m (_ _) m

I don‘t do emoticons. I just can’t.

Really, with my intense interest in symbols, icons and writing systems, I ought to. Beyond the basic appeal of little cartoons made of mostly punctuation, I have a humor that veers between very dry to overstated silly, either of which can suffer from a lack of facial and body language cues, and often leads me to send disclaimers or follow-up email translating my previous turns of phrase.

But I just can’t. Something in me rebels. I will include the occasional conversational cue like (hee) or (hem, haw), or stage directions, such as *scratching head*.

That said, I do really like them and remain impressed that I can usually understand the meaning without a helpful chart, like this one. And I really like the horizontal variants—what I had called the manga set even before I knew they were conclusively Japanese. Thanks to a link from a new blog I’ve been reading, Geisha asobi blog (who, in turn, got it from Boing Boing), I can feel a twinge of regret that I can’t effectively do Japanese character sets. C’mon, who hasn’t felt the need to include a ninja throwing a shuriken in the odd email?

The Future was Then

Antoni Gaudi submits his proposal for the
World Trade Center building, post-humously.

I find that oddly appropiate.

Hermes-of-the-Internet

As nifty and full of phallic symbolism as
Apollo’s Delphic
oracles may have been, I was always more fond of how one petitioned prophesy
from Hermes.
You left money at an image of Hermes, whispered your question into its ear,
covered your ears and then walked into the middle of the marketplace. The first
words you hear after uncovering your ears is the oracle’s answer.

So I’m curious, has anyone try doing this with the internet? Specifically
with Google. You know, type in a question in the
search field and then hit “I’m Feeling Lucky.” It’s
a big internet—I wouldn’t be surprised if someone has.

I gave it a whirl, with the fairly innocuous “What’s Up?”
And wouldn’t you know, all
it could talk about was the weather.

What is up with your name?

Jenn Manley Lee. No hyphen between “Manley” and “Lee”—my last name is Lee, middle name Manley.

Why? Well, this recent post of Barry’s explains half the problem. Now marry that with
the last name of Lee. Oy. In Portland alone there are at least seven other Jennifer
Lees. At least. And two others are in desktop publishing/graphic design and
yet another works in an art store (I met her personally). Two of the seven have
defaulted on student loans (found this out while buying our house) and I think
most of us have requested that Powell’s pull a book for us (always an adventure when I call in).

If all that wasn’t bad enough, I had to the charming experience several years ago of learning that the New Jersey DMV derived driver licence numbers from a combination of codes for name, sex, eye and hair color, date of birth, and height. How did I find this out? It seems there was another Jennifer Lee born on the same day as I, with brown hair, eyes, etc. who participated in a disputed traffic accident, which suddenly started to show on my driving record and insurance premium. I started a frustrating round-robin with the DMV, my insurance company and the police. Finally, a DMV opperative in Trenton figured out what happened, altered my number and cleaned my record. Guess the other Jennifer wasn’t born in New Mexico.

So why didn’t I simply take Kip’s name when we married? Well, one, Kip wouldn’t have it. Freaked him out, actually. Kinda a pity—I rather fancied becoming a ”Manley Woman.” But then people people would ask if I’m related to Joey Manley—as opposed to Jim or Stan Lee. (Fun fact: it seems that Joey and Kip might have common relations from Cullman, Alabama.)

The second reason is that I have some credits as Jenn/Jennifer Lee that I want
traceable. Okay, probably the most precious one to me is the acknowledgement in Understanding Comics. (Still not exactly sure why Scott included me.)

I apologize to all those who have had to say Jenn Manley Lee out loud as it doesn‘t roll trippingly off the tongue. And I hope you will be understanding when I ask for the removal of the hyphen.

Same old, same old

Events in my own day-to-day life as well those of the world at large often
support the idea of of a never-ending story cycle. Or, history repeating itself.
I mean, beyond the deja vu of a President Bush wanting to waltz into Iraq for
some flimsy reasons in his mid-term. I mean, there’s also the censoring
of inciteful speech and the current affrimative action shuffle addressed by
Atrios
(found via Kip).

Example: a great new technology that promised to change the way we communicate
and experience the world that caused a frenzy of investment. The dotcom boom
of the 1990s or the Telegraph boom of 1860s? And take a look at this
timeline—scroll down to 1872. Now, does the Credit Mobiler scandal
remind you of any somewhat recent headlines?

I often troll Periodicals
Paradise, which sells used magazines and books, for entertainment and research.
Beyond having about every National Geographic you could ever want, they
have an impressive collection of Life. Someday, I am going to go and
buy every one that talks of this or that Wall Street crash based around the
rise and fall of some new technology.

And this era hardly has a monopoly in horrendous crimes and murder. Please. Reading
Stewart Holbrook and other sources has made clear that we have forgotten more
tragedy than we could we ever create. I seriously doubt that there are proportionally
any more murders now than at any time in history—we just have convienent
websites deicated to serial murders and 24/7 news coverage coast-to-coast (and
the gross fact that death sells). Take a good look at political advancement
in classical Rome. Or at the number of people gunned down by John
Wesley Hardin beginning when he was 15 years of age—without the inspiration
of video games.

I of course despair at our lack of long-term memory, but also can experience extreme amusement when someone decries “there has never been anything like this before.” The names might have changed along with daily costume, but, yeah there has. It might not be the same exact catalyst and the ramifications might be different, but the impact is similar.

I’m not urging complacency or surrender to fate—far, far from it.
The struggle insures the cycle can continue as well as further social progress.
I worry when people take refuge in the specialness of their situation, setting
themselves apart from the rest of humanity. To claim that no one has ever experienced
or could experience your pain, to deny another way of life is as worthwhile
as your own or thinking that “for the grace of God go I” means “God
likes me best” can lead to a blindness and a lack of compassion that starts
the worst part of the cycle all over again.