T-shirt #299 - Grendel and the Broken Phone

T-shirt #299 - Grendel and the Broken Phone

Today's entry has more to do with the broken phone shown in the picture than in the actual content of the
comic book portrayed. Grendel is a comic book character created by Matt Wagner, named, obviously, for the "monster" from Beowulf.

I will get to the Grendel content later. But first I went to delve into a subject recently addressed by one of my favorite authors: Warren Ellis.

I have been saving this picture for just such an occasion as when I might have a subject that would relate to a broken phone. The two photos of me with my shattered phone, my HTC Evo, come from 2012.

And now to the content...

WARREN ELLIS AND SILENCE

I have written about the author Warren Ellis enough times that he has his own category in my list.

For those who want their links here for easy clicking. T-shirt #22 featured his excellent Internet comic FreakAngels.  T-shirt #75 featured his ongoing "hobby" podcast called Spektrmodule. Ellis just posted his first Spektrmodule since August HERE. It's good, though one of the drone tracks is a bit difficult to abide, at least I found it so last night and had to shut it off. Usually the podcasts are golden. I updated T-shirt #75 just for you, dear reader. Check it out.

I shared Warren Ellis' Twitter "lecture" (rant? tirade?) about whisky and whiskey via (fittingly) a t-shirt about Cerebus the Dictator in T-shirt #82. I did not reprint the whisky lecture in my post for the DOCTOR WHISKY T-shirt #284, mainly because I like to try to increase readership of previous posts in my sneaky, link-referencing way, much like I am doing here.

Also, (and I just caught and corrected this oversight), I reviewed Ellis' novel Gun Machine in the post for T-shirt #138, which I have now added to the Ellis category.

Have I mentioned that Warren Ellis would be at my Dinner Party? See the Dinner Party category. One of these days I am going to have to make the guest list and keep it updated, but not today. Also, one of these days, I am going to have to reference Judy Chicago's Dinner Party, which surely influenced my writing about this fantasy Dinner Party populated by the people I would most like to talk with and would like to observe talking with each other. And so I just did reference Judy Chicago. Linked and referenced.

I am very grateful for Warren Ellis. Planetary is one of the best things I have ever read ever in comics in fiction in anything.

I shared Warren's photo (seen here) about coffee in T-shirt #286, which I have added to the Warren Ellis category, but I think the photo deserves another go here. I am nothing if not repetitious to make sure all that needs to be seen, gets seen. So, there you go (above and left).

Warren Ellis has started a newsletter. I am going to present nearly the ENTIRE contents of the most recent one on my blog today. I am hoping Warren will be okay with this if he happens to find out. I am giving him full credit for the following text, so I don't see pasting his newsletter to my blog as much different than sharing it on Facebook as a link. Warren maintained an email newsletter recently to promote his book Gun Machine, but it died when there was some dust up with the publisher. He had some other newsletters deeper in Net history and has actually published many of these ramblings as small books or spine bound "comic" books (text books by comic publishers in comic-sized formats). I like to keep up with what Warren is on about as it fuels my own imagination and my own quests to be going on and daydreaming about my own things.

Warren's most recent email missive struck me as a subject worth more exploration. I would say that when Warren is in full-band broadcast mode from his sea fort in England, he lives more in what he calls "the flow" than I do. I am often stepping back from the flow of media to get work done. In fact, as I type this, I am taking a one hour break from work to make some progress in the blog while also checking email and Facebook, and then I will shut back down to barrel through work.

I am not a natural multi-tasker. What Warren refers to as the silence is in disconnecting from the social media flow, the techno-flow, the churn of the machine. I find that I have been more adrift in the flow this year as I have devoted myself daily to blog content and to just enough social media attention to feel like a participant. But I find that I cannot easily split my attention forty ways. Often Twitter is too much. I control in a miserly way the number (a small number) of messages that I allow through to my phone. I have disabled the phone's squawk when a message comes over the prow. I often ignore Facebook, and I do not even delve daily into the vast wilderness that is the Twitter feed let alone Tumblr or Instagram as I would be lost. This blog alone is enough of a sink hole for my attention and effort.

And yet, when I mu blog year is over, I will cease daily operational capacity. What T-shirts remain will be parceled out at a slower pace or at least that is what I say to myself now. And though I cannot claim that I am showered with daily feedback from readers, I do receive enough feedback that stepping back from the transmission and reception cycle may prove as jarring as breaking one's phone and being unreachable by the portable device until a new one is procured. (Did you wonder how I was going to bring this back to the broken phone thing?) And I am not even as much of a phone junkie as others. I rely on it mostly for communication and as a way to pass time when I am not in my office. I especially like the ability to read and archive email while waiting in line for a prescription or at the grocery checkout.

I am hatching my plans for when I enter the silence and stop the daily broadcasts. I plan to transition to fiction work, which I plan to transmit, though not on a daily basis. However, the satisfaction of just a little attention from the blog cycle may compel me to try some kind of daily updating. As I wrote, I am hatching my plans. The plans are not fully hatched yet.

And yet, I envy the true "silence" that Warren writes about in stepping out of the world and into a cocoon as he has done and as Gaiman is reportedly doing in order to write. Ellis has THOUSANDS of readers. I was searching for the number as I could swear he reported it in an Orbital Operations, and I want to say it was 10,000, but I am not sure. With Twitter and other social media outlets, authors and various artists can broadcast daily and build a following in new and ever more powerful ways. To "go dark," as Warren calls it, must be difficult and require great self-control and yet it must be very necessary for creation and productivity, as he explains in the following.

I am still "unpacking" this idea (as Warren likes to say). After all, it was Eco (who Warren quotes) that said that all cultural phenomena can be studied as communication. And so I am contemplating my own upcoming silence and how it will serve as a transition for new broadcasts and new information.

I hope you enjoy reading Warren Ellis' writing that follows. It's all set apart in a white box, so it is all clearly marked as his. If you are inspired to subscribe to his newsletter, then please use the link that follows. If by some completely CRAZY coincidence and a rare treat YOU ARE WARREN ELLIS, I hope it's okay that I re-transmitted your transmission.

ORBITAL OPERATIONS SUBSCRIBE LINK

++ ORBITAL OPERATIONS (BY Warren Ellis)

“I would say that one of the ethical problems we face today is how to return to silence. And one of the semiotic problems we might consider is the closer study of the function of silence in various aspects of communication, to examine a semiotics of silence: it may be a semiotics of reticence, a semiotics of silence in theater, a semiotics of silence in politics, a semiotics of silence in political debate—in other words, the long pause, silence as creation of suspense, silence as threat, silence as agreement, silence as denial, silence in music.”

This is from Umberto Eco’s INVENTING THE ENEMY, which I finally started reading on a plane a couple of months ago. The quote is found in a lecture he gave some years ago, but it seems to speak directly to some of the talk about internet and social media over the last year. And while some of that talk has been sourced in privilege and an intent (conscious or otherwise) to assert social-media silence as a new badge of exclusivity (remember the business cards that didn’t have phone numbers on them, because if you didn’t know how to contact the bearer of the card then you weren’t worth their time?)...

...well, I’ve gone internet-dark for extended periods over the last couple of years. Silence is restorative. Neil Gaiman’s off to write for six months, because his process requires quiet. Silence, frankly, has cultural utility. Remember how everyone thought David Bowie had gone away?

And silence on social media -- particularly performative social media --

Warren Ellis @warrenellis

I have just seen someone use the phrase "bad doge syntax" and I am therefore now on the side of the NSA and drone strikes

8:45AM 23 Dec 2013 Reply Favorite

-- reserves keystrokes and “thoughts” for pursuits perhaps more productive.

(If you’re minded to, you can see the majority of social media use amongst the creative clade as performance, process/transparency, community-building and curation.)

I myself am looking forward to shutting down social media for four or five weeks after I get to LA. Not ORBITAL OPERATIONS, though. ORBITAL OPERATIONS continue regardless of location because I am orbiting you constantly like a satellite of love.

I still skim some things when I’m on silent running, because I have Twitter tuned as a news feed -- I personally still believe that the realtime news stream is what made Twitter great -- and because Instagram is pretty.

(My favourite thing is actually Instagram.)

I’m not good with the quiet. I need to feel the flow of the world. But I find that, to a large extent, going dark allows me to go back to books. I’ve gotten terrible at sustained reading, and it’s entirely possible that living with my head in the flow for a couple of decades has done something to (some aspect of) my attention span. I am not going to subject you to the unread-books list on my Kindle. Which I make worse for myself by using the Send To Kindle extension for Chrome, which turns Kindle into my Instapaper. I’ve got to tell you, Send To Kindle has buried itself in my workflow now. I mean, sure, death to the Stacks and all that, but that extension is genuinely bloody useful.

“The Stacks” is a Sterlingism. 

HERE'S GOOD COVERAGE OF WHERE IT CAME FROM.

The Stacks are Apple, Google, Microsoft, Amazon and Facebook. Or, it did in 2012. You can probably add Twitter to that, though I understand that to be arguable. And The Stacks are part of the reason that people are considering going dark. Things like Send To Kindle are becoming the exception. Interoperability is not what it used to be. Functionality is not what it used to be. People have been talking about IndieWeb again, pulling back to personal websites from company-owned streams, but some of those same companies own your web browser, and shit could get weird, and, yes, I’m completely aware that I’ve been talking just a paragraph ago about two of those Stacks collaborating to my benefit. WHICH IS HOW THEY GET YOU (PARANOID GLITTER IN EYES, TAKES OFF CLOTHES, PRODUCES KNIFE FROM BEARD)

FOLLOW UP ON ELLIS BY ME

Okay, back to me. Isn't it interesting how Ellis relates Eco's comments to his own work process and I did the same thing? Maybe not interesting. I read Warren's newsletter before writing my own comments. But whereas a writer can step back to get the silence she needs to produce work, Eco is also ruminating on the ethical dilemma of silence by political leaders in the 24-hour news cycle, which is quite a different animal.

When Warren Ellis is in full broadcast mode, he transmits multiple messages, and up to five hit his web page on average in a normal day when he's had enough coffee, whiskey, and bull semen. Others I follow, such as John Scalzi and Cory Doctorow manage at least one post a day in their own feed (Cory is more active on average than Scalzi but then Cory helps run Boing Boing!). They have audiences. People rely on them for a constant stream of entertainment. But writing books is a thing that for many of us (I must be in the same boat with Gaiman and Ellis) requires SILENCE. I am on Day 299 of my blog (tomorrow is the big 300), and I have mental time for my fiction but not much typing time. What I have learned is that I can find the time to produce LARGE VOLUMES of text for this blog, so, ipso facto, one would assume I could convert that time to fiction at the end of the blog year. Somehow I do not think it will be that easy, but I am keen to try.

On another note, I have no idea how Cory Doctorow does all that he does. I think he has Cory robots to help him.

SIDENOTE: I love that Google has started remembering my recent searches, so when I search again, I hit "Grendel Comic" first. Brilliant. Thanks again Google. It's a little creepy, but it's bloody useful (as Warren says).
SIDESIDENOTE: I am very afraid of the "send to Kindle" thing that Warren was on about. not sure I am ready to load that app in the browser. Damn. I am still transferring links via email and assembling them in text files that I will probably never look at again. Besides my Kindle is an early gen unit and not so handy with web stuff.

GRENDEL CONTENT

Oh yeah, so today's actual shirt subject is the Grendel comic book character created by Matt Wagner. The original Grendel, Hunter Rose, as depicted on the shirt, ran as back up stories in the earliest Mage comics as published by Comico. I have featured Mage three times, but I am not inclined to paste the links. You will find them all in the comic books category, but then there around 90 posts in the comic book category.

I have a Grendel mask, but I am not sure where it is. If it resurfaces, I may add to this item. I also own the pin seen on the Grendel Cycle cover below. I own several of the comics shown, such as Devil by the Deed, but I could not find them.

The story of Grendel is well told via the following links, especially HUNTER ROSE - COMIC VINE for the character as depicted on the shirt. But the books I am seen reading in the photos concern other characters who are "possessed" (and possessed may not be the right word) of the Grendel spirit.

USEFUL LINKS

GRENDEL WIKI

GRENDEL COMIC VINE - CHARACTER

GRENDEL COMIC VINE - VOLUME

HUNTER ROSE - COMIC VINE

MATT WAGNER SITE

For kicks, today's cover gallery will follow the sign off. Cheers!

COUNTDOWN TO END OF THE BLOG YEAR - 66 shirts remaining

- chris tower - 1401.14 - 19:28

GRENDEL art and COVER GALLERY

T-shirt #178 - KUDL2009PLAY - Introversion

T-shirt #178 - KUDL2009PLAY - Introversion

I am still in Detroit. Troy, actually. Liesel and I did a lot of driving around Detroit suburbs yesterday. Friday night in Ferndale for dinner. Yesterday, we had lunch in Royal Oak and drove to the Sign of the Beefcarver to get our pictures (see far below). Then after I finished a set of grades, we were off to the Meadowbrook festival site, taking Rochester Road up to stop at an Old Navy enroute. Rochester is cute. Easy in and out at the Laneway Festival.

We ended up getting there just in time to see Sigur Rós.

I was hoping that Pavilion seating would be first come/first served, and it was. We showed up at the end of Solange's set and snagged two seats, which would have been perfect if the stupid, bumpkin, uncouth, insensitive, privileged, "I am the center of the universe and I don't give a fuck about you" Detroit "fans" of Sigur Rós did not stand in front of their lovely and comfy seats for the entire show. I tried to release the anger and rage out my pores and not dwell on it. But, really, if I had wanted to stand through the whole concert, I would have moved up front to the standing area!!

Next time, I am not going to be passive, and I will ask these dickheads to sit down. Do I sound bitter? I am mostly over it, but I am still a little bitter. I want to love everyone and suspend judgment, but some people make this so difficult. I want to be a loving, accepting, and easy-going person, free of judgment, and treating others as I want to be treated (BE NICE), and yet I want to sit through my Sigur Rós concert and SEE THE FUCKING STAGE; AND so I have a long way to go to forgive people for being so insensitive because they think they are the center of the universe. Or perhaps they just don't think at all.

Oh yeah. Remember T-shirt #168, and the PLAY & NO PLAY tags on two identical shirts both hanging in my closet? This is the second "PLAY" one and seemed a good way to get into other subjects.

INTROVERTS - INTROVERSION

This is a good place to share a few thoughts on Introversion and introverts.

I shared the video that Liesel had introduced me to in T-shirt #161. You can either dial back and watch the video or search You Tube for Susan Cain: The Power of Introverts, if you want to watch it and have not yet done so. It will take about 20 minutes of your time.

Susan Cain's video is very thought-provoking. As I explained in T-shirt #161, I am more introvert than extravert. ("Extravert is Jung's spelling, and he created the words.) And yet, I am often mistaken for an extravert. I often play the role of the extravert because our society and culture glorifies and enables extraversion while it denigrates, admonishes, and fails to understand introversion. In our culture, there is something wrong with people who want to be alone, who like to read and have quiet time, who need solitude to work on one project at a time, who do not always feel like collaborating or being a team player, who do not spend all their time out and about being social.

Why are introverts so misunderstood? Why are introverts pressured to change their ways? Why are introverts seen as damaged, sad, or in some other way deficient?

Susan Cain makes several astute observations in her video about the importance of introverts and the contributions they have made to the arts, to science, to world cultures.

According to Jung, we all fall on a spectrum. Each of us is some part introvert and some part extravert. We are yin and yang, light and dark. And yet many people want to homogenize. They want pasteurization. Difference is what is interesting. Conformity is not.

Enjoy the wonderful comic reprinted below (and linked) that makes this point more effectively than my rhetoric.

GOOD LINKS

Susan Cain - The Power of Introverts - Cain's main site.

Introversion Cartoon - Link to the comic strip re-published below, without permission but with due credit.

French Fries and Waffles - Link to main site of Luchie's cartoons, artist of the strip below.

INTROVERSION COMIC STRIP

PICTURES FROM THE DETROIT - LANEWAY ADVENTURE - 1309.14

Liesel and I at Laneway Pavilion
shortly before the Sigur Rós performance

Liesel 's "Breaking Bad"
Detroit City shot
Is she scary?
Is she cool?
Scary cool?

Liesel enjoying the melon margarita
at a Cantina in Royal Oak.
We both enjoyed our drinks.

Classic cafeteria style restaurant
on Woodward Ave near Birmingham

Why settle for one Beef Carver sign picture
when one can have two?

Sigur Rós creates the paradigm shift

By the time, I finished this blog, we were back home after a brunch at East Lansing's El Azteco. No pictures.

- chris tower - 1309.15 - 14:43

T-shirt #161 - Blue In Sport

T-shirt #161 - "Blue, Blue, Electric Blue, that's the Color of my room, where I will live..."

"Blue Blue."

Immortal words by David Bowie from "Sound and Vision" a track off his 1977 album Low part of the Berlin trilogy. Arguably, his best album. Definitely, the one I find that I keep coming back to and listening to again the most over the years; it was produced by Brian Eno.

When Bowie released his boxed set career retrospective, he called it Sound and Vision. He also named his 1990 tour "Sound and Vision," a greatest hits tour in which he intended to play his hits for the last time and then retire them. This has not happened, strictly speaking.

All of which I have shared because this shirt is blue.

Just a blue shirt made by InSport. Wicks moisture.

No logo or design. (Well, there is one on the sleeve but I decided to leave it off the picture.)

"Don't you wonder sometime about sound and vision?"

I spend a lot of time thinking.

This may surprise some people, but I am more introvert than extrovert.

It's true.

I can play the part of an "extravert" (to use Carl Jung's spelling), but it's playing a part, and it can cause me enormous anxiety. My base line state of existence, my preference, my natural state is solitude and quiet.

For example, for many years, I took solo vacations up north at the Neahtawanta Inn (as described best in T-shirt #85: Up North). Though sometimes I had a guest with me for a short time, the majority of the time I was alone. I would read, write, run, bike, swim, eat great food, and go see movies at night (sometimes two in one night). These vacations were just what I needed to recharge and prepare for the assault of another Fall-Winter college school semester of teaching classes.

Another example, I like to go to bed early and read. This is something that my wife likes to do as well. Though last night, I had the Tigers game plugged into one ear, for the most part, we had quiet, reading time in bed with each other and the puppy. I could have gone to the KUDL draft, but I was not feeling well, still not fully recovered, and I needed time at home, time alone with my wife and dog. This is what introverts need.

For me, time alone is crucial. My blogging all began during what I used to call "Bloggy Friday" when my parents would leave for my mother's beauty shop appointment (back when I lived them and later when I was there helping out while Liesel was at work) and I would have the house to myself. Peace and quiet and solitude so that I could do whatever I fancied. I liked this time best around the holidays when I could turn on all the lights on the Christmas decorations as the sunlight outside faded away.

I can be a social creature. I am actually a bit more of a social creature than my wife. But I crave alone time, and if I do not get enough of it every week, I start to go a bit bonkers.

Why am I writing about alone time and introversion?

Well, last night after dinner, my wife asked me to watch some videos with her. They are TED talk videos. If you have not heard of the TED conference and the TED Talks video podcasts, this is something very much worth your time. Do some exploring on YouTube. Or better yet, start with these three videos included farther below.

First, we watched neuroanatomist Jill Bolte Taylor's talk on what she learned about the brain after the stroke she suffered, and the message she has for all of us about our brains. Later, we watched a second video by Jill Bolte Taylor on brain development and the teenage brain, but first, we watched a wonderful talk by Susan Cain on the power of introverts.

I am including all three videos here on today's blog, plus a video for "Sound and Vision" by David Bowie, as my blog always needs more music. I give my wife credit for finding the videos and sharing them with me. My wife is remarkable. This is also further proof that she is perfect for me.

All three videos are extraordinary and very enlightening. However, I was deeply touched by the Susan Cain video about introversion.

Blue seems the right color for quiet time and introverts. Susan Cain's video touched me deeply because I always feel that I am a misunderstood introvert. At one time, my wife teasingly called me "Mr. Aloha" because of my propensity to chat with cashiers or food vendors. But I am an introvert as my previous examples should illustrate. I prefer quiet time, and, out of my element, I tend to keep to myself. But I do like to spread the sunshine. I think that "farting around" and making connections with the people in our community is an important part of each day, or at least that's what I learned from Kurt Vonnegut.

The Jill Bolte Taylor stuff is fantastic for understanding the brain, especially the "Stroke of Insight" video with her description of the gap between right and left brain functions and the world of peace and tranquility she discovered when her left brain shut down.

Grading Robot is in full swing today and thinking a lot about brains and introversion.

I hope you have time watch these videos and think about these things, too.

If so, PLEASE share comments. I would love to have discussions about these ideas.

Jill Bolte Taylor's stroke of insight

Susan Cain: The power of introverts

JBT TEDxYouthIndy

DAVID BOWIE - SOUND AND VISION - LIVE TOKYO 1990

- chris tower - 1308.29 - 8:18