So no, this isn’t exactly deep insight from me, but it’s something I’ve had to come to terms with over the past few months. I have traditionally been a very politically-minded person, because I feel it is the duty of every American to be informed about what their government is doing and what direction it’s headed in. I am socially liberal, fiscally conservative, pro-death penalty, pro-choice (with certain limits), and believe deeply in the separation of state and religion. I tend to vote Democratic, but have also voted for Republicans and third party candidates in the past. I try to choose people who I think best represent what I believe America should be.

However, as it was with the South Park episode “Douche and Turd,” ultimately we must all decide between a giant douche and a turd sandwich, our vote wasted on something we don’t want one way or the other.

"Douche and Turd" South Park season 8.

The reason is that our leaders have lost sight of who they are and what the hell they are doing. They are meant to be public servants, our duly appointed representatives, but instead they have ended up more like a new generation of lords, with the only difference being that every few years they have to jump up, pander, and lie to the voting public to hold onto their lordly power. In the end all these politicians, regardless of party, end up the same: Power-hungry, ethically-disabled, morally bankrupt, greedy, two-faced scumbags. None of them really do the work of the people; they simply work for themselves to keep their cushy lifestyles in place. The few idealists who try to do the good work, fight the good fight, are either ground down and broken or perverted and end up becoming a part of the problem in the end. Our leaders owe more to the special interests of corporations and lobbying groups than they do to their people, and it has blinded them to the degree that I cannot see this system of government ever recovering.

And the cherry on top of this turd sundae for me was the brainless drivel that poured forth from the mouth of Representative Joe Barton (R-Texas) during the BP chew-out, when he apologized to BP for the government’s attempted shakedown of their precious company.

"Damn those dirty, rotten congressmen, making BP pay for their screw up!

I sat in dumbfounded shock when I heard this and swore that I had to have heard it wrong. Nope, I didn’t. He actually apologized to the incompetent oil company who potentially ruined the Gulf of Mexico’s ecosystem for the next generation or two and all the many coastal-based businesses that depend on it, for the government’s audacity at demanding that they foot the bill to fix their mess and to aid the people they harmed.

Who else is supposed to foot the bill, you half-witted moron? Us? Sorry, we’re already tapped our from bailing out the entire American banking system that almost dragged us down into a full-blown depression because they were cheating hundreds of thousands of their customers in the most naked and ethically devoid cash-grab in American history. Oh, and then bailing our the car companies, who were too behind-the-times to find out that most people don’t want to keep sucking down fuel like it’s going out of fashion and would like some more environmentally, and bank account friendly, vehicles. Ya know, so we don’t have to be the Middle East’s bitch forever. And worse yet, the Republicans are letting this ninny-brained fossil keep his god-damned post as the leading Republican on the Energy and Commerce Committee! And as Politico reported, John Boehner was reported as saying “Joe has done the right thing by apologizing — it’s time to move on,” to his fellows during a closed meeting concerning Barton.

No, it is not time to move on! You can’t just say “oops, my bad” for something like this. How can these people get away with just apologizing their way out of stuff like this? This is what mystifies me about our leaders, the same way that Democratic Representative Bob Etheridge assaulted a person on camera, grabbing the boy by the wrist and then by the neck while yelling “Who are you! Who sent you” like a nut-bag. Reports say the kids were planted to aggravate him, but I cannot say, but no matter what, you can’t just grab someone like that and get away with it. It’s called simple assault, and it is a misdemeanor, but Bobby got away with it so far by saying “he was sorry.” Oh, well, that makes it all better, doesn’t it?

I’m still waiting for this change I can believe in, too, but even if President Obama has the best intentions in the world and a possible plan to execute, how can it ever see the light of day when our leaders are more concerned with serving their own interests than in protecting ours? I’m pretty patient in all, I know none of our issues are going to be fixed in a year, or even two, but nothing so far that I have seen is giving me the faintest glimmer of hope that it is getting better. Stocks are up? Whoopdie-do, unless you have a retirement plan that rides on the market or have enough money to buy and sell stocks seriously it doesn’t really matter what the ass heads on Wall Street do. The average Joe and Jane are still struggling to make it by, find decent work, or keep their families fed. I know I’ve been living on the razor’s edge for a while now, coming into this economy with a degree that would be most useful in fields that are presently weak or dying, competing for entry-level positions against more experienced people because they, too, are looking to get whatever they can. I still don’t have health insurance, and I’m not overly confident with this new plan that is (very slowly) going into the works. And then I watch our idiot leaders fumble about in Washington, and see BP’s spokestard Tony

"Hello, my name is Tony Hayward, and I am a complete twat."

Hayward getting away from all the stress of being a complete and utter git by going out and racing his yacht. Tut tut tut. Sure, he’s handed the reins over now, but to what end? Damage is done, and now all they can do is stumble along and try to fix their mess.

It’s something Hunter S. Thompson saw over thirty eight years ago, when he watched the disintegration of the 1972 Presidential election, and how in the end one party was willing to sacrifice their chance at the Presidency due to internal politics, with the promise of being handed power in 76’, regardless of what was good for the nation. Finks, liars, and criminals all, occasionally trading power back and forth while ignoring their true jobs as our representatives. But, we keep electing them. Why? Because our choices are vanilla and chocolate, democrat and republican, giant douche and turd sandwich. Groups like the Tea Party arise out of a mutual sense of anger towards what’s going on, but lack the focus, power, and broad appeal to ever do anything more than act as spoilers for one party or the other. These third parties tend to be focused on one aspect of government, fail in every other area, and are so radicalized that the average person who just wants to be left the hell alone won’t vote for them. What else can we do though? America is so afraid of anything that smells of… socialism (oh noez, run!), and we don’t want nationalism, but what can we do? The problem is, we can’t do anything short of rounding up all our present leaders and kicking them to

WWCD?

the curb and trying again from the ground up. America needs a personality change, because most people are so disenchanted with government that they simply do not vote, and no amount of sweet words will easily lure them back and keep them interested enough to continue to care. The disconnect between our leaders and the people is so great that there is no feasible way as I see it to bridge the differences. But things will just keep getting worse if we don’t vote, because the fanatics will always vote, and we do note want our fates decided by fanatics. Thomas Jefferson said that “a little rebellion now and again is a good thing.” Short of that, I’m not sure what else can be done, but all I know is that I cannot bring myself to care as much about something I so believed in anymore.

In the end, unless anything amazing happens, I guess I’ll just vote for Cthulu in 2012. After all, if I can’t have the nation I truly want, why settle for the lesser evil? Ftaghn!

That change has come.

I’m proud to announce that mispeled.net is no longer the showcase for the work of just one guy. Instead, mispeled.net is a now collective of creative people. Don’t worry, I vouch for them (except for Jeeves. I don’t know how the hell she got involved in this thing).

I’m pleased to introduce these awesome contributors to mispeled.net. I’ll let them introduce themselves:

Angela Sels – Once a precocious creator of art, Ms. Sels then discovered such websites as YouTube, Failblog, and I Can Has Cheeseburger. Since then, it has been a life of lethargy and procrastination with occasional bouts of creative energy. She currently lives and works in Des Moines.

Erin Nelsen – Erin Nelsen writes and edits. She dislikes autobiography.

Elric James Collvill – Elric James Colvill is a writer, historian, literary scholar, and an unabashed, lifelong geek. Graduating from ISU in December 2009 with a Master’s Degree in English, Elric has been feeling the love of the recession and is currently cobbling together a living however he can while he pursues his writing career. Presently he is re-editing his first novel, Weird Wyrd, until he feels it is acceptable enough for publication (which is difficult since he never actually feels anything is good enough, but he’ll just have to get over it). Also, he is working as the lead editor for a role-playing game system in development through one of his colleagues, to be released sometime next year if luck holds out. Elric published his Master’s thesis, Fear and Loathing in American Literature: Freedom, the American Dream, and Hunter S. Thompson and performed copy editing work for a scholarly treatment of James Fenimore Cooper’s The Autobiography of a Pocket Handkerchief (sounds bloody exciting, doesn’t it?) in cooperation with senior editor and project leader, Dr. Matthew Wynn Sivils, in 2009. Elric’s main areas of writing interest lie in science-fiction and fantasy, both humorous and dramatic.

Joe Bergeron -_joe is a private fellow, but he has some junk he’d like to share with people. He codes and is generally passionate about creating interesting tools that aid creative people.

Tyler Niska – Tyler Niska serves as keytarist and founding member of progressive gregorian funk band “Bishop’s Porridge.” He has been frequently mistaken for the Northern Lights. Though he is a convicted arsonist, his voting rights were restored after a controversial 4-3 state supreme court decision ruled he was mentally unaccountable for his actions. He plans to vote for “lizard people” in 2012. The circumference of his mouth is rumored to be 10 inches but actually measures closer to 9 1/4.

Jeeves Fuzzenstein – Jeeves G. Fuzzenstein is an anthropologist/ connoisseur/ hunter/ writer currently conducting studies in her hometown. She started a facebook page in 2008 to gain credibility as a sentient being and a blog in 2009 to gain credibility as a writer. She has an uncanny and unbiased view of humans that is rarely seen in writers. It’s been a rocky road to the relatively tame life she currently lives in her downtown loft. In her unpublished autobiography, A Million Little Nips, Fuzzenstein documents all too clearly the dark sides of c-nip addiction, a growing problem among American felines. Unlike many others, she struggled free of this dark abyss and is now able to share her partially fabricated and plagiarized story with others. Fuzzenstein’s decision to share her knowledge with the world has given her intense feelings of entitlement, leading her to expect great amounts of fame, money, and respect from those around her.

I’m proud to have them here and excited about all the opportunities this brings for the people who read this site. It’s an exciting time for mispeled.net. Please bear with us in the coming days as the site is updated.

Thanks for your support!
-luke t. bergeron (mispeled)

While working on these things I’ve skipped social engagements, time spent with friends, and other fun things that I’d like to do. Most of my friends are creative people, but I’ve realized that the reason I get stuff out the door and they never seem to finish, is because I’m at home working while they are out having fun. When I do go out with them and we end up talking about projects, the sentiments they always express are things like, “I just don’t have the time to work projects as much as I’d like to.”

Well, neither do I. But the difference between me and them is that I can say it with a straight face, because I work my goddamn ass off to ship.

I’ve always been a huge proponent of free content, because I feel like it enriches the world. And I’ve given tons of things away for free while I was learning and getting better. But I’ve always known in the back of my mind that this day would come. While working on Tune and s.k. I’ve realized that these are the best things I’ve ever created. And I just can’t give them away for free. I’m my own worst critic – some of the things I’ve written I gave away for free because I knew in the back of my mind that they weren’t good enough to ask people to pay for them. But Tune and s.k. are good – they approach professional caliber work. They are worth more than free. The long hours I spent on them are worth more than free.

Beyond that, there is one other reason that I can no longer afford to give away my stuff for free – student debt. I have tons of it, more than I’d like to admit. I made some dumb choices in college and now I’m paying for them. Student debt is the only debt I have – I own my car and have worked diligently in the past six months to pay off those blood-sucking parasites at the credit card company. But my student debt still hangs over my head like a guillotine. I need to get rid of it. And even though I doubt that I’ll make much from my work, all the time I spend working on projects needs to help release me from this sickness. And debt is a sickness, make no mistake.

I mentioned in a previous post that I thought people should give things away for free if they can afford it. I still believe that. However, as I look down the barrel at years of student debt, I’ve realized that I can no longer afford to give my work away for free. The projects I gave away for free took a long time, but the better I get at writing, the longer things take. It’s reaching for that last 10 percent that doubles the hours. From now on I’ll be charging my work.

Don’t worry – this new stuff is awesome. If I was a reader I would pay for it, and I can say that with a straight face.

Tune (Part 1 of 5): Just a Little Ditty

The main project I’m working on is a comic book, something I’ve never done before, but wanted to do since I was a kid. Now, finally, the pieces are falling together.

About a year ago my brother and I were working on the beginning stages of our second Flash game. (The first game was never released (link), even though my part was done – my brother got a full-time job and had to focus on that. Hopefully, someday, he’ll finish it and I can show it to you.) The second game never made it very far past the initial planning and design stages – it was an overly ambitious project for two people – a fully animated game with five different chapters. I wrote the general story outline for all five chapters and the full script for the first.

However, things fell apart when my brother (Jay, if you’re reading this – it’s cool, man, I understand) and the script for the game just sat on my hard drive until recently. I’ve been reading a lot of comic books lately and I realized that the script was a good fit for a comic: it had snappy dialogue, an interesting backstory and plot, and the general scene description was already there because we intended to make cutscenes and scripted sequences.

So, after adapting the script (taking out the player choices, beefing up the story and removing some scenes that were player driven), I laid out the panels and text with In Design to get a feel for how the thing would look. That part is all done now. The next step is to create the art in Illustrator and slip it into the panels. I’m not an artist by any means, but I’m serviceable in Illustrator.

Still, it will probably take awhile: the comic has thirty two pages with an average of four panels per page (some have more, some have less). I’ve done seven panels so far and that took as many hours. With about 120 panels left to go I’m looking at about a solid month of work if I can manage four hours a day spent on artwork. It’s more likely that it’ll take me more than a month. But even after seven panels I’m getting better at drawing in illustrator, so that process will probably speed up as I go along and refine my technique.

If it turns out well and people like it, I may end up doing all five parts as comics, depending on how long it takes to do the art. I don’t want to give away the story, but it relates to a family secret and a gang war on the moon. It’s sci-fi. I’ll probably release some more teaser images as the process goes along, because I’m so excited about the project and want to share it with people.

I intend to release it for free on my site as a PDF or CBZ (probably both), but I’ve also looked into printing a few copies for family and friends though comixpress.com. Their rates seem pretty reasonable for printing just a few copies. I’ll also probably put the comic on Scribd and distribute it via bit torrent on Mininova.

Tune is gonna be awesome. I can’t wait to finish it and get it out to you. I seriously can’t contain my excitement – I’m practically vibrating with it. Or maybe that’s just caffeine. Time will tell.

s.k.

The second project I’m working on is a novel. This novel is unrelated and completely different from Disappearances.

This book is a first person account written by an unrepentant serial killer as awaits lethal injection on death row. The killer’s name is Simon Kassidy. His narrative relates the story of his killings and is periodically interrupted by an editor who comments on the killer’s account. The editor is a fictional version of me: a version of me who lobbied the courts to get Simon’s story released, a version of me who slowly cracks under the strain of editing Kassidy’s coldly logical madness, a version of me that is darkly exciting to write.

The novel is coming along – I’m sitting at 55k words and 20 chapters right now. It feels a little over halfway done and is the best piece of writing I’ve done to date. The book is tentatively titled s.k. after the main character, Simon Kassidy, but that might just be a project name in my head that gets changed later. My intention with this project is to try again, at least for awhile, with the agent/query nonsense or maybe send it to a small publisher. I haven’t decided yet. Either way, I will probably also release the book on my site for free.

This book is turning out great – it overcomes all the failings of my previous novel – the plot is quickly paced and more focused. The writing is tighter, with some snappy prose in places that I’m really proud of. But most importantly, this is a book that doesn’t let anything get in the way of a good story. All the “personal lessons” nonsense that I needed to write into Disappearances isn’t there – its story first, “big” ideas second. Plus, it’s sexy as fuck. It’s gonna rock.
Thanks for reading!

-m.

P.S. Look for a new short story, Madeleine’s Children, to be released here in the next few days. It’s a sci-fi story about a scientist who clones his wife’s DNA to create super soldiers. His wife, of course, is livid. That sounds a little cheesy (all sci-fi summaries do!), but it’s really kick-ass – shiver-inducing, heart-wrenching, and quietly desperate. The cover/teaser image will also give you a taste of the art style I’m refining for Tune. Look forward to it!

No, it wasn’t those things at all, but still, as my eyes scrolled over his words, I couldn’t help but smile. All I was sure of was that his writing ability had little to do with my good mood as I read. Sure, it’d been a good day – I was full of a good meal, brimming with desert and caffeine, but that couldn’t be the total picture.

Then I realized – it was the first time I’d read any work of literary criticism since my graduation from my English MA program some nine months earlier. But that alone wasn’t the whole story. During my time spent studying literature and creative writing, the five years spent toward a BA and MA in English, I’d encountered and read many volumes and articles of literary criticism. And through I’d been impressed by many of them on a purely intellectual level, respected the brilliant minds that created them and hatched their concepts and formulated their impervious sentences, I didn’t enjoy a one of them, not one bit.

What then, made this Lewis book different? I was sure, even as I stared at the cover on the nearby table, that it had nothing to do with Lewis’s ideas, interesting though they were. The simple fact of it was that I was enjoying the book above and beyond the intellectual flirtation his ideas provided me.

After a few minutes wandering aimlessly around my living room, unsettling the cat from her perch in the fur-covered papasan chair, I began to understand that my enjoyment of the book stemmed from my motivation for reading it. I was reading it on the recommendation of a friend, an old man who runs the local used book shop. His bookspertise was such that I’d gone to consult with him for recommendations, to ask him for similar stories like the novel I am writing. I have specific ideas about the function of stories and literature, and after a two-hour conversation about those very topics, he asked me if I’d ever read Lewis’s critical work.

I hadn’t known it existed, up until that moment. He quickly found a musty old copy in the backroom and let me have it for a bargain at fifty cents. “No one else would even pay that much for it, smelling like it does,” he told me. I left it in the early summer sunlight for two days next to a glass jar of sun tea, and that cleared up the smell, leaving me with a serviceable, if stained, copy.

I was eager to read it, simply from his descriptions, but it was another three days before I got around to it, the business of daily life being what it is. When I finally approached the book, late last evening, I paused again, this time to trod down this line of reasoning, finally arriving to loom over the cat on the papasan chair, considering my motivations.

It seems to me that the reason I’ve enjoyed reading the book so much, is because it was useful to me. It directly pertained to what I was writing, and therefore, what I was doing with my daily life, that is, considering a novel and typing it out as the story developed. Lewis’s book, which contains ideas about how literature should be considered, was a timely and fortunate find.

A cup of coffee and a snack later, I was back on my couch, this time deep in thought.  I’d read many books in college that were useful to me, and some that were timely. A select few had even touched me in the way that Lewis’s had, but none inspired the sense of, dare I use such strong a term, joy, in me. But why?

I’m loathe to simply relay to you, as you sit there reading this essay, a simple string of my realizations, but the fiction writer in me must maintain a sense of flow and I confess that a string of realizations is the best way I know how to do that. I’ve never been a great scholarly or academic writer, so please bear with me: I’ve some things to say. The consideration of Lewis’s book created in me a wave of crystallization much in the way that Robert Pirsig describes in his book, Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance, it begins as an idea seed in an uncrystallized solution and from that idea seed a whole crystal seems to grow.

For a long time I’ve had a beaker, if you will allow me to continue with this ham-handed metaphor, of ideas about education, higher education specifically, and the experience reading the Lewis book provided the crystallization for me. Here, for your consideration, were the ideas floating in the beaker, in no particular order:

1. Recently my mother went back to university to finish the four year accounting degree she began three decades earlier. She chose to do this for the simple reason that in today’s job market, twenty-five years of accounting experience wasn’t enough for advancement when all she had was her associates. So she’s returned to school, not to take accounting classes, because those requirements are mostly fulfilled, with the exception of a few classes to become updated, but general education. Currently she’s taking Earth Science. Before that, Film Appreciation. All so she can complete her accounting degree and get a better accounting job.
2. I have, from five years of education, a decent amount of student loan debt that I’m having trouble paying off, despite the nonexistent salary my unpublished novelist career is paying me (ha, ha, my professors did warn me, after all, I can’t blame them completely). The wages from my day job as a technical writer for a small computer networking company are adequate, but it’s hard to make payments each month to a nameless loan company when I receive little day to day benefits of those payments except keeping credit agencies at bay.
3. When earning my MA I taught freshman composition for two years. My students thought every assignment I gave them was useless and dull, and though I assigned projects and papers anyhow, I agreed with them that what I was teaching them was useless and dull, though probably not for the same reasons. But I had no control over the scope of the curriculum. It was handed down to me from on high.

It was with these three concepts in mind that a consideration of Lewis’ work began the wave of crystallization in me. Beware: this is probably a polemic, I make no attempt to defend the reverse side of my ideas, but what I have to say is necessary all the same.

The formal education system in this country is vastly out of balance. In my own discipline, English, thousands more people are allowed to receive degrees than the market can support. Many of my graduate colleagues left school in hopes of finding a job within their discipline, as teachers, editors, or copywriters. But unfortunately, the face of the written language is changing. Multi-media, film, the web, even new forms of text like Twitter are changing the face of how we communicate. Our schools are vastly behind the times, graduating students without the proper tools to integrate themselves into the modern pace of business.

As technology advances the way humans communicate is changing. No longer can struggling writers attempt to support themselves in the dying print market. The old masters were all able to support themselves while working on novels through a steady stream of magazine short-story publishing. Even some of the recent writers, like Stephen King, got started this way. But even by the time he began his career the publishing world had changed enough, was already dying its slow death, and he had to support himself by teaching until he made his sweepstake-winning break.

But it’s not just publishing, or communication, that’s changed by technology. It’s our science, our trades, and everything else. The age old Greek idea (as well as medieval and renaissance) of a well rounded, university education is sadly outdated. The level of specialization required to receive a degree in a modern scientific field is such that all four years could be spent learning a discipline, and our scientists and engineers would be better for it.

If all four years are not required, then all the extra education, in drama, in geology (that easy freshman class that all students take, affectionately referred to in uncouth circles as, “rocks for jocks”), in speech communication, in film appreciation, and all the other bogus classes needed to receive a “well-rounded” university education simply serve to detain students for four years, when two would do, and increase their student debt.

Now, I’m not arguing that drama or film appreciation are not noble or useful pursuits. Simply put, however, are they necessary for a university education? What modern student doesn’t understand film? Our lives are a multimedia existence. Modern students no more need film than they need classes explaining to them how to use their cell phones, or, to beat a straw horse, how to walk on two feet. In fact, modern students could probably teach academics a thing or two, because, as has become painfully obvious, academics, especially in the humanities, are sadly behind the times.

I was allowed to graduate with two degrees in English without any instruction on how the modern business world uses English and communication. I needed HTML, javascript, layout and design instruction, copy-editing, advertisement classes, and any number of other skills I had to teach myself after I realized I needed them to perform the job I was hired to do. Perhaps I picked the wrong pursuit, but I was young and I sorely needed guidance that was not given.

Now, I have no patience for curmudgeonly whiners who present problems without suggesting solutions, so I mean to present some.

Our education system needs to be based on the realistic needs of modern students, students who need real world skills. Contemplating art, and I say this as a novelist and an artist, has no place in the modern college system when so much is riding on that degree. It’s too expensive to spend time contemplating the moon.

Forcing students to learn things they have no interest in, and saddling them with vast amounts of debt for the privilege, is, frankly, bullshit. It’s an outdated system that needs to be changed. I mentioned at the beginning of this essay that recently I read a book of literary criticism. I read it for fun, but also because I needed it. It was applicable to me. Any success that I’ve had in any area has always been won on self-taught sweat, teaching myself the skills that I needed to know because they weren’t taught to me by my supposed educators.

This must change.

Universities need to come down from their ivory towers and talk to modern, fast-paced businesses. They need to ask companies what they want in an English major, a history major, even a computer science major. They need to teach students the skills employers want. They need to institute mandatory internship programs so students gain experience and see the immediate value of the skills they are being taught in the classroom. Schools need to stop trying to dictate how things should be run, and start examining how things are run.

These are the principles that I’ve learned, as a lifetime learner, an employee, and during my two year stint as a teacher while earning my master’s degree:

1. Immediate need dictates desire to learn. If a student needs to know something for a project or an aspect of her job, she will learn it.
2. The converse of point one is also true. Without an applicable need or interest, students will not learn.
3. Universities need to do a better job of preparing students for the real world by listening, not by trying to dictate the terms. Employers want skills, not theory. Theory comes from experience with the material, not the other way around. Employers want experience. Mandatory internships, arranged by the university, are necessary.

The formal education system in this country needs to be reformed. The above steps need to be taken. Classes need to focus on what students need to perform their jobs and the information they are taught needs to be directly applicable.

Art, culture, and the other aspects that make a life worth living need to be left to personal pursuits. I say this without blanching, even as an art lover, because I know that unless a student wants to learn about those things, instruction in those disciplines is useless. It doesn’t get past the media haze unless students reach out for those things themselves, and no instruction by stodgy old men and women out of touch with the modern world is going to encourage that desire. It can only come from inside, or because students feel it’s needed.

It’s time to reform. Otherwise, I stand by the statement boldly proclaimed as the title of this essay: Formal education is bunk.

After playing with it for a few days, I have some thoughts about it. This isn’t a review by any means. There are so many reviews for the iPhone that another would be a waste of space, every if the virtual space is near limitless.

No, this is something else.

First, I’d like to explain a little about myself. I’ve always been something of a loner. Not a Columbine, Virgina Tech sort of loner, mind you, but the stigma of the word loner carries with those negative ideas in the cultural ethos. No, it’s more that my favorite activities are inherently solitary ones: writing, reading, playing single player video games, thinking alone, and other things like that. Those types of things are hard to build a community around, except in specialized cases, and the circles I now find myself in on a regular basis are not specialized.

In fact, I almost wonder if it’s something in my genes. When I was very young, I sat with my grandfather by a campfire. He has a small cabin up on the shores of a lake in Maine’s wilderness, and my family would go up there to spend time my grandfather and grandmother during the summers. Once, fireside, my grandfather was joking with my father, and he said, “Danny, I don’t have any friends and I’ve never wanted any. The closet thing I have to friends is a list of enemies, and my wife is at the top of that list.”

The slight against my grandmother (whom I love very dearly) aside, I knew what he meant. My grandfather is a man for whom being alone, solitary, is the ultimate state of being, either because he didn’t like the company of others (or others couldn’t stand his company, which is possible), or because of how he liked to spend his time: hunting fishing, camping, hiking, riding, in short, solitary pursuits.

I didn’t understand his sentiment then, but as I grow older, I begin to appreciate it more. My father is like his father, and I am the same. I enjoy my solitary pursuits. It makes personal relationships difficult.

Thus, it’s with that background that I received the iPhone, a device focused on connections. Of course, I’d had cell phones before, but never something with so many connections: telephone, SMS messaging, instant messaging, email, internet, and a multitude of other connections, depending on the installed applications.

When I first started playing with the device, I was a bit disappointed that it doesn’t allow applications to run in the background, that is, aside from email, SMS, and phone capibilites. I wanted to be able to receive instant messages all the time on my phone, but without the IM client being actively open on the phone, that was not possible. That bothered me. Of course, I’ve heard there is a new firmware for the phone coming soon that might allow an application (such as IM) to run in the background, but currently that’s not possible.

Searching through my feelings, I wondered why I was so disappointed. I mean, instant messaging programs are running on my computers (desktop, laptop, and work desktop) and I rarely pay attention to them. The same 5 tired contacts have been hanging around in my AIM list since the late 90’s, and my personal gmail account is barely better. Facebook has a chat built into it that can be accessed through their website, the iPhone, or various plugins for IM clients like Pidgin, but the majority of my facebook “friends” are simply people I have no interesting in maintaining “instant” communication with, if I am interested in maintaining any relationship at all.

So why was I disappointed that this phone didn’t have the connective capabilities that I had hope for? I don’t understand it. I didn’t really need more connection. I barely utilize the current capabilities of the networks I use now. I don’t like answering my phone; IM’s are usually interruptions that annoy me. Email is alright, I guess, though not many people use it anymore. It’s not instant, and that’s why I like it and most people don’t.

Still, I really enjoy many aspects of having a mini-computer in my pocket. Web access, maps, and things like that have already proved themselves valuable to me. I love information, reading, and data access, so that part is great.

But the strange thing about having more connection to my rarely used social network is that all I feel is less connected. Having all those communication options in my pocket is a stark reminder of how little connection I really have with other people. With the iPhone in my pocket I get to be sure that no one is messaging me and I’m not messaging anyone else.

So why am I disappointed that the phone doesn’t have as much connection as I was hoping? I don’t know, but I have a few guesses.

What I’m really excited about with the phone is the blurring of the line between the physical and the virtual world. The iPhone knows where I am in physical space (which would frighten my grandfather for privacy reasons, but doesn’t really bother me) and with it in my pocket I have a constant connection to the virtual space where I feel more at home. In the virtual space

I am a not comfortable in the physical space as much as I am in the virtual. In the virtual I am a disembodied voice, a weaving figure on a webcam, a few quick paragraphs on a forum post, an unread blogger, a guy who for some reasons uses Lando Calrissian for almost all his online avatars, but those things are all my creations, to be changed at my whim into something different.

In the physical world I am a 5’7” guy with more weight than he wants (even if I’m the only one who notices), who doesn’t know how to dress well (and doesn’t really care), drives a crappy car (it’s junk, but it’s paid for), goes to work, and spends most of his time sitting in front of various screens. My voice doesn’t project as far as I’d like, I don’t have the drive to work-out as much as I should, and I tend to fidget in social situations because there is always something behind them that I don’t understand, some connection that others feel and I do not, and I’m trying so hard to examine that connection to determine precisely what it is (which is my problem, I think), that I feel disconnected from it. Suffice it to say, there’s so much data flying around in the physical world that I don’t know how to organize it and explain it, and don’t know how to interact with it.

In the virtual, however, I can set my own pace, display myself in the way that I want, because I control all aspects of my virtual self. I don’t have to be too short, or too heavy, or not attractive enough, or worry that I’m fidgeting too much. I am what I say I am.

I construct myself. I am not a loner or a socially awkward person. I am a person designed. I am a creation.

I like to play video games, and although I prefer single player, for a while I played World of Warcraft and found myself as the raid leader for a decent guild. What that means, for the non-gamers out there, was that three times a week I would lead twenty-five people through interactive challenges, wherein each person had his own role, and I would coordinate (with the help of a few others) everyone through the completion of those challenges. That doesn’t sound like much (it’s only a video game) but organizing 25 people without a set power dynamic was difficult.

But it was my virtual self that did this, as conveyed through my game avatar, my forum posts on the guild’s forums, and my voice, as I gave orders over a voice-chat program called Ventrilo.

Thinking about it the differences between my virtual self and my physical one, I’ve come to realize that the iPhone disappointed me because it didn’t provide me with as much connection to my virtual self as I wanted.

I yearn for a blending of the two spheres, a melding of the two selves – physical and virtual. I enjoy that certain applications on the iPhone provide a small amount of this – when I am downtown and looking for a place to eat, I can fire up an application that will track where I am and provide me with a map of places close to me, as well as reviews and prices. That virtual overlay over the physical world is the kind of thing I’m looking for, but it’s a far cry from what I’d actually like it to be.

Perhaps I was a bit naïve to hope for more from just a simple phone. But still, it disappointed me. The physicality of the phone itself still provides a physical connection to the virtual sphere, and I wish it was more seamless. Without the device, I am lost, and I hate carrying things in my pocket. Each time I pull it out to look something up, I feel like the utility it provides is undermined by the feeling that I have using it – that I’m showing it off, or it’s not actually vital to me. I don’t like that.

Maybe, it sounds like science fiction, and I’m sure many would disagree with me for the sake of natural purity, but I want technology directly integrated with my body. I want inserts in my eyes, or an upgrade to my contacts. The corrective lenses I currently wear should draw information upon the air that only I can see.

I want a wireless connection in my hip, storage space in my finger. A GPS unit hidden in the small of my back. And a hundred other devices inserted into my body that allow me to interface with my virtual self.

I want to be able to walk down the street with an HUD overlay that displays relevant information – maps, contacts, a film I’m watching as I appear to stare off into space on the subway.

I want to be able to use my eyes to record information like a video camera, my ears to record sounds. I want to be able to take pictures with my eyes via a vocal or mental command and upload those videos and pictures up to the web.

I want to be able to listen to music via an implant directly wired to the auditory receptors in my brain, without headphones or any ambient noise heard by those around me.

I want to be able to maintain constant contact with the friends of my virtual self, have him looming over my physical self as a constructed and powerful being of my own design, repairing the shortcomings of the physical.

I want all these devices in my body powered by the food that I eat, so I could consume a few extra hundred calories a day and feed my virtual self by way of the physical.

Maybe all this sounds insane. I’m sure that there are people who would be purists, not want so much technology built into their own body. But I know there are others who feel the same as me.

I understand this type of technology is years and years away. It’ probable that I won’t see it in my lifetime, and even if I did, it would be prohibitively expensive. But the strange thing is: the iPhone is the first glimmer of it, even seen far away in the distance.

But it’s only a glimmer, serving to remind me of what I wish it were. That’s why it disappoints me.

I am a person split between two worlds. I want them drawn together.

For right now, though, I’d settle for being able to run applications in the background.