Into the Future very slowly

I haven't done an installment of "Into the Future" in a while. That doesn't mean I'm going to do an installment now, though. I'm just noticing, and thought I'd point it out to myself. I've soured a bit on the whole computer programming thing, because it's taking longer than I thought. I read all these stories on the internet about old people my age learning programming in one year, but I'm not even close to really getting even one basic language.  I originally envisioned, when I began the project, that by this time I'd be programming my raspberry pi to send security feed from my porch GoPro directly to my phone, and sending my drone on search and destroy missions against the neighborhood dogs. I expected my life to look something like this:

My wife relaxing on the couch while our robotic servants await commands. Notice the robot dog, it would have an adjustable bark volume. 

But this beautiful vision has not materialized. I'm still floundering around learning basic PHP:

<?php echo 'hello world, where/'s my goddamned programmable drone?' ?>

Actually not even sure that will work, it usually takes me three or four tries to remember how to do the quotes in the string. One problem with learning style is that I don't do organized lessons very well. Nor have I stuck to learning one language. I kind of do some reading or a tutorial, try something, get some basic few lines of code to work, get overexcited, get a huge idea for a neat application, try to write it, get lazy about the exercises in whatever instructional book or tutorial, fail spectacularly at implementing the big idea, break down, sullenly go back to tutorial, mechanically churn through a few lessons at a listless, once a week pace, think up a reason I should actually be learning some other language, start a new tutorial, forget everything I learned about the other language. And the robots wait for instructions, mute and immobile. 

In this way I've learned a little bit about Visual Basic, C, JavaScript, Python and PHP. And it took all my willpower not to dump PHP to learn Ruby.  And I haven't really done anything interesting with any of them, but I've made some magnificent plans, imagined some really cool applications, with all of them

I've saved the movie industry from themselves, again

We've been watching Stranger Things, the 80's nostalgia sci fi series, and enjoying it even though I feel it signals another milestone in the ongoing contraction of Western civilization. I could not have enjoyed it in the actual 1980s when the movie themes so lovingly restored in Stranger Things regularly enraged and disturbed me whenever I found them, i.e., the repetitive telekinesis trope which I've always disliked, especially in "science fiction". I originally disliked it because I felt it didn't belong in science fiction because I had a young man's idealistic and naive view that there was something intrinsically valuable about maintaining some pure platonic version of a genre, but now I realize I just found telekinesis boring. I find the electrodes on the heads boring and the dumb experiments the phony scientists performed in all the movies on the telekinetic "mutant" person bored me. I mis-attributed my own anger and frustration to a more flattering cause: Righteous concern for scientific truth.  I was just bored. I know it was boredom, because I love another 1980s trope in Stranger Things: Alternate Dimensional Reality, especially an Alternate Reality with spooky resonance to our own, blinking lights, ectoplasmic portals, shadow worlds, I adore that stuff and want more of it, and as a younger man I never made a fuss about how completely nonsensical the science behind the Alternate Reality was. A physicist might groan when they see the Alternate Reality Part of the show, especially when the characters in the show talk about "Alternate Dimension" as a synonym for "Alternate Reality", but I didn't care in the 80s and I don't care now, because it entertains me. 

As a young man in the 80s, I spent more time than I should have trying to fix the telekinesis trope in my mind, by thinking up scientific explanations and rules for the telekinesis. But I think these explanations would not have worked for popular movies; too cerebral and time consuming. So I've come up with an explanation that utilizes my favorite Alternate Reality trope: All humans have an alternate monster self in the alternate reality, some of us have plant-like, relatively motionless monster selves, some have moving monster selves, but everyone's monster self corresponds with their psychic power; mind readers have monster selves with antenna, telekinetic people have monster selves with long tentacles, maybe there are monster selves with the ability to fly, granting the human the power to teleport. 

This would be a very cool movie, and it would certainly spice up the monotonous lab scenes with electrodes and nosebleeds and crushed product placement

I will write the graphic novel, I promise

"The Art Zone": A creepy new web comic!

By changing sides we turn defeat into victory

After careful analysis of the content dominating the Internet I've come to the painful conclusion that print is dead. I first heard about this idea from Ghostbusters and I vigorously disagreed with it (by inner monologue only) even as I generally enjoyed most of the movie...

Most of the movie, not all of it. I disliked enough of the movie to mildly enjoy watching the feminists rip its entrails out online. Ironically the line "print is dead," is delivered by Egon to impress one of the only two female characters in the show (the ghostbusters' secretary, cute and comforting, unlike that Fe-Man Sigourney Weaver). 

Anyway, I have devoted most of my life as a pseudo intellectual  and amateur writer to the idea that the printed word is sacred, so the idea of its death has been emotionally painful for me to resolve, especially as I long held out hope of a career as a writer and book critic. As those career hopes foundered and I became embittered towards mark twain and other fascist American writers, I began to enjoy the schadenfreude of the idea, cackling like a bitter old man on a rickety rocking chair on a dusty porch at every inroad by the illterati; Twitter, Facebook, Doom, Harry Potter, Star Wars, and more seriously, the evisceration of public libraries through diversion of resources to audio visual departments. The fools, I cackle, the fools!

In keeping with this triumphant march against long words and extended paragraphs, I have begun a word purge in my own inner, personal, and electronic lives. We will be veering this blog away from the word thing, instituting a push toward graphic novel type storytelling. This transition will be difficult, necessitating some improvement to my graphic communication skills, but I have set a goal for this blog to be 100% word-free by August 2017. 

Step 1: Pictorial communication. See below. 

Coming attractions on channel hagenart

The blog as TV network idea has gained some traction with the fictional characters whose  conversations comprise my embarrassingly stylized inner world, so I'm swerving toward animated content for this blog. Not full stories of course, I have nowhere near enough time, but gifs. Most people capitalize gif but I'm too lazy. Anyway, here's my first gif, capturing my current work in progress:

I'm hoping to improve these obviously. In keeping with the moving picture theme, I will also be instituting a periodic review of whatever TV shows I watch. Most recently I watched the pilot for "Vice Principals" on HBO. It did not capture my interest, as the producers have already made one of the basic fatal errors; writing an amusingly unlike able side character as protagonist. This only works if you cast a fantastic actor for the part, who can find nice things about the character to communicate. Actors that good are rare, even among talented comic actors. I think the lead of vice principals is good, but in the first episode, he didn't find anything nice about his character for us. He has made an amusing side character, but he needs a straight man main character. The producers furthermore chose to demonstrate this shortcoming through what they probably thought was a slick marketing coup, getting Bill Murray to appear for two scenes and in previews. The opening scene with Murray made me laugh because he understands so thoroughly how to play a sympathetic straight man. I laughed at the two other characters because Murray laid the groundwork for the scene by communicating a sense of longstanding weariness and irritation with the vice principals. He makes the viewer believe they are witnessing something real, and the arguing becomes funny. In the rest of the episode, without Murray's straight man take to make the bickering vice principals real, their words have no life and I did not find them funny. The show needs a straight person, and so far they haven't found one. 

It seems to me that there is a lesson here that I could apply to my own life, but I don't know it. That might be a good feature of these reviews, kind of a homey Sunday school type vibe where I apply the teachings and become a better person. Or maybe not finding the moral is the lesson

Injecting Vampiric Life in a Dying Series

If I ran this blog as a TV network, and I do, I would run the next installment/episode of "The Incredible Lightness of My College Experience" as a two-hour special, where the plot would turn into a bad vampire story halfway through, similarly to "From Dusk to Dawn".   I got the idea for this from "From Dusk to Dawn" of course, but also from a dream I had while sleeping at one of the creepy cubicles in the basement of the Marriott library where I sometimes had to go on busy days when all the nice upper floor study cubicles with a view were taken and I just needed a place to sleep. The similarity in layout of the floors of the Marriott fascinated me, especially the repetitive layout of study desks on each floor, but the basement desks seemed a little dustier and more cheaply made, their placement seemed subtly more haphazard, and the feng shui of the area felt oh so slightly off, just enough that no one wanted to use the desks in the basement, even to sleep, even though it was noticeably quieter. I went to the basement often during busy days, but never ended up staying long, except for this one time, when I felt tired enough to sleep there, in a study cube in a far corner of the map department. 

I dreamt that a pale and icy skinned vampire woman, walking on a broken foot like a zombie, walked over to my desk and bit my neck. Then I was on the library pay phone, berating someone who was somehow responsible for the vampire attack. Waking up after, drooling and disturbed, I reflected that the dream would make an interesting vampire movie, where two students come across a thesis paper about satanic scripts, and end up summoning a recently deceased girl who pursues them as a vampire. 

They argue over how to destroy the vampire as one of them is Catholic and the other is Mormon. They try a crucifix on her and it fails, and she attacks the Mormon again.  The Catholic is stricken and feels guilty as his study partner is dying in the hospital. He tells his family and his priest that their belief is a lie. They try a Book of Mormon on the vampire, but this fails too, and the Catholic is attacked this time.  The Mormon denounces his own family's religion. 

The Catholic's family priest, in a crisis of faith, seeks out the man who wrote the original thesis, a mysterious old man who lives on Antelope Island. He tells them that the vampires can only be destroyed by the icons of their own religion, so they must research the vampire woman's life. 

They discover that in life, she was Jewish. But, the crazy old man on the island says, the icons must be held by a true believer to kill the vampire. The priest resolves to find a good rabbi. 

Meanwhile the Mormon dies. The Catholic is terrified, certain that his friend will come after him as a vampire. "He's mad at me anyway".   He sends the priest to request that his friends body be cremated. The boy's family refuse him, referring to him as "that creepy Catholic."  The priest tells the boy he will go and kill both vampires before night falls. He meets the rabbi at the airport. They drive to Antelope island and find the crazy old man, holding a rifle and a triple combination. The priest passes out wooden stakes. They discuss their plans in a war council, where it turns out that all three are martial artists and highly trained weapons specialists.

 On their way to the cemetery, just to break the tension, they encounter a series of situations that resemble the plot to several "priest, rabbi, and Mormon" jokes. Then they find the family mausoleum of the woman vampire.  When they open her coffin, she is lying still, but she screeches horribly when the rabbi begins singing in Hebrew from a scroll. He lights a menorah, and at each lighting of the candle a graphic flaming Hebrew symbol appears on the howling vampire's forehead. Then the rabbi draws an Izmel and the other two draw their stakes, and they stab the writhing vampire in an incredibly graphic scene with sheets of black blood and green ectoplasm spraying everywhere. The vampire grotesquely degenerates into a skeleton.  

"She is at peace," the rabbi says. They leave the mausoleum and drive straight to the morgue where the Mormon student's body is located. At the sight of the vampire hunters, the staff call the police, but the priest and rabbi draw pistols and they advance to the big cabinet with the long slabs behind drawers like you see in movies. They find a mortuary staff person with a stack of file tabs with peoples' names on them. He says he's re-doing the tabs. They start pulling out the drawers to find the Mormon student, tension growing. Finally two cops burst into the room. The rabbi goes into karate mode and takes them out, but he gets shot and dies dramatically in the priest's arms. The other two frantically open drawers until they only have one left. Awful pause. The priest tells the Mormon to ready his triple combination and stake. But the Mormon confesses that he lost his faith while they killed the Jewish vampire. He says he is Jewish now, and won't be able to wield the Mormon icons. At this point the young clerk with the file tabs speaks up and bears his testimony. The priest grabs the triple combination and throws it to the boy, whose name is Trey Parker. The priest slides out the drawer to find, the body of an elderly woman. "Where is he?" the priest demands of the clerk, who shakes his head in confusion. 

"I can answer that," says the Mormon, as the door to the room opens and the mortuary staff run in with automatic rifles. As they disarm and handcuff the priest, the crazy old Mormon tells him that the body of the Mormon student is headed to Europe, where he will infect chosen missionaries, who will be unstoppable and will initiate a vampire apocalypse, as it turns out that no Mormon outside the old boundaries of the territory of Deseret is actually a true believer. The vampire plague will rampage through all the world and leave the Mormons of Utah and Idaho untouched and in control of the world. This has all been the master plan of a secret cult within the church, led by himself. He reveals himself as the clonal offspring of both Joseph Smith, Abraham Lincoln, and Martin Bormann.

  As he laughs demonically, the mortuary staff push the priest onto an empty drawer slab. But at that moment the door bursts open and the Catholic student comes in with a group of nuns armed with Uzis. They shoot up the mortuary staff in a firefight, and only the crazy old Mormon is left, holding his hands up in surrender. The student holds a pistol on the old Mormon, who laughs and says they'll never stop the Mormon vampire plague. The student holds up a handwritten piece of notepaper, a last message from his Mormon study partner, indicating he wants a nondenominational funeral, as he has become, an atheist!  The cray old Mormon screams, as the scene switches to an international airport in Brussels or something, where an ominous oblong box slides down the baggage chute to the claim carousel. Waiting at the carousel are a group of Mormon missionaries. The scene slowly swings behind the missionaries, to another group of people, old men with gray ponytails and tie-dye, a few younger people with nose piercings and Charles darwin shirts, all in sandals with tube socks and dumpy, I'll-fitting jeans. They are holding slide-rules and prisms and copies of "Cosmos" and "the God Delusion". They see the box and nod grimly to each other. 

As the closing credits roll, we do an inset advertising my upcoming series: "The Booth", based on my time selling magnets at Festivals.