Star Trek universe, because it doesn't adhere to the defining vision...

The story of Star Trek (production-wise) is complicated and varied.  When The Original Series (TOS) was on TV, it was struggling for continued existence and was limited by the constraints of its era as a monster-of-the-week series with minimal character development.  As a result, every problem was wrapped up by the end of the hour.  TOS had just one single two-part episode in its three year run...

Thus, it wasn't until the movies (and really not until the second - The Wrath of Khan) where any problem - with a monster of the week; or with the larger world (er, galaxy) - had real stakes.  The Wrath of Khan ends in a victory, but it is partial, and at great cost (sorry, Spock!). 

When The Next Generation (TNG) came about, it also began as a monster-of-the week series.  Through its run of seven seasons there were 9 two-parters, but only one before the end of season 3 (and that was the series premiere, where both episodes aired on the same evening).

As TNG came in to its own, it started to venture away from the straight "one episode, one new problem" formula, and explore recurring conflicts in the larger world.  First external, like Q, the Ferengi, the Crystalline Entity - but TNG also started to explore the concept that Star Fleet - the human institution at the core of the entire Star Trek Universe - was perhaps not infallible.  I think first with "The Measure of a Man" where Star Fleet sanctions reclassifying Data, a graduate of their academy, as property.

More importantly, as the series progressed, was the relationship with the Borg - and particularly how Picard deals with them (and particularly the changes in his behavior after his assimilation).  The Borg are the perfect test case - an enemy so heinous that any action to thwart would be justified.  When Picard has the opportunity in Season 5's "I, Borg" episode to infect the Borg with what might constitute a genocidal pandemic he plans to use it right up until the last minute when he is swayed to take another course.

Picard's moral dilemma (much like his rampant revenge motive throughout much of First Contact, the best of the Next Gen films) is what makes it Star Trek.  Roddenberry's vision was one of a future that had achieved much - an optimistic outlook to answer the dystopian imagining that makes up most science fiction.  But the Star Trek universe is not a utopia.  It is utopian in its ideals, but that work (like our work) is an ongoing project, toward betterment.

In Star Trek: Picard, there is a clear moral balance - "good guys" and "bad guys" (some are what we expect - e.g. Romulans bad | but some teams aren't matching our expectations - e.g. Borg, Star Fleet, or androids).  What's unfamiliar about it is the pace - i expect that by the end of Season 1 we will have resolution of the moral order and clarity and what has gone wrong.  It's a season-long episode, and good will triumph in the end (though perhaps just a partial victory).

The world of Star Trek isn't achieved.  Even at its origin (whether that's TOS, Enterprise, Zefram Cochrane or even the Kelvin Universe reboot), the utopian ideal was a work in process.  And a core value of the world is betterment.  There were cracks in Star Fleet in The Undiscovered Country, TNG and DS9.  Too long resting on its laurels assuming it was good because it was Star Fleet.  In Insurrection, the corrosive corruption had taken full hold, and 10 years later when Mars is destroyed (by whom, we're not quite sure yet - though it sure seems it wasn't the synths), it has taken full hold... Selfish protectionism and the path of the human project seemingly lost...

Call to Order

The March 2020 meeting of the Commune starts in 20 minutes...  (as a reminder, first Friday of each month 6pm - 8pm CT).

Please feel free to text me with any new business, or we can use the comments section...

Let me know if we need to set up a group chat or anything...

Jalapeño Serioso

We ate last night (for about the 500th time) at Jalapeño Loco - hands down the best Mexican restaurant in Milwaukee.  Just north of the airport (5067 S. Howell Avenue), it looks from the street like a place you'd pass by, but inside it's cozy, particularly on the bar side (best option if you're two or one is the bar, which is friendly and plenty of space for food).

Order the High Taste Margarita while you consider your menu options.  It is a superior concoction made with the Sauza Conmemorativo.  The house and gold versions are fine - and there are flavors if that's your speed, but if you don't go high taste you're selling yourself short. 

The reason there are so few great Mexican restaurants is finding a balance of a great margarita with exceptional authentic food.  Jalapeño Loco (or "Jalapanoes" {hard 'J'} as my in-laws fondly refer to it) specializes in Oaxacan cuisine, and dabble in a number of other regions of Mexico.  You really can't go wrong on their menu, although their moles are quite special and not to be missed.  The weekly specials are also generally quite good, and we frequently visit and only stay on this ever-changing list.  Last night, it was the Chalupas appetizer and Pollo Estofado and a few High Taste Margaritas. 

As we were entering last night, we were bemoaning the fact that Milwaukee doesn't have any truly upscale Mexican places, which are coming into favor in larger metros.  So we propose a new restaurant in Milwaukee - in the same vein as Jalapeño Loco (perhaps even with the exact same menu!).  I think we should call it Jalapeño Serioso, and it should probably find a location in the 3rd Ward/5th Ward fluidity.  A lofty, industrial space - if Hugo and Janet want to start it, that would be awesome (!), but if they don't want to, that's okay... your spot is a favorite already. 

But i duly submit this as a brilliant idea...