Geoff asked for my take on this. Well … as someone who knows a little something about imagining the perils of attempting real-life superheroics, I suppose I have somewhat of an educated view. But you guys have no idea just how close I came to vigilantism at one insane point in my life, though it was less about fighting crime and more about fighting hypocrisy … as perceived through my emotionally unstable, 18-year-old eyes. I’ve never told this story before to ANYONE, so consider this a warm-up for my inevitable memoirs, and consider yourself awesomely lucky.

When I was 18, prior to being diagnosed as hypoglycemic, I was renting a room in a house with several strangers who were also doing the same. I had graduated high school, but had no plans for college or much else beyond making music, writing poetry and scraping by with my minimum-wage retail job(s). I wasn’t eating much, living mostly off of coffee, cigarettes and teenage angst.

I had become hugely critical of organized religion, not for any specific reason, other than I felt an abnormally close connection to some greater truth/power, and felt most churches bastardized people’s own relationships with God or whatever by imposing all these man-made rules and guidelines upon their worship. As well — and sorry, church-lovers, this stuff is historically inarguable — organized religion has been responsible for most of the world’s worst wars/slaughters/persecutions, and I guess it really bothered me at the time (years later, I’d revisit the topic in an academic setting, penning a sociological study comparing the Northern Ireland conflicts to other religiously based disputes).

By 18, I had moved from making homemade comics to writing short stories and novellas, or at least starting them. One such story (I seem to recall it being named “Christ the Conqueror,” but that can’t be right, can it?) that never went anywhere was about an anonymous crusader calling for the dismantling of “the church” (no specific one), because it was offensive to the true spirit of Christ or something. In the first scene of the story (if I recall correctly), the protagonist breaks into or somehow defaces a church, escaping just as police arrive, leaving behind as his calling card a letter in rhymed structure announcing his mission statement. I don’t recall where the story was supposed to go from there, but I do know this: I tried to play out the story in real life.

The neighborhood in which I lived at the time was (and still is) densely populated with churches. There had to be at least three different houses of God within a four-block radius from my house. One night, probably driven by chemical imbalance due to my undiagnosed hypoglycemia (I was also often depressed and occasionally suicidal at the time, fun topics we can discuss later!), I hatched a plan to start desecrating these churches, leaving behind poems declaring my own anonymous mission statement (pulled verbatim from those stories), hoping to stir up media attention and possibly a guerrilla movement. I wrote out the letter, careful to wear gloves and not use my normal handwriting, donned all-black clothes, hat and utility bag, and set off into the night to find a church for my first covert mission.

I had planned to be dramatic about it, wrapping the note around a rock and launching it through the glass door of the church. But at the last minute — likely as a combination of fear and good sense gripped me — I reneged on the rock idea, settling for taping the note to the door and calmly walking off. I figured at least it’d get someone’s attention, especially if I started doing it to all the churches in the area. But I never went any further. My bout of late-night madness had passed, and all that was left was my unfinished, handwritten story.

You may be wondering what this has to do with Phoenix Jones and his compatriots taking back their communities in Seattle via bulletproof vests and ski masks. Well, I just wanted to convey that I understand. I get the urge to live out your fantasies of standing up for someone or something, dressing up, hiding your identity, and taking action. I can’t fault people for genuinely wanting to step in where they feel the system has failed them (police, the church, whatever). But what Seattle police spokesperson Jeff Kappel said, “There’s nothing wrong with citizens getting involved with the criminal justice process — as long as they follow it all the way through,” is an important point. Acting in the dark, beneath masks, might temporarily interrupt a rape or car theft, but if you can’t testify in court because you’re trying to protect some secret identity, then you’ve only won half the battle. Criminals hide behind masks. Not heroes.

It’s a lesson my comic book creation The Utopian had to learn. It’s a lesson I learned. And it’s a lesson the Rain City Superhero Movement has to learn as well.

For those who don’t know, net neutrality is basically a principle advocating unrestricted access to the World Wide Web by network access providers. (Yes, I’ve boiled it down very simply. The complicated version is one Google search away.) It’s basically the very opposite of what goes on in places like China, for example, where access to content the government there doesn’t want you to see is blocked left and right.

In the United States, the issue tends to be less an issue of government censorship than it is of commercial interests (though the former isn’t unthinkable). Say you get your broadband connection through Time Warner Cable, and say TWC doesn’t want you to be able to view the website or ads for its competitor, Comcast. Well, maybe while accessing the internet using TWC’s connection, access to Comcast’s website is blocked. (Again, oversimplified, but you get the idea.)

Another recent issue pertains to mobile device access to the internet, and mobile providers considering tiered access plans where you’d have to pay more for less restricted access (and those paying less may get “choked off” when trying to stream audio, video and other bandwidth-intensive content).

While Congress has unsuccessfully passed any sort of comprehensive net neutrality legislation, the FCC recently did pass rules that prevent (for the time being) cable and telephone service providers from preventing access to specific websites or competitors, but do allow for tiered internet access plans.

But what you really want to know is, “Pj, where do you stand? You’re a big ol’ bleeding heart liberal socialist, everything should be free and equal, right?”

Yes and no.

We’ve become very accustomed to the internet being “free,” whether in accessing content, or sharing content. Even though most people pay a price to access the internet, they still expect that access to be free and unhindered, except by their own desire (by using a content filter or other self-policing). But the fact is, you are almost always viewing the web through a window opened by one third-party entity or another, whether it’s your ISP, your employer or a public wi-fi connection. Accessing the internet isn’t like taking a leisurely swim into an endless stream. It’s more like paying a boat captain to take you on a cruise down the river. He controls the speed of the boat, and if someone else on the boat is blocking your view of the river, oh well, they paid too. Heck, maybe they paid more to get a better view. Either way, you can’t get on the river without paying the captain — and then it’s the captain’s rules when you’re on his boat.

Now, yes, this is why we have government regulation. This is why the FCC has rules. And as a good little socialist, I believe these rules (just like laws and taxes and other government-y stuff) help serve the common good, representing the will of the little man where he might otherwise be powerless to do so.

But as a free-market capitalist (oh, I am a man of contradictions), I’m on the fence. I honestly think it’s fine for companies to charge different rates for different levels of speed/access — so long as that tiered system is based on general usage and not specific content types. After all, if the captain has to buy a bigger, newer boat to accommodate the increased demand for river access, he’s gotta pay for it somehow, right? I left AT&T’s mobile service for Verizon right before they announced their move to tiered data access plans, but Verizon’s own similar approach is imminent, and honestly, I’m sure I’ll still shell out whatever amount of cash for a top-tier, unlimited data package. That’s my CHOICE as a consumer.

Now, on the flip side, if Verizon wanted to block my access to Pandora, for example, over some other streaming radio service it might be partnering with, well, yeah, I’d be a bit teed-off about that. But, again, as a consumer, I can make the choice not to use Verizon, and move to another provider that won’t restrict my access as such.

“But, Pj, what if ALL providers restricted your access to the web in some way or another?”

Well, then, that’s where I’d depend on the legislators I elected and the agencies under their purview (such as the FCC) to fight, as some of them have (Al Gore, where are you?), to uphold network neutrality. But it’s a sticky subject. We say we don’t want the government dictating what individuals or businesses can and can’t do, and yet, we want them there when we’re feeling cheated or abused. We want clean drinking water. We want green forests, white beaches and bald eagles flying free. And the more libertarian-minded friends of mine believe left to their own devices, for-profit corporations will self-police and do the right thing, eventually. But I’m pretty sure left without regulation, you’d quickly be seeing unencumbered access to your favorite website, messaging service or streaming media disappear.

So where do I stand on net neutrality?

Hate the player, not the game.

Nope, I have no idea what that means either. I have no answers — I’m just adding my few kilobytes to the noise.

OK, folks! Remember to leave your Choose Your Own Adventure Week topic suggestions in the comments below, e-mail me, or hit me on the Twitterz!

We’re starting a new year with a new look, and in order for you to force me to start it with fresh web content, it’s time for the return of Choose Your Own Adventure Week!

In November 2009, I took suggestions from you fine people via Twitter, blog comments and … maybe somewhere else, I dunno, and turned those suggestions into amazing blog posts!

OK, so they weren’t so amazing, and I kind of petered out after a few posts. But I’m going to try REALLY HARD to at least look like I’m trying, and fill up this blog for the entire first week of January 2011 with my usual brand of nonsense on the topics of YOUR CHOOSING.

Very exciting, I know. So leave a comment, drop me a tweet, or send me an e-mail with your suggestions by Dec. 31, 2010. And if you’re lucky/I’m not lazy, you’ll see me write SOMETHING about your suggested topic/theme/whatever. Huzzah!

Well, Keith, here’s the thing: Writers are hacks. They get paid — most just barely, some over-extravagantly — to make themselves appear smarter, more informed or more clever than you. That’s not cool. I mean, sure, they might be all creative or investigative or enlightened and stuff, but why do they have to go and throw it in our faces? Even worse, they expect us to buy their stupid books and magazines and comics and…

Just kidding. But seriously, I can’t pinpoint any specific writers as “influences.” I think we are all sum reflections of that which came before us, that to which we’ve been exposed our entire lives. In both my journalistic and creative writing efforts, my writing is surely as much informed by the last episode of The West Wing I watched as it is by a Fantastic Four comic I read when I was 9.

I don’t tend to be a follower of a particular writer in any genre, I don’t read books, and I have limited patience for lengthy magazine articles and prefer my news read to me while driving. So … that about sums it up.

Check back soon tomorrow as we wrap up Choose Your Own (Bleeding Neon) Adventure Week, and if you have a topic you’re just dying for me to cover in this here blog, drop me a comment, tweet or e-mail. If I have enough overflow suggestions, I may just do this again. If you choose.

First up is a topic proposed by Gordon Dymowski of Blog This, Pal!, who asked me on Twitter to write about “fun things you can do with cardboard.” Well, Gordo, just remember, you asked for it, and as I am a child of the 1980s, cardboard is quite prominent in my upbringing. And it’s totally not because I was raised by homeless bums. Really!

• First and foremost, and perhaps most dearest to my heart, breakdancing. Whenever I see cardboard on the floor, that’s always the first thing that comes to mind. I can’t help it. I grew up surrounded by a culture intent on capitalizing on the b-boys and b-girls by crafting fine cinematic diversions such as “Breakin’” and, um, “Breakin’ 2: Electric Boogaloo.” So yeah.
• Building forts, spaceships, castles, other imaginary domiciles. OK, so there are real people who HAVE to live in cardboard boxes out there. I get it. I’m sorry for your situation. But let’s face facts: When mom and dad brought home a new washer, dryer or — the holy grail of all cardboard boxes — refrigerator, it was ON. Playtime had begun. I could spend hours arranging cardboard boxes in various configurations to enable my overactive imagination. To this day, if a cardboard box appears in my house, I instantly stick my dogs inside to allow them the same joys I experienced as a child (they don’t seem to be as amused). When I have children, I will likely do the same. Go ahead and put Child Protective Services on speed dial now.
• Weapons: Chinese throwing stars cut from notepad backing boards. Swords derived from wrapping paper tubes. Nunchaku comprised of paper towel rolls and string. The possibilities are endless. And have you ever gotten a cardboard cut? YOW.
• A bed: I mean, even if you’re not homeless, you may be a weird little Pekingese dog that likes sleeping on cardboard.
• Cardboard robots. ‘Nuff said.
  

CHOOSE YOUR OWN (BLEEDING NEON) ADVENTURE WEEK

Here’s how it works: You give me a topic, any topic, and I’ll blog about it. I’m not saying what I write will be intelligent, informed or otherwise worth reading, but it’ll somehow be related to your topic. You are in control, dear reader. It’s like “Whose Line is It, Anyway?” without Greg Proops.

So leave your topic of interest in the comments below, tweet it to me on Twitter, or e-mail it to me directly. Let’s do this.