So, I failed to blog about Viennese Ball. No more! For those of you who are curious, it was fabulous.

Opening went really well. I was particularly glad that the actual performances went well, since the floor was very slippery (as advertised) and we didn't have the nice defining lines of the marley to work from. Also, I had phenomenal partners. Dancing with them was way fun. And even the waltz went well, I'd say, which I was relieved about because while I could do the polka in my sleep, I could only do the waltz when I wasn't distracted. This was not a function of my partner, just a function of time: the length of the waltz choreography meant that it was encoded in my head as three distinct parts, and I simply wasn't able to stitch them together seamlessly in time for the ball. That meant that I might actually make mistakes during the waltz, and that would be bad, because, you know, I wanted to be a good partner for Esther Selene.

Opening in general was just really good this year. I really liked the choreography that Shanah, Rose, and Eeyore came up with, and I really liked the folks I got to dance with, both my partners specifically and the members of the committee generally. Additionally - and I think this is what made it particularly so fun for me - I felt like Opening was very well led. The teaching was good and I felt like our choreographers worked well together. From my perspective at least logistics were very well taken care of. I was also quite pleased with discipline during rehearsals. I felt like it served its proper role: namely, reminding us all that it was important to us not to fail our choreographers. When that happens you know something has gone right.

And after the Opening performance I had a really good time. For a while there I was sort of afraid that I'd spend the entire time saying to people, "Oh, hi! I didn't know you were here! I really like your dress, are you having a good time?" and watching performances. Now, don't get me wrong, I like seeing people at dance events and I really did think people looked good in their formalwear (I love dressing up for events like that), and I saw some very good performances. But, you know, dancing. Fortunately I think Esther was either feeling the same way and/or noticed that I was, and we got a decent amount of dancing in.

I really like dancing with Esther. I like dancing with Stanford girls in general, partially because the Dance Master has imparted to this crowd his passionate love of partnering, and partially because people up here think that acceleration, and especially centripetal acceleration, is key to a lot of dances (this is not the case everywhere, as I learned last summer). But there are some girls I really like dancing with, and Esther is one of them. Partially of course that's because, you know, I like her in other ways. But I also feel remarkably comfortable dancing with her, which I consider noteworthy given that in my estimation she is both flashier and more accomplished than I am on the dance floor. I also tend to feel more adventurous with her than normal - in terms of improvising figures, sure, but also in terms of timing and footwork. Hopefully I don't feel so adventurous as to be annoying, but from my perspective at least that all makes dancing with her a lot of fun. Of course she doesn't schottische, but that's okay, because I don't really do salsa. Anyway I felt like we had a very good time dancing and just sort of floating along (Viennese is like scuba diving; the key to having a good time is to just relax). We didn't get to dance the last dance together, but that was okay because she had promised someone a dance and that was the last one, and it is good to honor that sort of thing when at all possible. Also at the last minute they changed the last waltz from Erin Shore to something else, and I thought that was a nice sort of thing for God to contrive. That made me feel very special.

In addition to fun dancing, there were two performances which stuck out in my mind as particularly worthwhile. The performances are one of the things about Viennese that can annoy me the most, because they fly pretty thick, and sometimes I feel like they break up the dancing unnecessarily. Generally speaking I felt like the performances this year were worth watching, but two especially so. One was the Alaskan and her two male cohorts performing their Martial Arts Tango. I saw that last year of course, and it was good back then, but clearly rough. This was not. This was way cool. Way cool fails to describe it, but I'm afraid I lack the technical vocabulary to provide a more adequate picture. Suffice it to say that the Alaskan has surprising depths of allure that she can draw on when the performance context calls for it, the choreography has been vastly improved (over something which was already way, way cool), and the actual performance was jaw dropping. The other performance I saw that was especially memorable was Swingtime's. I always like watching Swingtime perform but I felt like at the ball they were really at the top of their game (ironic given that one of their dancers really hurt his knee during the aforesaid Martial Arts Tango). Their new solos were really good, and there was just a lot of panache and energy to their dancing. They were really, really good.

This might be the last ball on this scale for a while; I don't know. I hope not - we lost something like $11,000 owing to a nonsensical constitutional provision and a certain newspaper editor's stupidity or vindictiveness; I'm not sure which. It doesn't seem to me like $11,000 would be impossible to raise - I mean, I think if you asked people whether they'd rather have the Ball in Roble (i.e., Jammix in tails) or pay $20 to have it at the Hyatt Regency in Burlingame, most people would opt for the extra ticket price. But I don't really know much about it; I'm not close to the financial situation at all. If this was the last ball on this scale for the forseeable future, though, it was a good one.

I went to build today for the first time for Kiss Me Kate. As always happens lately when I'm walking to a KMK event, my mind was filled with righteous indignation by the time I got there: I didn't sign up for this, I wasn't warned about this, it's not fair for this show to rob me of the sacred days which by rights ought to be dedicated to family, friends, and roleplaying. Those are the sorts of thoughts that go through my mind every time I go to rehearsal, or think about build.

Of course those thoughts are completely unbecoming, but I love the way in which God points that out to me. Over the past few days I have noticed that while KMK can incense me at the drop of a hat, I cannot remain furious with it when I am actually doing it. In the presence of my director and my stage manager, and (I discovered today) my tech director, I simply can't be mad at this show. All my resentment falls away and I love doing it.

Now, what does that mean? For one thing, it's confirmed to me yet again the importance of the chain of command in performance groups. My director is doing a good job, but she is the director, mistress after God. My stage manager is the director's executive officer, my liaison (as an actor) both to the crew side of the company, and to the director, and she does a good job of it. They are not part of the cast, nor should they be - the proper way to support me and the rest of the cast is by doing what they're doing.

Our own leadership must come from within the cast, and it falls to the lead to provide it. This is where KMK fails most critically, in my opinion, for our lead is a star with an unabashed prima donna persona. Like it or not, being cast as a lead makes you central to the spirit of the cast. It is up to the lead to be the link between the cast and the rest of the company, and ours isn't doing his job. And that of course is what makes it completely shameful for me to resent the time KMK demands of me. I can't demand that our lead do his job and refuse to do mine - even if it's a job that I didn't realize I was signing up for, it's one that I signed up for implicitly when I joined the company (which is and must be tantamount to swearing fealty for the duration of the run).

Why is that so important? Because leadership isn't a function of office. Leadership is a function of competence and character. The leader who has both can lead her people into the jaws of hell; the leader who has neither can only lead her people where self-interest induces them to go anyway. In KMK, the competence side of the question is largely decided. Either our director is competent or she isn't, and the same goes for the rest of us. We can improve as a result of our experience over the course of the show, but not that much.

Character, on the other hand, is something which is formed and maintained by everything we do. I have to fulfill my build and rehearsal obligations. Not because people expect it of me, but because it's my duty to do so: it is a debt that I owe to myself to fulfill an obligation I have assumed voluntarily (see sidebar). Difficult it may be, but the reward is ...

... is what? Self-respect? Certainly. The Song of the Lioness and the Protector of the Small beckon me onward in this regard, regaling me with tales of institutional injustice overcome by sheer determinedness. I will not fall short of the example of Alanna and Keladry. But more than self-respect, the reward is character. Am I going to be the sort of person who fulfills my obligations or not? Am I going to be the sort of person whom my company can lean upon or not? Am I going to be the person who does all things without complaining and disputing so that I may become blameless and innocent, a child of God without fault in the midst of a crooked and perverse generation, among whom I shine as a light in the world, holding fast the word of life (Phil. 2:14-16) - or am I not?

Of course this is one of my great Principles of Life - but it is one I forgot with regards to KMK. But here I am, in a company where some leaders melt my resentment simply by doing what they do. I follow them into this show, which I can hate so easily, not because of their position but because of who they are. So I am faced with the question Paul implicitly posed to the Philippians: am I going to be the sort of child of God he describes, or not?

There is a song that Point of Grace sings called "Living the Legacy," the first bit of which goes like this:

My father knew it, and his before him
And it goes way back down the line.
They had a vision - a prayer for the future
For what I would believe in time.
Now I'm not perfect; life's not easy
But I wouldn't take the world for what they gave to me.

I'm living the legacy, walking the path that the faithful have laid down
I'm living the legacy, finding the hope that my fathers found

Years ago when I heard that song for the first time I swore that my children would be able to truthfully sing this song. They may never hear it. But I vowed that my children will know their father as a real Christian: a real man who is a real example of a real Christ. If I am to lead my household in that regard, it begins here, in the sort of person I choose to be when I go to rehearsal.

I want to reiterate that the fact that today I followed my tech director into the figurative jaws of hell (i.e., spending four hours building that I didn't want to spend building) does not mean I was forcing myself to do something I didn't want to do. Take the leader out of the picture and I don't want to build; put the leader into the picture and I do. I even had fun. No, fun isn't the right word for it. This is what the word joy was invented for. I find it is in the nature of duties to be joyous when I commit myself to them; that is one of the things that convinces me that duty is built into the fundamental workings of the universe. But it can take a leader to remind one of that fact and draw one on to the point of actually performing one's duty, and that is a very magical thing about leadership in my opinion. Leaders, by virtue of who they are, draw those around them to the point of joy. That is the sort of person I choose to be.

I just got back from seeing Big Fish. I've experienced//seen//read//heard a lot of art that I wish I could share with people - more art of that kind than I have any right to expect. Tonight I saw another piece of art that goes in that category, but it's different than most. Most of the art I want to share with people is like the Iliad, or Peter Jackson's Lord of the Rings, or Tamora Pierce's Tortall books. Or it might be dreaming of waltzing (performance art) with my wife to The Corrs' version of Erin Shore, or to Jennifer Knapp's Martyrs & Thieves. In other words, it's mostly art that has to do with being a man. Put it another way: it's art about what I want to be. Or put it yet another way: it's art about who I believe I was created to be. It's about being a husband and a father, and there is no dream in my heart rooted deeper than that. But tonight, as I said, I saw something different. I saw a piece of art that was about stories and a man who told them.

Four years ago Ms. Poole told me that no matter what anyone said, I would always be a writer. Just a month or so ago Shanah Van said that, deep down, I am a theatre person. I don't think those are false statements, but if you were to ask me about it, I'd say that deep down I am a storyteller.

I saw Big Fish tonight and I saw a film about a man who told stories that told who he was. I think that's what got me most of all, what's making me write this now instead of going to sleep and writing it tomorrow afternoon. We tell - I tell - stories because we must, but the stories we tell are poured out of our hearts. I am glad to read anything the Jennies want me to read, of course - but the magic of it is that they want to hear the books that I want to read. I am glad to roleplay in any game that is well played, well crafted, and well run - but the magic of Phoenix Earth draws me back time and again.

The stories are the ways in which we reach out to the world. They are romance, in the Natalian sense; that is, they are how we say, this is what my heart looks like inside. For this reason I have always regretted that Rose never got to see a Phoenix Earth session. She and Alanna saw me roleplaying once, in Mirrielees, but not for very long and not in a very good game or a very good session. She knows what I mean when I say roleplaying, I suppose, as do many of my friends in various ways (who could forget roleplaying with Shanah over skit writing?). But do they understand Phoenix Earth? Have I told them the story of the rise and fall of man as my heart bids me tell it?

Of course everyone has their romances, and one can't expect everyone to sit through everyone else's. The hearts of man are more variegated than that. But still the hope is in me, the fairy tale, that to those dearest to me I will one day be able to tell these stories:

The Song of the Lioness
The Protector of the Small
Gates of Fire
Phoenix Earth

Will I tell those stories to my children? Will I grow old telling them to my wife? Will they hear the stories of Dienekes and Polynikes and Alanna and Jonathan and Keladry and Nealan and all the Phoenix Earth and see them in my heart? That is a mystery too wonderful for me, surely. But if they never know the names, I pray that at least, when the tears pour down my cheeks as I read for the hundredth time of Polynikes standing alone against the horizon, they will know my heart and in that way understand.

One of the things I find most interesting about my classical & 4th century art class is the way it makes me think about Christian iconography and Christian inspiration. It's not exactly a stretch: Christians were doing this a thousand years before me, which is why the Byzantines so carefully decapitated all those wonderful pagan statues.

To put it simply, I don't like Christian iconography. I won't deny that we've had our share of brilliant artists; I'm not knocking the skill of the Renaissance. But the stuff that people paint in service of Christianity ... well, basically none of it speaks to me. Put it another way: I can look at a statue of Athena and I feel safe. In the shadow of her shield you feel safe, because the Steel-Eyed Goddess is on your side. I look at statues of Artemis or Apollo, the sibling patrons of children growing into adults, I think: yes. Maidens should be wild and free and innocent and pure, and young men should be grave and perilous and stand for beauty and truth. Looking at the Far-Strikers represented on the Parthenon, or in Homer, I feel that deep down in my bones. Or I consider the Iliad: Diomedes, Telemonian Ajax, Menelaus ... men like that just feel good and true. Professor Martin can say all he likes that they aren't "moral" prototypes in the way we think of "heroes" in English, but they do embody something about manhood, I think. Every one of those men, I contend, is andreios, and I am proud to be named that myself.

Now, I'm not saying I wish the Olympians ruled the universe instead of the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob; and I'm not complaining about my God. When you come right down to it I'd much rather have the Lion of Judah on my side than Apollo Far-Striker or Steel-Eyed Athena. But that's just what I am complaining about: nobody (except C.S. Lewis) represents Jesus in art as the Lion of Judah. When we're shown paintings of Jesus, they're never of Iesous Glaukops walking through the angry mob in Galilee or clearing the Temple. Nobody paints the God of the Psalms, with his mighty bow bent on behalf of His children. Who ever saw the God of the Christians contemplating the heroes who fell in the line of duty, as Athena contemplated the Athenians who did just that?

I don't mean to suggest that those aspects of God are the most important ones, and I realize they're apt to be misinterpreted. On the other hand, I think it's important for people (both Christians and non) to realize that the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob has some teeth and claws to Him (to borrow Archimedes' phrase). And I think it's important to understand what that means. For one thing it's important from an evangelical standpoint, because God does have teeth and claws to Him and it's important for the world to understand that the God whom Moses called a Man of War is not incompatible with the Lamb of God - that, in fact, the one doesn't make sense without the other. For another thing, I think it's important that Christians (especially men) understand that the Jesus they are told to emulate is a "man o' men," not the cosmic Nice Guy. And they need to understand that because there is more to being a man than being a Nice Guy. You must be a nice guy, to be sure: you cannot love if that is not part of your character. If you don't have the compassion, the patience, the empathy, the meekness, the humility that make a Nice Guy, then you won't be much good to your neighbor. You won't be much good to your wife, either, or your girlfriend (this is one of those things that convinces me that, though romantic love and charitable love may differ in practicality, we are right to call them both love. They share an important essence). But you will also be a shell of a man with nothing to offer. It is no accident that when Messiah comes the lion lays down with the lamb; the Lion and the Lamb are the same man, and if Christians don't understand that - if they don't understand the Man who is love and the source of all love - then how can they expect to love themselves? How many marriages would have been saved if Christian men understood that a man "goes to find his strength; he returns to offer it. He tears down the walls of the tower that has held her with his words and with his actions. He speaks to her heart's deepest question in a thousand ways. Yes, you are lovely. Yes, there is one who will fight for you."

If Crusade has given me nothing else, it has given me this understanding by introducing me to John Eldredge's Wild At Heart (from which the above is quoted). I think it would do Christendom some good though if our art were to remind us that the itinerant rabbi whom we're told to emulate has more than a little of the knight in shining armor in him. It is truly said that I find rest in the shadow of His wing - but I also find rest in the shadow of His shield.

I just got back from a "ski" trip in Tahoe with Esther's suitemates and some friends. I say "ski" because I had a lot of work to catch up on going into the weekend, and I figured I might need to spend a day catching up. As it turned out, I basically spent the entire weekend writing home to the family.

I was thinking about that the other day, and I realized that one way to think about my letters home (which can be fairly substantial; this weekend's was about 5,300 words) is in terms of accountability. I suppose that won't help readers who aren't immersed in the evangelical tradition. But for those who are, it occurred to me that there is more to my family's tradition of weekly letters than just the fact that they are The Family, and we believe that families ought to be (though admittedly they frequently aren't) real entities. I strongly suspect that family is intended to be a picture of Godhead - i.e., a dim mortal illustration of how one being can be composed of multiple persons.

But besides that, my family consists of my principal counselors and (if you will) accountability partners. You can't cut yourself off from those people without cutting yourself off from a serious flow of God-ordained life and blessings. It is unfortunate that they are hundreds of miles away, but thanks to the miracle of the internet we can still communicate seriously and meaningfully, and speak life into each other's lives. It is not strange when accountability partners or a mentor-mentee couple spend hours talking to each other, and that is in a very real sense what I do when I spend hours writing home.

Today is the day on which Christians have chosen to specially remember the promise that the world need not perish, but that anyone might be saved. Today my people remember the God who says, "I have no pleasure in the death of one who dies. Therefore turn and live!" (Ez. 18:32), and we remember the strange events set in motion when our chieftain invaded our sphere not for mankind but for each man and woman, individually. I offer the following in tribute to all those who have ever gone to the aid of another human being with no regard to the cost, and especially to my national brothers and sisters who are spending Christmas away from their loved ones to aid their fellow men.

"In the grim logic of the universe this may be a weakness. Perhaps some race that never bothers to rescue an individual may exploit this human trait to wipe us out. The Skinnies have such a trait only slightly and the Bugs don't seem to have it at all - nobody ever saw a Bug come to the aid of another because he was wounded; they co-operate perfectly in fighting but units are abandoned the instant they are no longer useful.

Our behavior is different. How often have you seen a headline like this? - TWO DIE ATTEMPTING RESCUE OF DROWNING CHILD. If a man gets lost in the mountains, hundreds will search and often two or three searchers are killed. But the next time somebody gets lost just as many volunteers turn out.

Poor arithmetic ... but very human. It runs through all our folklore, all human religions, all our literature - a racial conviction that when one human needs rescue, others should not count the price."
- Robert Heinlein, Starship Troopers

In the beauty of the lilies Christ was born across the sea,
With a glory in his bosom that transfigures you and me:
As he died to make men holy, let us die to make men free,
While God is marching on.
- Julia Ward Howe, "Battle Hymn of the Republic," wartime version

May the day quickly come when the king returns once more for all, and the necessity for the arts of war will fade with the rest of this world like a bad dream. Merry Christmas.

Around this time of year you hear a lot about the Christmas spirit, by which I suppose people mean love and charity and warmth towards one's fellow men. That's a pretty decent message, and I'm all for love and charity and warmth towards one's fellow men. But I was reminded this past Sunday of what Jesus himself said about Christmas:

"For this is how God loved the world: that he sent his only begotten son so that everyone who believed in in him should not perish but rather have eternal life. For God did not send his son into the world so that he might judge the world, but rather so that the world through him might be saved."

... "should not perish." In the original, mê apolêtai, the operative word being the verb apolêtai, from apollumi. What is meant by that? Check a Greek lexicon and you get an interesting sense of the connotations of that word. Jesus came so that all the world should not have to be destroyed. He came that they might not be emotionally destitute and rootless. He came that they might not be lost or forgotten. But rather he came for the explicit purpose that the world might be saved: sôthêi ho kosmos, the operative word being sôthêi, from the verb sôzô. He came that the world might be preserved for himself. That it might not die, that it might be rescued from danger. He came to remember it.

We are not forgotten - but rather, we are remembered. We need not perish, but rather, we may be saved. And such is the message of Christmas to all the world, from the mouth of the baby king himself.

I'm writing this post separately because the previous one deserves its own post, but I feel sort of like I ought to comment on the Saddam Hussein thing. I posted the other one first because I figure of the two this one is the more likely to get comments, but let me just say right now that much more of my time has been spent thinking about how much I wanted Esther to be at Disneyland than it has been about Saddam's capture. This is partially because thinking about Iraq generally only succeeds in making me angry and frustrated, and partially because, let's face it, Esther is a lot more important to me than Saddam Hussein.

Anyway, I'm glad we've got him. I think that the military is being quite reasonable in saying to the press that they don't expect this to produce any immediate reduction of terrorism in the area. That's a prediction which I think is self-evident from the circumstances of his capture and statements from insurgents that have been flitting around the news, but I'm glad to hear the military saying it. I don't know if your average officer in Iraq views the press as very small children, but in my opinion they should. I think it's been fairly well established at this point that the major American news organs can't be counted on to infer even very obvious information from the situation in Iraq - or, if they can infer it, they can't be counted on to report to the American public in a way that acknowledges the inference. As far as I'm concerned, the more the military worries about being misquoted by the press or having their remarks used in a way that twists the fact, the better.

I also think that the military is being reasonable in focusing its statements on what seem to be the most plausible effects of Hussein's capture - the sense on the street that the man is gone, and that America a). believes in the best interests of Iraq, and b). is going to win. In other words, I think the military has been quite reasonable in focusing on Saddam's value as a figurehead (and really, without a country, what practical value does he have?). Those are predictions that I hope will come true. The less killing goes on over there, the faster we hand them a government which is willing and able to look out for the interests of Iraq, the better. The more the people of Iraq refuse to countenance the terrorism being directed against the reconstruction of their homeland, the faster that will happen - and hopefully having Saddam as a symbol of American implacability will hasten that.

I also hope it will give the cause of reconstruction a shot in the arm at home. This raises the question of why I care so much (which I manifestly do) about the Iraq war and its aftermath. I could plead Christian charity directed towards the people of Iraq, and to a certain extent that is true. But the truth of the matter is that I feel that the honor and integrity of my own people is at stake. We are a lousy country in a world full of lousy countries. I don't think that we went into Iraq primarily to depose a dictator (although I think we did intend to do that for the sake of that nation's people), or primarily to smash a regime which was a threat to its neighbors (although I do think we did intend to do that) - no, I think we went into Iraq because we thought we would benefit from having a U.S.-friendly nation in the area that wasn't Israel; let's not be silly. And there are lots of other terrible regimes we turn a blind eye to. I know that. Nevertheless, I think that we went in with some honorable motives mixed in with the nationalist ones, and the important thing, in my mind, is that America has a chance to do a truly good thing, something her people can be proud of. I think we really do have a chance to give Iraq a nationhood which will be governed by and for her people, which will create a society where parents can raise their children free from fear and look forward to giving them better things than they had.

More importantly, having smashed the nationhood which used to exist in that area of the world, I don't think we have any honorable choice other than to pursue that chance. If we don't stick it out until Iraq has a government with enough muscle to stand up against the terrorists which are trying to abort it before it's even born, then I think it's pretty clear that the area's going to devolve into Somalia, and that must not happen. We tore down a Bad Thing, that is well - but we can't just walk away or something equally bad (or worse) will take its place. If Iraq devolves into factionalist warfare where no faction has a clear military advantage (we just smashed the only source of clear military advantage in the country) - and in which ethnicity and/or religion can come into play - how long do you think the country will digest itself in civil war? The picture I have from Archimedes on how long civil wars last nowadays is not a pretty one.

I think America has a chance to prevent that, and I hope that the American people have the backbone to give it our best shot. Of course that means that our nation's sons and daughters will continue to die, and our media will continue to shrill about it. But not pursuing the chance that Iraq's reconstruction can succeed means condemning the sons and daughters of Iraq to die for many years to come, in numbers hundreds of times as great as our own people are dying. Our own men and women have training, equipment, resources, and organization that make them more invincible to terrorism than mankind has ever before known how. The people of Iraq do not have those advantages. I hate to sound like John Travolta, but what is all of our power good for if we aren't going to protect the weak from those who would (even unintentionally! I know that many of those "terrorists" are honestly fighting for the cause of Iraq as best they know how) bring the desolation of civil war upon the weak and their descendants, possibly for many generations to come?

And the thing that makes me angry and frustrated is that our military is, in that area, essentially invincible. I hope that people have been paying attention to the news articles and interviews recently which have finally admitted what was an obvious inference from the start: that the insurgents' strategy is not to defeat the American forces stationed in Iraq (as if they could!) but to kill so many of our sons and daughters that the American people demands we pull out. I desperately hope that my nation - my people - will not be scared off from doing the right thing because our troops are being killed in the line of duty. That is not the way to win a fight. I like this quote from the sixth Honor Harrington book on that subject: the secret to winning a fight and coming out alive, it says, is "making up your mind going in that you're not just gonna try to defend yourself. It's deciding right now, ahead of time, that you're gonna kill the mother-fucker if that's what it takes." That is essentially how I view the Iraq situation. If my people can decide right now that we're going to see this through until Iraq's people have their country back, we will win. If not, I am very much afraid that we will pull out and it will be a matter of decades, not a few years, before Iraq is owned by her people once more. And it won't be for any military reason. That unhappy fate will be inflicted upon Iraq because the United States of America, as a people, refused to pay the price of doing the right thing. If Saddam's capture gives the cause of reconstruction a stupid, irrational, political shot in the arm to make that eventuality less likely, then I will be glad.

Two more issues I've been wanting to comment on. Saddam's possible execution? Well, I don't know that the Governing Council's war crimes tribunal represents the Iraqi people per se, and I'm not sure what I think about our attempts to dodge the "commander-in-chief" argument for making him a prisoner of war (the legal consequences of which I am unsure of). I do know that many of the people who are arguing for POW status (and, presumably, for the situation to be handled by parties other than the U.S. or the Iraqi Governing Council) seem to be against execution primarily because they don't believe in killing, ever, and I think that's foolish.

Second, our decision to exclude certain foreign firms from bidding on lucrative reconstruction contracts. I can't say that I really see any injustice in keeping the best contracts for nations which did the work. If a nation didn't fight the war, and if her sons and daughters aren't dying in the Sunni Triangle to protect that war from having been fought in vain, what right does that nation have to reconstruction projects? I hope The Little Red Hen is still being read across the Atlantic.

Yesterday I went to Disneyland with the family, which was the first time we had done that (I mean, the four of us) in four years or so. It was so wonderful. I guess Disneyland probably gets old for some people, but I am not one of those people, and I don't live with any of those people.

This isn't a SoCal thing, it's a magical thing. Disneyland is not an amusement park in the conventional sense; it's a purveyor of magical lifestyles. Disneyland is about the total package experience of being wide-eyed and child-like and transported to a magical place where everything is good and sparkly and wonderful. Every love story that has ever been told, every prince charming that has ever loved, every beautiful princess that has ever loved, and every child that has ever hoped to wear shining armor on a white steed or a beautiful ballgown on a marble dance floor - this is what Disneyland is about. And especially at Christmastime, Disneyland takes on a special magic. And, as if that were not enough, now that Downtown Disney is up and running, Disneyland has good food. Wow was it good. Granted the prices are higher than you'd find for equivalent items elsewhere, but that doesn't really bother me. Of course it means that Disneyland cannot be a regular outing, but the whole point is that you aren't elsewhere. Disneyland has a value all its own. I wished that Esther Selene could have been there. Oh, how I wished that.

As most of you are probably aware, Christmas is coming. This is the time of year (i.e., finals) when I feel most lonely for home. Maybe it's the fact that I keep forgetting to burn the proper Christmas albums and bring them up here, so my Christmas music is impoverished, and the fact that a college campus doesn't exactly get decked out in holiday finery (though the freshmen have tried, which I appreciate. And people wonder why I wanted to live here).

Lately I've been thinking about Christmas as a holiday - I mean Christmas as Christmas, not as the holiday which Christians decided would be our winter solstice holiday. Christmas is something that I think people tend to leave out of the Jesus story - I mean the fashionable Jesus story, which likes to paint Jesus as a traveling rabbi who said some decent things and was executed as a result of power politics. The Christmas story - the story that God made Himself a man and invaded the territory to which He had banished the Accuser all those eons ago - that doesn't fit in the fashionable Jesus story. The story of the return of the High King of Existence does not mesh very well with a story about Decent Moral Teachings. The moment you introduce Christmas into the narrative you have to ask what it was really all about, and the Christian explanation - that the King marched into enemy territory for the express purpose of getting Himself killed - is really the only one on the market.

Now of course that explanation is, in its way, a moral one. The idea that "greater love has no man than this, that someone should lay down his life on behalf of his friends" - the idea of selflessness - is, I think, the heart of Western morality. Possibly Heinlein's Col. Dubois was right and it's the foundation for all morality. But that is clearly not what Jesus, at least, is getting at. "This is my command, that you love one another just as I loved you. Greater love has no man than this, that someone should lay down his life on behalf of his friends. You are my friends ..." The "someone" in question is, at least in the immediate sense, Jesus. Which raises again the problem of Jesus dying (in fact, looking for death) being the central point of the Jesus story.

So what I've been thinking is that Christmas as Christmas is a holiday about freedom from morality. Let me explain what I mean by that. I suppose the purpose of morality (by "morality" I mean "virtuous conduct") is to produce righteousness (by which I mean being in line with the moral standard). Those are, of course, pipe dreams: the first thing anyone learns about morality is that nobody can do it. And I mean nobody can do it all the time, which is really the only satisfying standard: who wants a moral standard that says, "well, you tried your best, that's good enough?" That would be a moral standard which compromises, and the whole point of being a standard is that you don't compromise. Christmas is the story of the Return of the King, who set things up so that righteousness could be attained in a way different from morality. Morality doesn't work for human beings. Maybe it was supposed to (that's my opinion, anyway), but for human beings as they are now it doesn't. Christmas is the celebration of the incident which allowed morality to bypassed on the way to righteousness.

Now, I don't for a moment mean to suggest that Christmas throws morality out the window. (I remember Antilles and I talking to Violet about this four years ago.) It does mean that the motivation for morality changes - and this entry has gone on long enough, so I'm going to leave it at that unless somebody actually wants to talk about it.

It is dead week up here at Stanford, which at other schools (so we are told) means "the week where there are no classes so students can study." At Stanford, it means "the week in which there are classes but you still have to study." I think what sustains most people through this week is the thought that soon, for better or worse, it will all be over. I'm certainly looking forward to going home: to seeing my sister and the DM after their Italian sojourns, to telling those who haven't heard about Esther Selene (I wrote a rather lengthy e-mail on the subject, then pressed some arcane combination of keys which deleted both the e-mail and the draft, which was so depressing that I couldn't bring myself to write another one), to finally resuming Phoenix Earth, to Christmas with the family. This will be the first Christmas break since coming to Stanford which doesn't start with a Testimony tour, so hopefully it will include lots of good roleplaying. To a certain extent I realize that I'm holding on to outmoded conceptions of the place of roleplaying in my life - but it is still something I love in a universe which I love, with people whom I love, and I am looking forward to presenting my characters with moral problems. And of course there is Disneyland, which truly is the most magical place I know. More magical, on a per-area basis, even than Maui or Disneyworld.

My dead week has not been bad at all (I mean, seriously, I can't complain) but it has had its own stresses (e.g., my early short story final and tomorrow's LSAT), and that is distressing in its own way. Lack of sleep and scholastic stress are enough to push a body over the edge into old patterns and out of modes of living fitting for Christians. As a Stanford Christian, I wonder about this a lot: how much do we work against ourselves by punishing our minds and bodies? I mean, to be sure, a certain amount of stress must simply be lived with. But on the other hand, how much do we stray from holiness because our wills are tired from lack of sleep and our emotions are frayed from stressing about school unnecessarily?

I don't mean to blow this out of proportion, of course - it is not our lifestyles which are credited to us as righteousness, but our pistis - our faith, or trust. Nevertheless the desire to live becomingly is there; it's even more organic than that - hoitines apethanomen tê hamartia, pôs eti zêsomen en autê? And when it comes to what I do, there is still that preposterous truth, that all really depends on what I do. But I am still an animal; the state of my will is not insensible to the state of my body. It is like Max Payne says: you look back and see the choices you didn't know you'd made. Procrastinating for an hour now might be harmless. But it might mean (and all too often does) losing that extra hour of sleep, which leads to that extra iota of stress. And then when the time comes to stand on the battlefield of moral decision you are fighting with a stressed-out, sleep-deprived will ... and what kind of weapon is that?

I just got back from the classics trip to Baltimore to see the Archimedes Palimpsest, which was way cool, though it's a shame Neani had to miss it owing to an untimely faint. Still, the trip was wonderful. A few highlights of non-Archimedean character (and, fair warning, my highlights are long):

Listening to Michelle Tumes' Dream on the flight back. Dream would probably strike someone of more advanced musical training as musically weak, especially compared to her earlier work, but I do not care because the album touches me, musical merit or no. Antilles once said that an album should be experienced as its own artistic creation - or words to that effect; I don't recall the exact quote. Dream is especially touching to me as an album, as it is obviously the product of a recently married, Bible-loving girl who lives far from home and sees the road of love as the adventure which validates all her dreams of ancient nobility and wonder to which she has clung all her life. If it surprises you that I resonate with this album, you need to go back and read some archives. Besides, decent ideas about love and marriage occur infrequently enough that they ought to be treasured when they do.

Re-finding my favorite waltz quote, in Tom Stoppard's Arcadia: "I must waltz, Septimus! I will be despised if I do not waltz! It is the most fashionable and gayest and boldest invention conceivable - started in Germany!"

Listening to the Philosopher perform his epic poetry (and here's where it starts to get long, since I'm about to meditate on Ephesians). Of course it was good to see one of the good old Hetairoi again, and his poetry embodies the Hetairic ideals of heroism, integrity, and bringing scholarship to life. A right good gathering of classicists it was, there in my room with even Alexander himself present, the man who taught us Homer - but there was more to it than that.

Simply put, the poetry was good. The Philosopher also demonstrated a real gift for storytelling - it made me long for storytime, or Phoenix Earth, or just to get up myself and tell the assembled classicists a story from Phoenix Earth - to tell the tale of Dis Neanidos, or of the final confrongation between Chastity Tomalov and Karlhoss Modron, or the destruction of the Paul Revere and the deaths of Veronica Kayne and Mackenzie Taylor. To tell the tale in the language of epic, not of history like I usually do.

It was interesting t hear the Philosopher's decidedly secular, and rather humanist, take on heroism. On the one hand his take on the modern heroic ideal is that of character shown through peril, and so far we are in accord. On the other hand, his hero Erik goes sailing to the ends of the earth to prove the measure of the worth of man, and that is where I differ with him. The Philosopher seems to view the worth of man as something intrinsic, waiting to be exploited or discovered or utilized - I see it as potential to be put into us "according to the power that works in us" (Eph 3:20); and again, "that He would grant you to be strengthened with might through His Spirit in the inner man" - and this strength of the inner man is character; i.e., the worth of man (Eph 3:16).

And of course that is another difference - I don't think honor and courage and nobility and heroism (i.e., character) are precisely good things (i.e., worth) inherently. I do think they are good, but only because (as my sister has recently observed) they are integral parts of Christianity and part of the "fullness of God" which Paul prays that we be filled with (Eph. 6:19). And to be sure, like Erik the viking, we must choose to be grand and true; I do not mean to suggest that we will one day wake up irresistibly heroic: "put off ... the old man;" "be kind to one another, tenderhearted;" "be imitators of God;" "love your wives;" "be strong in the Lord" - all things we are told to do, things we cannot do without God working in us but things which we must ourselves will to do all the same (Eph. 4:22, 32; 5:1, 25; 6:10). And truthfully these things are not really the "worth" of man - as if God valued the hero who believes and walks in the light and fullness more than the man who persists in his folly and mistrust of God. On the contrary, neither faith nor good works make a man worth more than his fellows, "lest anyone should boast" (Eph. 2:9). This strength of the inner man is less the worth of man than the potential: what we were created to be.

And because this strength of character is merely (merely!) returning to what God has always wanted for us, I must take issue also with haring off after adventure in order to discover it. On the contrary, we operate "by what every joing supplies, according to the effective working by which every part does its share" (Eph 4:16) - in other words, according to God's plan and not ours, the "good works which God prepared beforehand that we should walk in them" (Eph. 2:10). To do those works we must certainly partner with God as He invites us to do, but to choose our own good works - our own perils and quests - is folly.

This brings me back full circle to Dream, for in that album's liner notes Tumes writes, "It occurred to me this year that God is the only love, because He invented love and displayed love by sending His Son. So all the love we give would not exist without Him. I know it sounds simple, but it is so real to me." This connection of love (and especially romantic love, given the album context) to God makes me wonder: is it possible that love for a woman stems from a love for God? Of course a love for God and from is a prerequisite, but is it also possible that love for a woman may in fact be an act of loving God, part and parcel with that larger, more primal relationship? Is it possible that for the time to come when love for God demands love for a particular woman? Something I intend to think about.

I love Pirates of the Caribbean. There are lots of reasons to love that movie, especially for someone like me who's grown up in SoCal and loves Disneyland. I love the performances, I love the fact that it's quotable, I love the fact that it's full of beautiful people. I love the pageantry of that kind of costume drama. I also love the pageantry of that kind of story. Pirates has all sorts of wonderful things that an adventure love story should have. It has an exotic setting, in a world of breathtaking beauty where real seediness and evil lie beneath the veneer of civilization. It has the shy, girl-awed hero obsessed with his identity and the improvement thereof, whose innocence and good looks hide true grit and depths of strength he could never have guessed. It has a beautiful woman who is full of grit and power herself, and is a fitting partner for the hero instead of just a love interest. It has a dashing antihero with a heart of gold who gets to form a bond of true camaraderie with hero and heroine by the end. It has the stodgy but noble red herring lover, who doesn't get the girl but nevertheless proves himself a good man and true. It has a plot which shows forth, through peril and drama, the true colors of its characters - and which shows forth the centrality of love to peril and character, for love also shows forth the true colors of character, and without love peril is not worth facing, and so character is not shown forth.

These are the things that a boy dreams of - a world of beauty, a chance to face peril and not have his soul found hollow, true and trusty comrades and among them a woman to love and be loved by. These are the things that make my heart sing. They are what make Pirates of the Caribbean a film I love far beyond its merits as a piece of cinema.

And they are what make it a fitting start to a moonlit walk with Esther Selene.

I finished Max Payne 2 this morning. The story was fantastic. I loved it. It filled me with a wonderful, IG-esque sense of horror and anger at the way the world is broken, yet fulfillment and satisfaction that after all is said and done we have not given in, that we have refused to trade a vision of the world for which humans were made for a vision of the world in which we actually live. I don't want to say more than that because it will spoil things, but if you've played the game I'd love to gush with you about the story. If you liked Max Payne 1 you need to own this game.

Gameplay-wise it is the same thing, improved by about the amount you would expect given the elapsed time between the two games and consequent improvement of practical technological capacity. But the gameplay was good, and it remains good. It has also gotten better in a few notable ways. For one thing the weapons you have vary more thanks to the way they tell the story, so you do end up using lots of different guns. Generally speaking the ammo capacities of your weapons are corrected towards the side of reality. Rates of fire have also been tweaked - your automatic weapons fire slower than I know they are capable, but I think on the whole they fire more realistically. Sure a MAC M10 can pump out 1100 rpm, but who could hold it steady? So unlike MP1, where you could unload your Ingrams more or less at the full rate of fire, in MP2 you automatically fire bursts. I appreciate things like that, and it doesn't actually seem out of place at all juxtaposed with firing a .357 Desert Eagle one-handed (or rather, firing two one-handed). I mean, it's an action movie. In a good action movie we expect to see SPAS-12s, MAC M10s firing bursts, and people wielding two Desert Eagle Mark XIXs. Check, check, and check.

The interactivity of the environment and the ways in which characters respond to bullets are all quite satisfying. It's very nifty to whack someone with your SVD and watch them actually go tumbling head over heels into the dirt, or watch someone stagger back into a pile of boxes and have it collapse on them. Or, for that matter, go flying through that same pile of boxes, guns blazing. And then of course there's bullet time. Bullet time has been differentiated into two different maneuvers now: regular bullet time and shootdodging. Shootdodging consumes no bullet time and has the obvious advantage of letting you shoot while dodging - plus, now, the ability to stay prone and keep shooting. On the other hand it takes a moment to get up from being prone, and your slow-motion effect is at a fixed rate. With regular bullet time you can reload very quickly and your slow-motion effect can get even slower, but on the other hand you're not dodging as effectively and you don't have an unlimited amount of it. The two maneuvers are useful in very different circumstances, I find, and that's very nice. People are also no longer invincible while shootdodging, which is both satisfying and cool.

Then there's the damage model. Overall I find this satisfactory - again, for an action movie. I shudder to think how many bullets Max must have in him by the end of this game, held at bay by painkillers. But hey, we're not concerned about that, and I like the fact that some foes are obviously wearing bullet-proof vests which actually do something, while others are not and quite obviously so. The amount of punishment anybody (including you) can take is, I would say, roughly three times as many as they ought to be able to take, give or take fifty percent since I'm not 100% sure how many rounds a man can actually take. But that's darn good - say, about as realistic as Counter-Strike - compared to many games like this (e.g., Half-Life, where a man can take thirty rounds of 9mm and only end up with a limp). Where you hit or get hit has a huge impact on how much damage you inflict, and guns have satisfyingly different amounts of kick - which affects your rate of fire but also how much kick the foe feels (which in turn affects both the way he goes flying when he goes down and whether or not, and how fast, he can recover from your rounds).

Having spent so long talking about guns, I feel I should reiterate a point or two about these games. First off I should like the record to show that I do not like killing. I have very mixed feelings about actual firearms - and I daresay that, contrary to what the media periodically screams, that my increased familiarity (by way of Phoenix Earth research as well as games of all kinds) with firearms over your average American kid has given me a greater, not lesser, appreciation of the fact that these are very dangerous tools and not to be handled except by people of character, any more than you should give a man the killing capability of a black belt without the discipline and character that goes with that. I wouldn't mind learning how to shoot - I think I'd probably be pretty good at it - but the thought of handling an actual firearm, even on the range and surrounded by qualified personnel, fills me with a certain amount of dread.

So what do I see in these games? Partially it is an homage to those men and women who have accepted the dreadful responsibility of the gun and all that goes with it. I am reminded of a line from Perelandra: "And at that moment, far away on Earth, as he now could not help remembering, men were at war, and white-faced subalterns and freckled corporals who had but lately begun to shave, stood in horrible gaps or crawled forward in deadly darkness, awaking, like him, to the preposterous truth that all really depended on their actions." Of course the analogy of morality to warfare is as old as the prophets, but I like the way Lewis puts it here. To me, at least, but I suspect universally, the gun is indeed a symbol - not of phallic masculinity but of dangerous morality. I am not so foolish as to believe that gunfights are like what you see in John Woo movies, or even in Stephen Spielberg movies. The reality of a gunfight, I am certain, would be completely separate. When I play these games I do not see gunfights. I see a stylized representation of the gunfight used as a symbol of force itself. And force is, I think, a Good Thing. Not for nothing is the Lord called a man of war. It is like the symbol of the knight, the good man in arms for a good cause. It is like Honor Harrington, doing the right thing whatever the cost. It is like any number of good men and women in the stories of our race who have faced the onslaught of evil - of the Evil One himself and all the horrors he has worked in our world - and decided to go to war rather than submit to the rule of darkness.

I have said earlier that these "violent" games (whether they show the violence or not) are also resonant with masculinity, and I should like to reiterate that point as well. The question at the heart of every man - "do I have what it takes?" - is answered in these games. The game whispers, "yes, you do." Of course it is only a fiction - but I am not prepared to reject it on the basis of that fact. Inspiration is valuable, whether it comes by means of fiction or not. And some games, Max Payne among them, touch on other parts of a man's soul as well - like the part which cries out for a woman to rescue, but who is morally beautiful and morally dangerous in her own right. Mona Sax is a type - a fictionally distorted type, but a type nonetheless - of such a Belle, and if I can draw some inspiration from that fiction I will. And of course there is the allegory of the adventure, of sweeping the beauty into an adventure (not that she herself is the adventure) which is shared together. That is a type and symbol of romance - and, indeed, a type of the relationship between mankind and God Himself. To be inspired by this lesser thing to the greater thing of that grand Adventure is, in my view, worth my time. "As many things as are true, as many things as are majestic, as many things as are righteous, as many things as are pure, as many things as are dear, as many things as are of good repute - if there is any excellence and any commendation, take account of these things" (Phil. 4:8).

I have just finished the day's round of Max Payne 2, and I have to gush about it a bit before I go on with my work. I didn't think I would like MP2 at first, since the gun sounds are not as good (in my opinion) as they were in the first one, and I was afraid that the story was going to be dumb. Well, I still have my complaints about the gun sounds, although some of them are quite good (it's really just the 9mm stuff and Ingrams that I have complaints about, and having never fired a weapon in my life I don't even know if those sound wrong or my expectations of what a gun should sound like are wrong). But the story ... oh, the story.

Max Payne 2's story is darker, I would say, than the story in the first one - the writing is still aware of its film noir-ness, and still pokes fun at itself a bit. But the direction is much more straight-faced, and the stuff that happens in the story has hit my heartstrings much harder. Max is by no means a respectable character, but I do actually feel for him, for the way his world comes apart. And there is something he's holding on to inside which fascinates me. Mona is also a fascinating character to me, and I do actually resonate with what's going on. It is dark and overdramatic, but it is also about the hope that love gives a man, and the bonds of camaraderie and shared danger, about refusing to give in to the slings and arrows of the world. And it is told so well, too. So satisfying.

Pastor Scott's family has taught me a number of things over the years - or, rather, they've been the instruments whereby things which I was taught in a number of ways were crystallized. I was reminded of one of those truths at his memorial service, when one of his sons (and my friend) spoke about how his father had taught him how to "hustle" after the things of God, how to give it your all when you seek after more of the Holy Spirit in your life. I was reminded of these words from the eleventh chapter of Luke: "I say to you, even if he will not get up and give to him on account of the fact that he is his friend, indeed on account of his shamelessness he will get up and give to him as much as he needs." There is a majesty and an overpowering grandeur to the Presence, of course - but we are also invited to throw aside our sense of shame, the worthless lies which say that God doesn't want us, or that asking for more of Him is impertinence verging on blasphemy. Rather we seek after gifts from God, at His invitation, with boldness and no shame.

So worship today at The River was so good. The River has recently started providing a stretch of carpet in front of the stage, and inviting people to use that to dance, kneel, or do whatever before the Lord as part of their worship. It has been my privilege to watch The River grow as a congregation in seeking the things of the Lord in a reasonable, unassuming manner. They seek after charismata out of a recognition that the gifts of the Spirit are made available to us for a reason - never a hint that the goal is anything other than drawing closer to God and seeking after his dunamis to do His work.

(I say charismata because that is what it is, although they do not call it that. But "the speaking voice of God" is nothing other than prophecy, words of knowledge, words of wisdom - and, conversely, prophecy is nothing other than the speaking voice of God. One of the things I appreciate about The River is that they have no pretensions that the gifts of the Spirit are weird and spooky - and because they realize that they deliberately don't use the traditional terminology for these things, presumably because that might spook those who are seeking God.)

Anyway, this is another area in which I see The River growing - expression in worship. Now on the one hand I don't mean to suggest that people who aren't dancing around and prostrating themselves before the Lord and so forth aren't worshiping. It isn't even the best part of worship - the best part of worship is when the Lord shows up, and I would rather have that and no music at all than the most jamming worship session if the Lord refused to be present. On the other hand, I think that this sort of thing is like sex. Sex is not the best part of marriage, obviously (I admit that I'm not so sure about what the best part is - but I'm sure it's not that). But to say that because a couple's love is better than sex, and therefore they're going to dispense with the sex, would be silly. On the contrary, it is because the love is better than sex that the sex occurs at all - because with a love like that you can't not give everything you have to your spouse, whatever it may be. Love delights in the smallest of expressions, and it considers none of them superfluous. So it is with worship. My desire to worship as freely as possible (and for my school congregation to worship as freely as possible) is not born out of a desire for intensity of emotion, trendiness, or any sort of pseudo-Christian voodoo invocation of God by elaborate ceremony (although I admit that the intensity is a very pleasant gift - from God to me). But the root of my desire is to give everything I can give to my Beloved - if I want to dance in my own clumsy fashion, I want to be in a congregation that encourages that. If I want to fall literally on my face, it's nice to have the carpet there. If I want to clap, lift my hands, sing harmonies, shout praises to the Lord, be still on my knees, do whatever - I want to be able to. I want to do all those things, as I am so moved - there is a certain amorous adventurousness to it, in that sense. I want to worship the Lord shamelessly, brazenly even - and it is good to be part of a congregation which is feeling that too.

"I'm flying home tonight, I've got a ticket bound for my shore ..."

That's a line from a Michelle Tumes song that I always sing to myself when I fly home. Unfortunately I am flying home this time for the funeral of my friend and pastor, Dr. Scott G. Bauer. There are a lot of thoughts in my head about Pastor Scott, which I hope to be able to write down some time in the near future. Now is not the time, though, and I don't think is the best venue for them. Maybe later, after I've had a chance to attend the service and write to his family.

Death is a very funny thing. On the one hand I think, "would that he were not dead ..." But I also think that is a very silly thought. Death, by itself, is neither a calamity nor an ending, and in many ways it is a blessing. It is strange to me how human nature cries out for an end to death, an end to pain, an end to suffering, and yet views with horror the very thing which delivers that release. Partially of course my grief at his death is the grief of losing him ... as if he had gone on a very long trip to a place I will never visit. But there is a part of me too which abhors death itself, and I think that is a very silly part of me.

As a side note, the more I study Greek the prettier it seems to me. I think it looks pretty, too. Unfortunately I do not think it looks pretty in Roman characters. This presents me with a problem, because more and more I want my blognames to be in Greek, but when I transliterate them they look silly to me. Well, I shall have to think of something creative.

One more thing an infantry simulator ought to have: no fourth wall. In the first person view, most shooters give the appearance of perspective without the reality. That is, it appears that your rifle projects in front of you, but in fact it is a two-dimensional projection which only occupies the vertical plane of the monitor screen. This makes handguns and all forms of melee combat fundamentally obsolete. What is the real reason that soldiers carry pistols? Not because they're afraid that they might run out of ammunition for their primary weapon! If that were the case they would replace the pistol with extra clips for their rifle. No, soldiers carry handguns because they're handy, because rifles are long and unwieldy in indoor situations, and there are some cases when you cannot use them (e.g., when you are toe to toe with your foe). If an infantry simulator gives me a rifle, I want it to exist as an object with the proper dimensions in the world. If I run into my foe I shouldn't be able to shoot him with that weapon. Similarly, suppose I am a man with a knife facing a man with a rifle. I should be able (assuming he doesn't gun me down, of course) to run up to him so close that his rifle is worse than useless, leaving him at the mercy of my knife.

It's game post time. Feel free to skip if this is not a side of me you're interested in. But just to be fair, this is connected to the themes of the last several posts, at least in my mind. Also, I'm posting this here (as opposed to at www.tribesroleplayers.org) because I have no desire to hand Marweas another piece of "we hate Sierra" prose. That said:

Tribes: Vengeance is on its way (though admittedly it's a ways off) and I'm expecting to be disappointed. Let me clarify that. I am not concerned that Vengeance will be a bad Tribes game. I am not concerned over game balance. I am not even especially concerned that Irrational is going to screw with the fabric of the Earthsiege\\Starsiege\\Tribes universe. I am not actually consciously familiar with Irrational, but if M'lakMavet has faith in them then that's good enough for me until I actually see them screw something up. I am fully expecting them to turn out a game which nails their goals dead-on.

I just don't like those goals.

And that is the reason I am expecting to be disappointed. Call me a hidebound retroactive DOS-hugger, but I still think of the "Tribes" franchise in terms of the early 1990s. And the dominating factor of the four franchise games released during that period was that they were science fiction simulators. Granted they had some of the standard science-fiction absurditiesas their base assumptions (e.g., the bigger the autocannon, the shorter the range), but if you accepted the basic fabric of the world they took themselves seriously, and (most importantly) they invited the player to take the world seriously.

The advent of the Starsiege era in the late 1990s saw, in my opinion, a fundamental shift in this doctrine: Dynamix added more of a world, but it took it less seriously. Compared to Earthsiege 2, and adjusting for the technological capabilities of the two games' eras, Starsiege was an arcade game. It had lots of good ideas, I'm not disputing that - but it didn't feel real. There was a dissonance between what you knew the world to be (e.g., full of hulking engines of death armed with a motley assortment of weapons) and what your experience of it was (e.g., a dimensionless vehicle armed exclusively with blasters). For a variety of reasons, tactics were boiled down: instead of a serious attempt to implement the "walking tank" idea by actually making HERC pilots think like tankers, the tactical problem was dogfighting in two dimensions - that is to say, instead of "like tanks, only with more options and things to worry about" the problem was "like jets, only with less options and less things to worry about." The universe claimed to have advanced, but anybody could see that the game didn't bear that claim out. You weren't presented with a simulation of the world, you were presented with a caricature.

Then we come to the Tribes series, the flaws and virtues of which I am not interested in discussing. In many ways the Tribes games have been wonderful shooters, and no doubt the next game will be too. But I don't want a shooter. I want an infantry simulator. I want the franchise to go back to its original distinctiveness, and that is not likely to happen.

Let me make one thing clear: I am not asking that the game be paced slower (something which Marweas appears to live in perpetual opposition to). I am asking that the game present a believable representation of battle armor combat. A few things that I think an infantry simulator should have but that I don't expect Vengeance to seriously contemplate:

1). The player should have subsystems which can fail. Nobody would accept a mecha simulator in which you couldn't blow off weapons and limbs, disable key subsystems, etc. That just wouldn't feel realistic. Well, that standard doesn't change in an FPS. An infantry simulator should not be peopled with moving shooting range targets. If the player (or his victim) is hit in the arm, he should lose the use of that arm. Or that leg. Or (if we're feeling ambitious) the hand, or the foot. If that means you can't shoot as well (or can't shoot certain weapons at all), or you can't run anymore ... well, that's what you get for allowing your limb to be broken.

2). A reasonable tactical model. An illustration: Earthsiege had a real-world tactical model (late 20th-century tanks). BattleTech, much as I love it, does not. There are certain things which are common to combat at all times. One of these is the supremacy of maneuver. The first problem a soldier faces is never "can I outshoot my opponent?" and it never has been. For an infantry simulator to feel real (i.e., like a simulation of something that could actually happen, in real life) the player must be presented with viable ambush alternatives. Closely related to the supremacy of maneuver is the importance of reconaissance. Reconaissance has always been and ought to always be of paramount importance, and the game model should reflect that. The game model should not push the player towards protracted gunfights like fugitives from some sort of ahistorical Old West. Use of cover is another. Riflemen, tankers, chopper jocks - all understand the value of putting something between them and incoming fire, and the game should allow that. Which means allowing people to go prone and crawl (the fact that crouch-waddling has historically been preferred to crawling makes absolutely no sense to me. You try moving while crouched, then while prone, and see which you prefer). Of course there are times when "hitting the dirt" is inappropriate (e.g., when receiving artillery in the woods) - and that should be incorporated too. But infantry combat will not feel real if there is no cover.

3). Death. Ground combat is not about killing people; it's about making the enemy stop fighting - it's about morale. It will always be about morale, whatever you wrap around the infantryman's body. In a computer game of course this is difficult, particularly in multiplayer. But you can approach the fundamental problem of ground combat if you actually let people die, instead of letting them respawn. Force people to actually take care of themselves and they'll start to behave like soldiers.

4). Weapons that people would use. Of course soldiers will always complain about the inadequacies of their weapons, and weapons will always be, for one reason or another, at least partially inadequate. But very, very rarely have people fought with wholly inadequate weapons. If you want to construct a universe where infantry can travel at 100 m/s, that's just fine. But, given such a world, soldiers would not fight with weapons which throw their projectiles at 87m/s. Heck, I have a paintball marker which can shoot at a higher velocity than that. This is not an issue in a game where men are limited to more or less their natural mobility. If you are going to postulate that men can move as fast, or faster, than cars on a freeway, you had best start paying attention to the muzzle velocities of your weapons. As it is, it would be easier to hit a skiing light with a two thousand-year old bazooka than with a spinfusor. When the discrepancy between target velocity and bullet velocity becomes that great, you've got a big problem (or else you need to explain why the battle armor tactical problem is akin to that faced by World War II submarines).

Of course Irrational isn't setting out to make an infantry simulator, and Sierra doesn't want one. Personally I'm not at all sure that the market wouldn't like one - we've been desensitized to one-life rounds ever since Counter-Strike, and it seems to me that after Soldier of Fortune 2 the idea of disabled limbs and so forth is one whose time has come. In fact the existence of battle armor would be a huge crutch to the public. For one thing you wouldn't even have to worry about injury until your shields were depleted (and wouldn't it be nice to see shields - a staple of the franchise since day one - make a real appearance in game, instead of lurking in the realms of after-market rationalization?). For another, you could postulate some sort of Elemental-style dealing with injury - sure things would be fuzzy and your broken leg might be locked in an armored cast, but you would be able to walk. And as for muzzle velocities (my number-one pet peeve with the Tribes series), well, again, that's been with the public since Counter-Strike. And personally I don't find it very hard to imagine Joe Gamer getting a lot of satisfaction out of popping poor fools out of the air left and right (as Johnny Rico reminds us, "it's tempting to get the most out of your jump gear - but don't do it!").

It's been a while since I updated, and I reckon it's time. I have been cast as the Pirate King in the Savoyards' production of Pirates of Penzance, which is ever so much fun. Pirates is the highlight of my week, even if Archimedes and Phoebe aren't in it this time around. I love singing with this cast - I love that it isn't just this cast, it's my cast. I am part of a company again, a company with good points and weak points and foibles and people to get to know. I love doing stage work again, singing songs where I'm encouraged to act - and oh, what a fun part this is! How wonderful it is to be able to roar at the top of my lungs one moment, and crack a joke in the middle of the song the next! And of course I love singing this music, because the numbers are expressive and the lyrics are clever and witty. And also it's no mean feat to take these inverted words and fun melodies and shape them in a way that they mean something to the audience. Succeed or fail, it's a great challenge, and lots of fun.

I just got back from my short story class, which is thankfully getting less shallow. One thing I will say for that class, though: reading Chekhov and Joyce has actually given me a greater appreciation for modern fiction, and short stories in general. It is nice to see that there are authors who had the guts to feel something other than despair and hopelessness at the state of the world - authors who could see where the world was going and write, as it were, "Hell no, we won't go!"

Of course this has also given me a greater appreciation for the fiction that I actually read. I admire the aforementioned authors for protesting, but they didn't actually offer any sort of suggestion as to where we should go - in fact, if my professor is to be believed (and on this point I think he is) they didn't think it was the writer's business to answer that question. As for me, I'm aware that the world is full of terrible things and that people are declining and paralyzed and oppressed and all that other hellish nonsense. I don't need James Joyce to tell me that.

This is why I prefer other kinds of fiction. It is not escapism, not in the dictionary sense of "The tendency to seek, or the practice of seeking, distraction from what normally has to be endured" (thank you, OED). What I am looking for is encouragement, the "trumpet's martial sound," as the policemen in Pirates put it. I read Honor Harrington and Tortall because they offer visions of character: not just of men and women who know that there is something better, but who have some idea of what that something is, and are determined to live it, come what may. It is not distraction that I seek, but inspiration: something to rouse my fighting spirit. Despair can wait. There's a war on.

Speaking of decompression, the a cappella auditioning madness has ended and I am once more At School in fact as well as geography. I'm listening to Disney songs, which is all the proof you should need. I have played through Jedi Academy once already, and I have fairly detailed thoughts on it that I might spew forth at a later date, since it's been a while since I've had a game review post here. (I give it about an 87% as an overall gaming experience.) I am seized with a desire to see Beauty and the Beast and Moulin Rouge to celebrate the resumption of school. Yes, ladies and gentlemen, I am most assuredly Back To School.

I have now officially become a Testimony alumnus, which is just fine with me. Not that I won't miss the group, of course, and it would have been nice to be in a group with Archimedes too, and besides all of that the new Testimony absolutely rocks and I think they would have been a lot of fun to fellowship and sing with and serve with. Also I perceive that God is moving Testimony into another phase of his plan for the group, and it would have been really nifty to be around for that. But instead of rejoining Testimony I have joined the Stanford Savoyards in their production of Pirates of Penzance as the Pirate King. The show is going to be a lot of fun and stands a very good chance of being an excellent show, plus I love my part.

Of course the real reason I am part of the Savoyards and not part of Testimony is that I feel like God has called me to the one and not the other. I say "feel" because that's the expression, but of course analyzing this sort of thing is rather difficult. I am not part of the play because it makes me happy, although it fills me with an ineffable happiness which kept me awake for at least an hour last night. This is one of the things that makes me trust God - every time I do something because he tells me to, it ends up being the most wonderful thing, in ways that I could not have imagined, even if it was something which by all rights ought not to have been delightful at all.

And I am not a part of the play because of anything written in the word, although there is plenty of logos about the whole thing. I would not precisely call myself a theatre person, but there is something about theatre which thrills me, something about acting which makes sense to me as a way of communication in a way that even writing does not. It does make sense to go back to a place that is a part of me, and which has been neglected for a long time. It also makes sense that I be in a place where ministry would be by contact, as it were, like yeast. Ministry activities which are designed as ministry activities make no sense to me, although I will not deny that there is a place for them in the battle plan of the Kingdom. But ministering to a theatre company, or through a theatre company - that is done primarily by being a person in whom Jesus lives, whom the Spirit is transforming. It is ministry through leadership, both of which are rooted in personal excellence - and that is something which makes sense to me.

It also makes sense to me that I would leave Testimony this year, precisely because it is the start of something new, and the group is growing more and more into its existence as a ministry. The ministry of Testimony is never something I have understood very deeply, although I have done my best to be a part of it. But I can see very clearly how I was part of the work God was doing in Testimony for the past three years, and that work has been established. I daresay that if I were to remain I would stand a very good chance of getting in the way. One has the sense that something big is going down, and I don't think it's something that my gifts are well suited to. So I don't find it surprising that I have been reassigned, as it were - nor do I find it surprising that I love my new post.

Not that I know precisely why I am in the Savoyards, or "what good will come of it." One cannot go around attempting to do good all the time. For one thing there's more good things you (and here I mean "you" generally) ought to be doing than you can be doing, if all you have to go on is your own moral code or the Scriptures or whatever. For another thing you have a comparatively bad idea of what good you actually can do, having no way of knowing if any particular action will ultimately turn out for good or for bad, or how far the ramifications will go and whether or not they will be ultimately good or bad in the end. You would need to be both omniscient and atemporal to have a satisfactorily long view of something like that. And finally, you have a very poor idea of what will actually be good for you - what will give you the requisite experiences, skills, and whatnot to do important work later on in life. This is why it is much better to go around doing what one ought to do rather than go around trying to figure out how you can do the most good, or make the biggest difference in the world: you simply don't have enough information about the plan. The only way one can possibly hope for the church to make a difference in the world is by trusting God to know what he's about, and stick to the plan regardless of how "important" it seems (we cannot all blow up the Death Star. Where would Luke have been if the man in charge of shipping those proton torpedoes to Yavin 4 had decided that logistics wasn't as "important" as flying X-Wings?). The Watchmaker must not only be in the watch (thank you, Alanna); he must be communicating to the cogs what to do - and they have to be used to listening for instructions. If we don't have that, the cosmic Resistance which is the church might as well be Norsemen - fighting on the right side, but doomed to impotence.

Well, I'm back from the big O-Show, the last big show that I will sing with Testimony for the general Stanford public for the forseeable future. O-Show (Orientation Show) is the biggest a cappella event of the year, actually, with all eight a cappella groups (and, this year, three dance groups) singing their best for the freshman class and whoever else decides to show up (which lots of people do; Memorial Auditorium is not a small place, and it's reduced to standing room only). As I write this, O-Show is still going on, but I (obviously) am not there.

This is not because I didn't want to see the other groups. I'm sure it would have been very entertaining, what with everybody bringing out their best and all. I just needed to decompress after our performance. Some people seem to think that I don't get nervous before a show. That's not true (well, it was true of some Chaminade Players shows ... but with those I had the benefits of a character to get into and hours upon hours to just be still and know). If I seem calm before a show it's probably because I'm channeling all the nervousness into good backstage behavior, with the aid of a naturally placid disposition and lots of practice. But afterwards I need to decompress, and I felt like I would explode if I stayed in a sweltering auditorium (it's been really hot up here) with no time for myself, to reflect on the show and be thankful.

For the last several days I've been playing the demo for Jedi Knight: Jedi Academy. Given that the demo contains only two levels and no multiplayer component, this probably strikes some of you as rather strange. If so, believe me: it undoubtedly strikes my family as stranger. I can't help it. I require my lightsaber. If at all possible, I require two lightsabers. I may even require a saber staff. But it's more likely I require two lightsabers, and right now this is the only way I can get them.

Part of the appeal here is, undeniably, that Jedi Academy has been clearly designed to give players (and specifically, Star Wars fans) what they want in a game like this. The saber combat model is better than ever: more special moves (more than triple!), more styles. We've got customizable characters and sabers - all eye candy, of course, with no actual bearing on gameplay. But a game is more than the gameplay (one of my pet peeves in games is when designers forget that). Gameplay is an important aspect of a game, of course, but there are others. If all we cared about was gameplay, graphics would have peaked with chess. But we want more than graphics, too. We want a game to spin a world - or, if the world already exists, we want the game to know about it.

This is not true for all games, of course, but it is true of the design philosophy behind the overwhelming majority of modern computer games, and it is this which has allowed Jedi Academy's demo to enthrall me so: the little things that say, "this is a Star Wars game" (and a good Star Wars game. I do not love all Star Wars products, but there are few things I enjoy more than a good Star Wars products). A few examples: the saber staff is in the game, and therefore we have zabraks as a playable race (Darth Maul's species). The moves are not all from the movies, either; some come from the books (e.g., the introduction of thrusting moves, which come from Mara Jade in the Heir to the Empire trilogy). And then there's the fact that the game is giving us things we want to see: the Stouker concussion rifle returns, we have dual sabers and saber staves, we have really really cool moves, old favorites like Chewbacca and the Falcon, the list goes on and on. I can't wait until I get the full version.

I just finished reading Lady Knight, which is the fourth of Tamora Pierce's Protector of the Small series and the third quartet set in Tortall (well, the fifth if you count the two quartets she wrote for "younger readers"). I have a tradition of only reading Tamora Pierce books when the entire quartet is available in mass market paperback, since I find all other sizes of book annoying to hold. However, I am thinking that I ought to get myself a set of Tortall books in hardcover, for posterity.

I want a copy of these books for two reasons. One, I'd like it if my children could read them. Two, my paperback copies won't last forever in storage, and I want to have a copy of them. I doubt that any other set of books (well, I suppose we can except Scripture) has stuck with me the way these have. Their imprint is on every word of Phoenix Earth (the influences on Phoenix Earth are many and varied, of course, but Pierce's Immortals quartet would be high on a list of influences ranked by level of influence). I can't imagine what Phoenix Earth would look like without the framework laid down by that first campaign - and what would that have looked like with no neomagic, no astral plane, no dragons? It all comes from Tortall.

But more importantly, and dearer to my heart, their imprint is on me. It was from Pierce's books, way back in elementary school, when I got my first glimpse of heroism, and all the things that are important to me - everything, from the fact that I like to dance to the way I process my relationship to Jesus - are ultimately founded on heroism. It was from Pierce's books that I first learned to work hard, whatever the odds - that I learned that a noble (read hero, man, woman, or whatever appellation makes most sense to you, but I meant and mean noble, literally) never complains, never gives up. It was from Pierce's books that I learned that the spirit which will not be conquered cannot be conquered, and that if you throw enough hard work at a situation you will win through. From Pierce's books I learned to despise bullies and cowards, to love courage and hate physical violence. And of course my entire attitude towards women stems from Pierce's books, the result of concluding some time in middle school that most of mankind treated most of womankind neither the way they deserved nor the way they truly wanted, and I was determined to be different.

I say "learned" but that's not quite right. I would have said that from Pierce's books I "vowed," but of course that's not quite right either, because it wasn't that conscious. It was a more unconscious process than that (but not a passive one) as I filtered through the messages that are found in those books - many excellent, some not - and the results of that filtering process sunk deep into my bones. I have, I admit, a certain suspicion that I was intended to find The First Adventure in the Canoga Park public library, that these books were intended to spark in me and provide fodder for the deep-seated (God-seated) love of heroes and adventure that forms such an inextricable part of my academic life, my Christianity, my masculinity, and - I suspect - will form such an inextricable part of my romantic life as well. I would not like to lose these books because they fell apart on me and were out of print. It will be good to pull them out every now and then - and I admit I have hopes that my wife and children will read them one day and go, "ohhhhhhh ... that explains a lot."

Along the same lines, but on a lighter note, I like lightsabers. A lot. I particularly like strong, capable, no-nonsense girls with lightsabers, which means I love Mara Jade (who ought to look more like the art in Mysteries of the Sith and less like Shannon Baksa, no offense to said model). It also means I am really, really looking forward to the release of Jedi Academy and Knights of the Old Republic (for the PC; I know it's out for X-Box) this fall. One of the perks to going back to school is that the start of fall is one of the major game-release seasons, and I am really looking forward to getting my hands on a lightsaber again. For the character interaction in Knights of the Old Republic, which I hear is good. For the chance to go, "I recognize that move!" (I recently watched the lightsaber duel from the end of Phantom Menace. If you look, you really can recognize basically all the stances and moves in the Jedi Knight games from that choreography. Thank you, Ray Park). And of course for all the other things that that lightsabers mean.

So yesterday was the fiftieth anniversary celebration for my Uncle Gilbert and Aunt Eva. Actually they're my great-uncle and great-aunt, but we never call them that. It was about a hundred miles away but it was pretty fun all the same. The room they rented in the hotel was packed with Asian people I didn't know, which was kind of weird. Nobody actually asked me why I was there (which is also funny ... ever thought how easy it would be to crash a big family reunion?) but I kind of felt like if they had the best I would have been able to come up with was "well, the car stopped here, and I got out." Fortunately the adults of my party had some idea of who was related to who, so I was able to find out that I was in fact the grand-nephew of the couple of honor.

Despite being in a room full of unknown relatives, I did have a good time. For one thing, we got to sit next to the minister who administered the renewal of vows and his wife, and they were a lot of fun even though I mostly sat and listened to them talking with my parents. They were interested in what I was doing, and it was nice to be able to talk about that with Christians who I thought would understand the answers. It's hard to talk about big decisions in life to people who don't presuppose that God has a plan for everyone's life and is interested in communicating that plan to them. I also found out that one of my cousins frequents Gaskell's, so perhaps I should get myself out to one of those one of these days. Especially if I could go when a lot of Stanford people were going, or go with Phoebe and Neani and Archimedes. That would probably be fun.

So, back to why I had a good time. Apparently Uncle Gilbert and Auntie Eva have been dancing since the fifties (they met at a dance when they were introduced by Gilbert's date, who was the mother of the minister and his wife at our table ... how cute is that?) and their friends like to dance, too. So during the cake cutting my other aunt Stephanie grabs Auntie Eva and my cousin Denise (whom everyone calls Dee-Dee, but I don't actually know how that's spelled) and tells them that I like to dance and they should dance with me. This was somewhat embarassing but turned out to be a good thing. Said cousin is apparently in her forties but looks and acts (at least on the dance floor) like she's in her mid to late twenties, and she grabbed me as soon as the dancing started (with "In the Mood," hee hee. I love that song). That was fun. It's always fun when a pretty girl (I know she's not really a girl, but you wouldn't say that if you'd seen her) asks you to dance. Anyway, the dance floor needed to be bigger for all the couples out there, but I had a lot of fun dancing with various relatives and impressing them. And I will admit that it makes me smile inside when a pretty girl enjoys dancing with me. I guess a lot of people noticed me because they kept asking Dee-Dee and Eva who I was, and there were things being said like, "that's my grand-nephew!" So that too was a little embarassing but there was no harm done and I was glad that people enjoyed dancing with me. I enjoyed dancing with them. Also, the live music (which was just one middle-aged Chinese guy and a vocalist) was really, really good. I usually don't like live music but these guys were great, especially when you consider there were two of them and only one instrumentalist.

It's ironic that the best time dancing I've had all summer should be with a ballroom crowd, but there you have it. Of course it was mostly so much fun because the crowd was full of fun, friendly people, which is really the most important factor. I even danced a tango with Auntie Eva, which she could follow pretty well - which is impressive when you consider that she had never seen my quasi-20s, quasi-cross-step tango before (and when you consider the level of my tango skill). It was kind of a mess of a dance, but it was a lot of fun anyway. Also, the crowd wasn't strictly ballroom (ha ha) since they also knew swing (east coast and jitterbug only ... it's funny to think that most of my generation's "old people" are too young to have learned eight-count lindy hop when they were teenagers). So they were actually pretty easy-going about style, and that made for a fun time.

This is an application of the dancing skill that I hadn't really considered when I decided to take Social I two years ago. All I was thinking of then was not feelnig left out of the unofficial Testimony activity, and getting to spend time with Blue Rose. But this is the second time I've made a big impression (quite by accident, mind) at a large family-style event just by dancing. Go figure. Still, it will be fun to be back on campus when I can dance with people I feel comfortable with ... where people don't waltz ballroom, and know how to lindy, and care about things like counterbalancing and centripetal force. Seeing Shanah and Rose and Chariessa and Phoebe and Lady and Neani and the Ailouriskai and Tigranassa, and some of the folks from Waltz Week/FNW as well ... I mean, that'll be fun. And all of the guys, too, but it's been a long time since I've held a girl's right hand and had that instant jolt, like I was holding a live wire, or felt my partner waltz me around. I look forward to it.