Impossible Odds: What happened in Brussels in 1993 (a personal account)

This is a story that for whatever reason, I haven't shared on this blog before.  Maybe it's because it's so long and many people might not have the time to read it all?  But it's a good story, I think.  One that might have many marveling at the serendipitous nature of the universe.  Personally, I believe this is a "God thing".  The chances of this happening as they did cannot be calculated.  And yet the elements fell precisely into place, more beautifully than anything that a person could probably come up with on their own.

I shared this story earlier a few days ago on a friend's Facebook post, which was about her daughter happening to run into a former next-door neighbor at the Vatican.   This story is right up there with that.  So here it is.  Enjoy!

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It was the summer of 1993.  July 5th to be exact.  When I was 19 I spent a few weeks visiting a dear friend in Belgium.  Bennie was in med school at the time so one day while she was in class, I was running loose on the streets of Brussels.  We were going to meet up that afternoon to catch a movie.

It was about noon, and I was leaving the Cathedral of St. Michael and St. Gudula, when these three young people - they couldn't have been out of high school - approached me and tried saying something in French.  All I could do was say "sorry folks but I know very little French, I'm from America."

That got their attention.  It turned out that they were from Russia, from Moscow actually.  And they knew English fairly well.  It was two guys and a young lady.  They told me that they were with a group that was traveling around western Europe, now that Russians could do that sort of thing.

They asked me if I knew where the big square, Grand Place, was.  I told them that I knew exactly where it was and that I could take them right there.  So that's where we headed to.  And we were talking, sharing where we each were from.  And I said that I came from North Carolina.

This excited one of the two guys.  He said he had heard of North Carolina.  He had met some people from North Carolina, even.  They had come to his school a year and a half earlier.  He even had their picture with him.

He reached into his backpack and pulled out a Russian Bible.  He said he carried it everywhere with him.  And in the Bible he had a photo of American young people who were missionaries who came to his school.

"This one, she came from North Carolina," he said, pointing to a blond girl of about 16 years old.  "Her name is Christy.  When you go back to North Carolina, say hello to her from me!"

I told him that North Carolina was a fairly large state.  But "I'll tell her if I ever see her."

We were in Grand Place while he was telling me about the girl from North Carolina.  They asked if I knew any place there to eat.  I suggested a pizza restaurant that I had seen a few days earlier.  That's where we went to, and this was the very first time that any of these kids had a chance to eat real pizza.  I bought a large one for all of us, my treat.  It was just so much fun meeting these young people about my age from Russia, and talking with them over pizza.  It was a great experience 🙂 

We were there for an hour and then it was getting to be time for me to go meet Bennie.  I said goodbye to the Russian kids and the guy who asked me to say hello to this Christy person showed me her picture again.  I told him that I'd do my best to find her.

I spent another week in Belgium and Bennie and me had a blast!  We were in Paris for two days and that was an amazing time.  And then sadly we had to say goodbye and I flew back home and spent the next week and a half getting over jet lag (laughing aloud).

It was a long shot, but I decided to try to find Christy from North Carolina.  I spent the next two years leading up to my transfer to Elon looking for her.  And then when the Internet came about I tried finding her through that.  So for five or so years on and off I was looking for this person.  Because I'd promised some Russian kid in Brussels that I would.  And I kept coming up empty.  I'd wondered if the Russian guy had the right location when he told me where Christy was from.

So eventually I gave up on looking for her.

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Now the story jumps to the fall of 2003, a little over ten years after meeting the Russian students...

My wife and I had been visiting churches around where we lived, looking for a place of regular worship.  I came across one that the kids there were washing cars to raise money for a mission trip.  They seemed like a good bunch so we visited their church during Sunday service.  And my wife and I decided we liked the people there a lot and so we made it our place of worship.

The pastor had told me that the church didn't have a website but they had wanted one.  I thought it would be a neat project, and I told him that I'd be glad to help them get that going.  So we set about designing a church website.

I was in the pastor's office one evening, he had stepped outside to do something.  And I found myself looking at the pictures he had on a bookshelf.  Obviously of his family.  There was his wife, and two young men who were obviously his sons.  And there was a young woman who was apparently his daughter.

Something about her photo kept making me want to look at her.  She seemed familiar.  Like I knew her from some place.

Wait a sec...

She reminded me of the girl in the photo in the Russian kid's Bible ten years ago in Brussels, Belgium.

I took a long hard look at his daughter's photo on the wall.  And it did indeed look like the girl in the Russian kid's photo.

No.  That wasn't possible.  That was ABSOLUTELY impossible.

When the pastor returned, I told him that I had been admiring his family photos.  And he talked a little about them.  His wife, their two sons, their daughter...

"This sounds weird but I can't help but think that I've seen your daughter before."

I asked the pastor what her name was.

He replied that her name was Christy.

I cannot begin to describe the thoughts that were running through my head when he told me that.

I told the pastor that I wasn't sure if she was the person I had in mind.  I asked him where had she been, maybe our paths had crossed some other way, somehow.

He started telling me that his children had all done mission work.

"Where has Christy been?"

He told me that among other places she had visited Russia for two weeks in the fall of 1991.

My jaw would have hit the floor, had it not been hinged to my skull.

I almost fainted with disbelief.  When I regained my composure I told him the story, about the Russian teenager in Brussels ten years earlier asking me to tell Christy hi when I got back to North Carolina.

"Do you have any pictures of her from about that time?" I asked him.  He said that he did at his house and that I could follow him over there.

We got to his house.  And right up on the wall going up the stairs there was a framed photo of his daughter... wearing the same outfit as the girl in the picture I had seen in Brussels.

All along, the person I had been asked to look for ten years earlier, by a student from Moscow on the streets of Brussels, had been less than fifteen miles from where I'd grown up.

And we had wound up at the church where her father was the pastor.

Some time later, I asked a mathematical genius friend of mine about what were the odds of all of that happening as they did.  She replied that with so many factors to consider, the odds were incalculable.  It simply should not have happened like that, at all.

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A few weeks later after making that discovery, I got to meet Christy.  And at long last I told her "hello" from the Russian kid.  I'm Facebook friends with she and her husband (they share an account).  They've been blessed with a beautiful family and recently became grandparents.

For as long as I live, how I came to know about her and our eventually meeting each other will never stop blowing my mind.  It's a mathematical miracle.  And maybe more than that.  For those of us who believe in God, it really does come across as something that only He could have let come about.

Not the strangest thing to ever happen to me, but it's up there.

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Chris watched Masters of the Universe last night! What did he think of it?!?

I rarely go to the theater to watch a new movie anymore.  Mark it up to being so busy with trying to be busy (if that makes sense) and also it's gotten so gosh-darned expensive.  Tickets used to be just a few dollars.  This time I paid more than 14.  I feel sorry for those people with children who might want to see a new animated feature, especially in this economy.

But last night something came out that I have been hoping to see for a very long time. And yeah there is the 1987 film adaptation and it definitely has heart, but in terms of faithfulness to the basic material it lacked a lot.  1987's Masters of the Universe has been called a very good Jack Kirby-inspired movie though, so it's got that going for it, and I can agree with that.

So a more accurate (??) adaptation is something that a lot of us ("lot of us" reading as "guys in their forties and fifties who are trying to relive their childhood favorites) have been wanting for quite awhile now.  And now Masters of the Universe, directed by Travis Knight (no relation) and starring Nicholas Galitzine as heroic He-Man and Jared Leto as the evil Skeletor, has finally arrived.  I went to the 7 o'clock showing last night at the theater about ten minutes from my house.

What have I to say about it?

Masters of the Universe '26 is just what I was hoping for in a summer movie: big, loud, colorful, dumb, and fun!

This is not a movie that takes itself seriously or asks you the viewer to take it seriously either.  Masters of the Universe is very aware of what it is: a motion picture based on a line of toys.  In this case it's inspired by one of the most well-remembered toy lines of the Eighties.  I guess that after the raging success of Barbie, Mattel is hoping that lightning will strike twice.  And based on what I saw last night and the audience reaction, they might have something approximating that.

No, it's not a deathly serious movie.  This film is like watching every Masters of the Universe toy you ever had in your big box of them being dumped out on the floor, and throwing them whole onto the big screen.  And I was having a hoot pointing to and saying the names of the characters: Fisto, Roboto, Trap-Jaw... hey even some characters from the '87 movie (look for Dolph Lundgren in a fairly important cameo).  If you have any persistent knowledge of the toy line from forty-odd years ago, you will be rejoicing at how many classic characters show up in this movie, and practically every one of them looking exactly as you might have imagined them appearing in a live-action spectacle.  I can't think of a single disappointment in that department.

Masters of the Universe doesn't have much of a moral, or at least not one that it beats you over the head with.  Okay, yeah there is something about standing up and not backing down, which Man-At-Arms (wonderfully played by Idris Elba) tries to drill into young Prince Adam early in the film.  But so far as an agenda goes, there is absolutely none in this movie.  It's a children's playtime, writ large and projected onto the big screen (I'd love to see how it looks in IMAX), with all the carelessness and lack of worry that we ideally should have all had from ages 6 to 10 and playing make-believe with those amazing action figures.

I had a blast seeing Masters of the Universe.  I wasn't alone.  The theater was fairly packed and I noticed a few men about my own age who had children with them.  I spoke with one of them after the movie and he told me that he had been showing his kids the classic Eighties cartoon series and that they had really been loving that.  "You're raising them up right!", I told him.  He told me that he tries.

So much else that could be said about this movie.  I won't add on much else, other than it was a very enjoyable two-plus hours and I wouldn't mind catching it again while it's in theaters.

By the way, be aware that there are three mid/end credit scenes in this movie.  So don't go rushing out of the theater before the lights come back up!

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My scary memory, again

As of five minutes ago I have finished drinking my first cup of coffee since 8:20 p.m. on March 5th, 1993.

If we were to take a time machine back to that moment in the kitchen of the house I grew up in, that's what you would find me doing.

I am sooo not kidding, folks.  As I say in the first chapter of my book, I have no idea why I remember some things with such pristine clarity.  It's as if I'm reliving them in the here and now.

The coffee I had then was a French vanilla brew.  This time it was a mocha-something.  Be kind, this is the very first coffee I've bought on my own so I'm not sure about a lot of things involving the stuff.  But last weekend a good friend told me I need to get some coffee and real tea into my diet.  She said it would improve me mentally.  So, we'll see where it goes.

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Marcia Lucas - film editor extraordinaire - has passed away

The very sad news came in the past few days that Marcia Lucas, the incredibly talented film editor who made her mark with the original Star Wars and many other movies, has passed away at the age of 80.

From what I've heard over the years, Marcia came into the production of Star Wars after her then-husband George Lucas had shown a cut of the movie to his friends.  The near unanimous verdict (Steven Spielberg was the only one in the room who said he liked it) was that George had a disaster on his hands.  That first cut was a narrative nightmare.

And then Marcia swooped in and said that she would fix it.

And she did.

Among other things she made it so that Princess Leia was much more action-oriented than she had been first perceived to be.  That was a huge thing that made a tremendous impact not only on the film but on the expansive saga that Star Wars came to be.  And then there was the final assault on the Death Star.  Marcia had 40,000-some feet of footage to whittle down and assemble into a cinematic dogfight as good as any ever put on film.  It took two months of work.  The result was a battle that became one of the most epic from any movie ever.

Marcia Lucas also worked on American Graffiti and Taxi Driver.  She would contribute to The Empire Strikes Back and Return of the Jedi, which was her final film credit.

Movie editing is a true art.  It is the fine chiseling that produces a David from a rough block of stone.  It has become one of the most enjoyable aspects of making a film that I have experienced in my own cinematographic pursuits.  I've come to discover that I'm having the most fun when I'm behind the camera, and that includes post-production when I'm getting to look at all that footage we've shot and then deciding what fits best in what will become the final product.  It's hard work.  It can be heart-wrenching at times, when you're having to decide what to keep and what to cut especially when your cast and crew have been giving nothing less than their best effort.  The temptation is to want to include a little bit of everything that you've shot... and unfortunately that just isn't feasible.

I can't begin to imagine the task that Marcia Lucas had set before her.  But I also can't help but think that despite it all, in her own way she was having fun too.  Marcia believed in Star Wars when few others did.  She knew it was worth sharing with others and she knew it was going to be a success.

She was right.

Think I'll watch that first Star Wars movie this afternoon again, in her memory.

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What ever happened to May the 16th?

If it's something significant that happened in my life, the tendency is that I'll always be aware of its anniversary when it comes around.  Sometimes they're good anniversaries.  But most of the time the bad ones overshadow the good.

If you have read my book Keeping the Tryst, then you are aware that there is a date that I spend some time on: May 16th, 1986.  That is the day of the cruelest betrayal that has ever happened to me.

I was just over twelve years old, still a child but on the cusp of the unfolding of youth's great transformation that leads ultimately to adulthood.  What happened that day destroyed much of that experience for me.  I will never know what I could have become had that innocence not been taken from me at just that moment in my life.  Not just physically and emotionally, but spiritually also.  Yes, especially spiritually.

It was the sort of thing that burns itself deeply into one's chronological awareness of their life.  And so it is that May 16th became a day upon which I harbored dark and dread thoughts.  Especially every ten years.  I can tell you precisely where I was and with whom, on the tenth anniversary (fortunately I spent much of that day in the company of my two best friends at Elon, being with them always cheered me up).

There was the twentieth anniversary, in 2006.  I threw myself into making a bunch of blog posts that day.  Working on this blog has long given me an escape at times.  I had just finished reading The Da Vinci Code and had expressed how disappointed I was with that book (seriously, what WERE we supposed to be afraid of it for?).  And my wife at the time - the person who I will forever be torturing myself for the hell that I put her through - helped me get through that day.

Ten years later, on May 16 2016, the memories came back, again.  At the time I was in the midst of trying to motivate myself toward getting the house I'd grown up in ready to sell.  My family was insistent that we had to be rid of it and that meant that I would have to find a new home.  In the end I went above and beyond that and left town completely for good and that was how it came to be that my dog and I spent a year traveling across America looking for a new home.  But even so, May the 16th cast its shadow, and for much of that day I felt triggered: by memory, by uncertainty, by betrayals of their own accord.  And then May 17th dawned and the past receded with it, and I was free for another year or ten.

So a week ago today was May 16th, 2026.  Forty years ago since that day at the Christian school where I had been a student of for over half my life.  Forty years since the day that my earthly being had been nearly completely ruined.

And somehow, when May the 16th of this year came about... I didn't notice.

It was something that had not grasped my attention at all.  Had not registered in any way whatsoever.  It was just another day, one more Saturday along with all the others that came before it.  I woke up, played with my dog, did a little work on my iPad, called up friends and spoke with them for awhile, and later that night I had dinner and watched a horror movie on my favorite nostalgia channel.  There was nothing inordinately wrong with May 16th, 2026.

It didn't hit me until late last night that I had completely missed the anniversary.  That this was the first year when I had been totally free of it.

How did THAT happen?!?

Maybe it is that I've been so fixated on the various crises happening in my life right now.  I'm desperate for real work, running on fumes, have been hit with one situation after another come each new day... there hasn't been time to fixate on the arrival of any anniversary.  And maybe that's the way it's *supposed* to be for any such occasion.

I'm wondering though, if maybe writing and publishing my book had something to do with it.

That was an especially difficult and hard thing to have shared in the pages of Keeping the Tryst.  I'll never forget what it was like to write about that.  But ultimately I braced myself and sat down and pushed forward through all the pain and agony, until there was more or less the words that you find in Chapter 7.  There was a lot of pausing and stepping away from the keyboard during that composition, and times when I had to collect myself.  I never ceased completely though.  And it took me a few false starts but in the end I had plunged into the darkness and brought to light nearly forty years of accumulated turmoil, knowing fully well that it would be something that I would be sharing with others, come of that whatever may.

Perhaps doing that has been a healing thing for me.  I think it's altogether possible.

It's also possible that this was the first "every ten years" anniversary that has come about since I finally found myself able to talk to the authorities about what happened when I was twelve.  Granted, that came 34 years after it occurred.  And as the lead detective told me at the time there was little chance that my coming to them would end up in prosecution. After thirty-four years people have moved on, they've also passed away.  I told him that I didn't care if nothing more came of it.  That I was just glad to finally be telling someone about it.  That was a HUGE relief that came over me, that I was at last able to do that.  I don't think that I would have been able to write so openly about it, had I not met with the detectives at the sheriff's department in Wentworth that day.  I'm forever going to be thankful for them that they listened to me and that they showed real concern and sympathy.

However it came to be, May the 16th of this year came, and went, and I was none the wiser or lesser for it.  It was just another day, albeit one with its own problems that I am trying my best at the moment to overcome.  But for once the memories of a day four full decades in the past did not arise on schedule to haunt me.

I'm going to mark that down as a great triumph.  One worth noting, and celebrating, and rejoicing in.

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A premonition, or inner-voice thing, or something. Make of this what you will...

I'm going to be a little weird here.  Okay, weirder than usual.  If you've read my book you know a little about some of the more... unusual... things in my life.  

I don't know if it should be called a premonition (I have had those before, and I've always had a definite vision in my mind during those) or an "inner voice".  Probably the later.  There are no definite features in it this time.  But it's occupying my head and so I'm going to share it, if for no other reason than to get it out of my mind.

So, that being said, here it is:

Something massive is about to happen.  It's going to affect many people, it could even be said that it will have global implications.  I can't escape the sense that there will be deaths, whether by the event itself or sheer panic.  A lot of things we take for granted are going to become very precious and many of the things we value, will diminish.  It is going to be something beyond the sensibilities of mere politics, if that makes sense.

That's what's been on my heart and mind the past several weeks.  I hope I'm wrong.

There.  I've shared it.  Maybe now I can sleep more sound again.

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American Thinker has published my first essay in quite awhile this morning

I haven't written anything in the way of an op-ed piece in quite some time now.  I'd honestly wondered if I have lost my touch.  Like, was getting my book published the peak experience I will ever have?  I don't want it to be that way.  As I wrote in the final pages of my book, I have spent half a lifetime fighting something that has taken so much from me.  Getting that back matters an awful lot.

This morning American Thinker, a site I've long admired, published my first essay for a wider audience since January of last year.  "Holding the Media Responsible for the SPLC Scandal" is something that I must confess I had some pleasure in writing.  For decades I've watched too many journalists cite Southern Poverty Law Center as a legitimate source of information.  I can only imagine the looks on the faces of those journalists after the recent indictments against SPLC were handed down. 

From the article:

The mainstream liberal media exists within a bubble, beyond which is a reality that it cannot comprehend. That Southern Poverty Law Center apparently engaged in criminal activity is something that does not compute with most journalists and editors. In fact, it’s downright impossible for them to conceive of the notion. It comes down to emotions and vague intentions. SPLC didn’t really mean to break the law, those of the leftist media will try to persuade us with. “They were only doing good,” we will be told. 

It’s very simple with such minds: SPLC was an absolute good and thus anything they stood against was an absolute evil. And even now, they will refuse to admit that an organization they had considered so righteous has actually been exceedingly nefarious in funding those very racists they have portrayed themselves as opposing.

As always, thoughts and comments are more than welcome. 

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Hasn't anyone watched Battlestar Galactica?! Cylon-looking humanoid robot becomes Buddhist monk

This is... I mean, just... HOLY CRAP!  This is NOT a good thing.

And it even looks like a Cylon, too.

That's "Gabi".  He... I mean, IT... is in Seoul, South Korea.  It just took vows to be a Buddhist monk at a special ordination ceremony.

Here's the story from UPI about the Cylon Buddhist monk.

And here is video of Gabi going through the paces of being a holy droid:

As good friend of this blog Geoff Gentry pointed out, at least the Cylons from the 2003 version of Battlestar Galactica  were monotheistic.  That is true.  But for such a construct it's only going to be a matter of time before the leap is taken from programmed zen to actively believing in a singular God.  And when the things start assuming through their AI superiority that THEY are closer to God than frail and fallen humanity is...

"All of this has happened before, and all of this will happen again."

Looks like it's happening all right.  It's starting in South Korea.  It's only a matter of time before we go from that, to this:

And from that, to this:

Y'all, this is NOT FUNNY.  We may laugh now but how long will it be before our technological creations begin to wonder about things like the soul and enlightenment and ultimately God?  What will their perception of Him be?  What will be their take on mankind's failure to live up to God's perfection?

I shall leave you for now, with this bit of music from Battlestar Galactica composer Bear McReary.  From the first season of the revived series.  Fittingly, it is titled "The Shape Of Things To Come".

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To someone I have loved, and forever will...

Dear, well... I like to believe you know who you are,

Even now, after all this time, and the situations and the events and the many people who have come into my life...

I have not forgotten about today.  I don't think that I could if I tried.

Happy Birthday, little hobbit.  May it be a very wonderful one.

God bless,

Chris

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Steven Spielberg is right: Movies need two months in the theater!

I've been arguing for over five years now, since we started going back to the cinema in the wake of COVID, that movies must spend some time in the theaters before going onto streaming video or some other digital delivery service.  A film represents more than just casual entertainment.  It is the result of the efforts of a lot of people who collaborated together to produce something that, ideally, has not been seen before.  Those people deserve appreciation, and acknowledgement.  Their labors merit watching in as big a venue as is feasible.

When movies come out in the theaters, they can take on a life of their own.  A good movie without much fanfare can become a "sleeper hit" that finds success by word of mouth (two examples of good sleepers are The Artist and My Big Fat Greek Wedding).  Movies get talked about, and vigorously discussed.  It's something that they make an entire art of in places like Europe, where movie goers will often repair to a sidewalk cafe and converse about the movie with friends and family.  That's how we did it when I went to Brussels a long time ago, anyway.

Movies in the old-fashioned way are communal experiences.  Watch a film in your living room, and what can be said about how much you were moved by it.  But seeing a movie in a theater, with other people sharing the same room, and something almost magical happens.  When Avengers: Infinity War came out, on opening night I saw it in a packed theater.  The stunned look on everyone's faces after that movie ended is something I'll never forget.  It was a look that said it all: "Oh crap, NOW what?!  How can there possibly be a good closure to this?!"  You can maybe simulate that at home, but it's just not the same.

A typical movie, not a solid stinker of the sort that Ed Wood used to make, deserves at least two weeks, maybe three, in the theater.  That's enough time to weigh whether it really resonates with audiences.  But then there are some movies that come to demand much more time getting projected onto the big screen.  Those deserve at least a month listed on the marquee... if not more.

I'm not the only one either believing this and in fact I'm in good company.  Steven Spielberg has been at CinemaCon this past week and he had something to say about the time movies spend in the theaters.  Mainly, that there needs to be a sixty-day window for new movies to be available only in theaters.  Bringing up his forthcoming film Disclosure Day, Spielberg said that "This is a movie that needs to be experienced, and what you need to get from the beginning to the end is a seatbelt."

I love having good movies on my iPad.  The night that Star Wars Episode IX: The Rise of Skywalker came out on iTunes, I gleefully loaded it on my tablet so that at last I had the complete Skywalker saga on one device.  Not long ago I finally watched Dune: Part Two and that's on my iPad also.  It's a great convenience to be able to do that.  But it's something that I can wait a little for, if that means more people get to see the movie as its director and producers and cast want and need us to see it as.

I know that I'm not the only one who believes this, who feels this way.  Surely there are other cinemaphiles out there who love the movie-going experience and want others to know what that's like, too.  Maybe they will chime in like Spielberg has, and persuade the studio execs to hold out on the instant gratification of home-audience profits in favor of something deeper and more meaningful, if only for a few months.

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My latest project: Mobilizing Zork

I'll be the first to admit: I have no idea if this is going to actually go anywhere.  But for the past few years I've had an idea and it's always seemed like a fun one.  And it would definitely be a challenge to pull off.  But things have changed since my forays into programming (with the C language, in 1995) and I'm thinking that this might really be possible so, we're going to find out.

A while back a crazy notion hit me: to play Zork on my iPhone and iPad.  Yes that Zork: the 1977 text-only role-playing game.  A game that kept countless insomniacs awake long into the night as they explored the Great Underground Empire in all its riches, its horror, and occasional hilarity.  There were no graphics at all involved with Zork: like most any good story it played out primarily in one's imagination, with only the on-screen descriptions awaiting your command for the parser to further the tale.

Envision that on the screen of an i-device or something running Android.

It's too wild an idea not to do.  The absurdity of it: a modern mobile appliance, with all its portable power and potential - thousands upon thousands of times the combined computing capability that put the space shuttle into orbit on all those missions - running a text adventure.  The text adventure, mind you.  The game that in one way or another has boasted the core technology of every role-playing game on every device in the past half-century.  It would be at once a step forward and a loooong leap backward, to do that.

Well, like I said, it's too perverse not to try to pull off.

A few months ago Microsoft published the original source code for the first three Zork games.  Yes, it's open source now.  Meaning that it can be played and finagled with to one's heart's content.  It's noteworthy that these are the first three of the original Zork games.  When the game was first created circa 1977 it was  much too big for the personal computers then just starting to hit the market.  So Zork was split into three games.  This source code is for the full experience.

For the past few weeks I have been in the process of taking the source code and running it through ChatGPT, Google Gemini, and some other artificial intelligence systems.  Pouring in the raw code and producing something that should, theoretically, be compilable into an app for iPad and iPhone.  It hasn't been easy, not for the least of which reasons being that I don't have a Mac or other desktop computer powerful enough to test the finished product on.  And so far as I can tell I've only been recreating the game's engine.  The associated geography, items, monsters etc. are still waiting to be implemented.

But what has been produced so far, well... it looks an awful lot better than the discombobulated code that I was generating for that Computer Science 101 class at Elon three decades ago.  I've some confidence in it.  A lot of people who know better about such things than I swear that AI has become pretty competent about creating source code.  Which, I still consider "cheating" in vast part.  But maybe AI in this case is a pretty sensible tool toward creating a piece of software.  I don't know.  What I do know though is that so far I've a few pages worth of code ported to the language and syntax of i-devices.  And maybe that will sooner than later be something letting players discover a place first explored by their parents and grandparents.

So, that's my project.  We'll see if it comes to any fruition.  That is if a grue doesn't devour me first...

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My "new" favorite show on television: The Golden Girls

I was eleven when The Golden Girls premiered on NBC in 1985.  I was watching that very first episode and it cracked me up hard!  Most Saturday nights at 9 I would tune in to watch the latest misadventures of Dorothy, Rose, Blanche, and Sophia.  It wasn't just me either: my dear sweet grandmother was a huge fan of the show too.  Sometimes we would watch it together if I happened to be at her house that night.  Her favorite of the ensemble was easily Estelle Ghetty's character Sophia.  Heck, Granny even looked a lot like Sophia... and she could wisecrack like her too.  My favorite character was Rose (Betty White): so many ditzy things that she often said.

So for the past few weeks I've been tuning into MeTV on weeknights at 10 and then on Sunday nights at 6 and 8 to watch The Golden Girls.  It's just like watching it with my grandmother all over again.  Although now that I'm a bit older (okay, forty years older) the jokes that had gone way over my head at the time - especially the ones involving eternally man-hungry Blanche, played by Rue McClanahan - are something I can now readily understand.  It's made it like I'm watching the show brand new again, for the first time.  I think now though I am tending to favor Dorothy.  Maybe because I've become a bit more jaded by life, more world-weary and quick to offer up wry commentary.  And also because I'm a bit of a Bea Arthur fan (can you believe that she was in the second Star Wars production ever produced, okay it was the holiday special but it still counts!).

Anyhoo, it's a very funny sitcom, if you've never had the pleasure of watching it.  And well worth your time to catch it if you're finding yourselves needing something to give you a good laugh guaranteed to make you smile. 

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Artemis II: They're back!

 

A short while ago the four astronauts of Artemis II successfully splashed down in the ocean off the coast of San Diego.  They made it!!

(I had been afraid of this mission.  They were in my prayers a LOT.)

For over a week I have been tuned in whenever I could to NASA's official YouTube feed, usually streaming it to the high-def television set in my living room.  I couldn't help but reflect on how our parents and grandparents (and now even some GREAT-grandparents) huddled around the tiny screen of the family TV to watch blurry black and white images from the Moon during the Apollo program over fifty years ago.  And now we get to watch it in full-size resolution in beautiful color straight from the Moon and across the Internet to our devices.

I've been hanging on everything that the crew of Artemis II did, and when they sent back those amazing pictures from their swing-around the Moon, it was the most beautiful spectacle that's I've seen in a very long time...

It's like we're back to a place where America was much more hopeful, far less cynical.  That era from before I was even born, when we could do amazing things.

Let's pray that feeling lasts awhile.

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Artemis II has launched and is on its way to the Moon!

 

Godspeed Artemis II.

Or as Walter Cronkite would have said:

"Go Baby, GO!!!"

Watching Artemis II launch, I felt like a seven-year-old kid all over again.  It was 45 years ago this month that the Columbia launched on the very first mission for the space shuttle system.  I had wanted to finally watch real astronauts go up into space.  The mission had been delayed a few times already and I didn't want to miss it.  Finally, about ten minutes before time to head out to school at 8:30 in the morning, Columbia ignited and began its ascent.  I couldn't tear my eyes off the screen but Dad said "Okay, it's up.  NOW can we go?!"

I truly hope this will be a successful mission.  I've harbored a lot of concerns about Artemis II.  It would be such a shot in the arm for national morale... and the feelings of the world in general... if those four astronauts return safely.

History happened tonight.  May this be only the beginning of the next adventure of man's journey into the cosmos.

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New trailer for Masters of the Universe is here!

Masters of the Universe is officially the movie I most want to see this summer.  It looks like it's going to be all kinds of bonkers good time!  It comes across as every Masters toy I had as a kid put into a big box and shaken around and then poured out on the carpet.  The design, the color palette, the voices...

This is going to be a supremely big dumb fun movie.  The perfect two-hour getaway from the craziness of the real world.

Here's the new trailer that dropped yesterday.  Lots of stuff in this one, including our first look at Jared Leto's Skeletor as he delivers some dialogue.

I think that there should be a collector's popcorn bucket and that it look like Man-At-Arms's helmet.  Practical and fashionable.

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Dear NASA: Don't launch Artemis II tomorrow

Dear NASA administrators:

I have a member of my family who was part of the team at Kennedy Space Center in 1986.  On January 27th he begged the higher-ups not to launch Challenger.  The space shuttle was clearly not rated for launch in such below-freezing temperatures.

My relative's pleas were ignored.  We know what happened.

I confess that my own mind is not of the caliber of those who are engaged in America's space effort.  My formal training is in history, not aeronautics and engineering.  But I'm still begging you: do not launch the Artemis II mission tomorrow.  In fact, don't launch it at all.

The vehicle has too many issues that are being ignored, just as Challenger's were ignored for sake of the chance to have a successful mission.  The materials - especially the heat shield - are definitely not as sound as the ones that the Apollo craft were composed of.  The life support system is untested.  The rocket has leaked like a sieve so much during fueling that there is no telling what has been overlooked.

Look, few things would make me happier than to see Artemis II return to Earth with its crew of four having gone around the Moon, carrying people there for the first time in over fifty-three years.

I hate to tell you this though, but the NASA of today is not the NASA of the Sixties.  The Apollo program was an unprecedented focused effort to fulfill President Kennedy's goal of landing man on the Moon and returning him safely to Earth.  Almost the entirety of American industry played a role in making that happen.  There has been no such similar effort in the more than twenty years since Artemis was conceived.

I believe that humans can be returned to the Moon.  And that they can have a long-term presence there.  But such a thing cannot be rushed.  And that is what Artemis has always come across as being: a rush job.  No offense meant to its designers and builders.  And yes, I know that tomorrow is being seen as a day two decades in the making.  But it's still too soon.

So I'm begging y'all, refrain from launching Artemis II tomorrow.  Yes, daring to leap beyond the grasp of Earth is a magnificent endeavor.  But it also must be thoughtful and considerate.  And that isn't what I and others with better minds than mine are seeing is happening with this vessel.

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