Yes, but did she throw 276 air freshners into the deal?

It's been years since Oprah Winfrey's show really interested me (then again it's been years since most television really interested me). Back in the day she could find something that would grab anyone's attention at least one day out of the week. But that was before "The Oprah Winfrey Show" became about... well, Oprah. Her magazine and book club always struck me as self-serving gimmicks and I understand that there's an entire show on Oxygen or Nitrogen or whatever that women's cable network is that covers nothing but what happens behind the scenes of her other show. Go figure.

But I had to smile yesterday when I heard that to kick off the 19th season of her show, Winfrey gave a new car to each person in her 276-member studio audience. The massive giveaway of the new Pontiac G6 sedans was part of a plot hatched by Winfrey and General Motors. I didn't see it but I heard that after a bit of teasing the audience Winfrey ran across the stage screaming "Everybody gets a car! Everybody gets a car!" Granted, Winfrey herself didn't buy the cars herself (they were donated by General Motors, which when you figure the cost of regular advertising versus the ratings of the Oprah show it comes out that the $7 million giveaway actually saved money on the advertising value alone) but given that everyone in the crowd had a loved one who wrote to Winfrey about how that person needed a new car, you can't help but appreciate that there was at least a sliver of charity at work here.

Still, the whole thing was the beginning of the theme for Winfrey's theme this season: "Wildest Dreams Come True", and I've got to wonder if getting a new car really qualifies as a "wildest dream". Your greatest dreams shouldn't be about getting material things, or finding yourself covered in fortune or glory, or waking up on a pile of money with the most attractive person imaginable beside you. They shouldn't be about the acquisition of something, at all.

My "wildest dream come true" would be to make it as a successful writer, to also have some luck as a filmmaker, to someday be as good a servant to my family, my friends, my church and my community as I can be. And yes, I do want to have a bit more money than I have now (actually a LOT more money wouldn't hurt) but if any of those things were given to me outright, I couldn't appreciate it. Instead I need to earn my dreams, and let them come or go based on my own vision and temerity. With all due respect to her, I'd love for that to be God making my wildest dreams come true, not Oprah. If she or anyone wants to really let me have my "wildest dream" become a reality, all I ask is that I be given a real shot at something, without bias or favoritism, and whether I rise or fall or please or fail, to know that I gave it my best. It's not the destination that makes the dream worthwhile... it's the journey.

It has to to be noted though that it's been awhile since I've seen a new picture of her and I must say... Oprah looks HOT!

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George W. Bush sent a thug to tell me to "get the f-ck out of here!"

Y'know, I like to think that in the course of writing stuff in this lil' space (for whoever might find it, all two of them at least for certain) that people will get the impression that, at heart, I'm a pretty nice guy. Not a perfect guy mind ya (my lovely spousal overunit, God bless her, would be the first to tell anyone that much :-) because I do have weaknesses of human nature that I contend with on a daily basis. But overall, I try to convey that you're reading the words of a guy who's a big kid at heart, loves things like collecting Star Wars figures and making short movies with his friends, will talk with you about anything and everything from why the black and white episodes of The Andy Griffith Show were better than the color ones to the history of the Soviet space program, and whose biggest goal in life is to someday buy a house, then buy a brown male miniature Dachshund that I intend to name "Colonel Klink", and then buy lots of babies (if eBay will have lifted my getting banned by then).

I'm a nice guy. I try to always do what's right. That's what I was taught to do growing up: to be honest to yourself and to others, do your best, leave things in better shape than how you found them (learned that one from camping in the Boy Scouts), and try to never hurt anyone. It's that last one that I've struggled with most of all.

Which is what's at the heart of what I'm considering - not right now though, but please keep reading - as a post on this blog. Because it's not so much a matter about whether it would hurt a man (in all honesty I doubt it would) but rather...

"Is my heart right to want to do this? Am I being led to do this out of a sense of spite, and anger that I still haven't been able to let go of completely? Am I really being the example of that Christ-like spirit that I should be demonstrating to others instead? Shouldn't I just forget that this happened, and let God handle it? Shouldn't I instead be trying to love the man, and the other people that he sent that were involved with this? Because doesn't the fact that I am desiring to love them in spite of themselves show that I'm not bound as they are to the carnality of this world, for which they should be pitied instead of despised?"

Thoughts like that have been running through my head, on and off, for the better part of four years now. I realized not long after all this happened that when I stayed angry at people like that - who wouldn't care whether or not I was angry at them anyway - all I was really doing was letting them have that much more control over my life than they deserved. Which is none at all.

So, I'm not angry at that anymore. My life is a far better thing without it. And I like to think late at night that, somehow, I was able to find a certain happiness that just can't be enjoyed or even discovered by people who will never get any further in life than being a career politician, a hired goon or cops that abuse their authority. They think they have power... but so what? I have freedom. And there's a difference between the two.

What happened four years ago has been something I only tend to dwell upon when I hear or read something about the guy who initiated it. Maybe that's what he wants for some reason: for his name to forevermore be mentally associated with things that didn't used to happen once upon a time in America. And the part of me that tries to rationalize things did wonder if the whole thing was a serious misunderstanding of some sort that maybe I should have been a lot more forgiving of anyway.

I wish that I could believe that last one. As a Christian who tries to forgive and forget, I really do.

Except that it's been happening to a lot of people lately. It's been happening ever since four years ago. And at the risk of coming across as a biased observer, it's gotten a lot worse than what I knew about it then. Heck, for all I know, I may have been one of the very first people that was introduced to the concept of the "free speech zone". And wasn't I more than a little disturbed when THAT image kept popping up in various news stories during the past four years?

Everyone at some time has heard this stanza...

First they came for the Communists,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Communist.
Then they came for the Jews,
and I didn't speak up,
because I wasn't a Jew.
Then they came for the Catholics,
and I didn't speak up,
because I was a Protestant.
Then they came for me,
and by that time there was no one
left to speak up for me.

Most people know it but surprisingly few have heard of the man who wrote them: Martin Niemoller. As one of the leaders of the "Confessing Church" movement during Hitler's Germany, Niemoller helped organize a spiritual resistance to oppose the Nazi-sponsored "German Christian Church" that had cornered the market on Protestantism in that country. Anyway, Niemoller's bit of poetry has been coming to mind a few times lately. And though I was obligated to make a note of it in my capacity as a journalist then, part of me has wondered not a few times since then if I should have done more to tell others about my own experience with this kind of mentality. One that I've tried my best to be convinced otherwise but from what I now believe is completely unlike the Christ-like spirit that we are told permeates this group and the one that it surrounds.

Look, I want this to be understood: I'm a devout Christian. I am very staunchly pro-life, because I believe every life is precious and unique and deserves a chance in this world. I don't believe that such a concept as "homosexual marriage" is possible (for reasons that I may go into sometime later and maybe it'll interest folks to know that I'm against an amendment banning it too). I believe that affirmative action programs violate everything there is about making it on your own merits in a land of opportunity. I believe in cutting taxes, cutting spending along with them and scrapping a lot of over-burdening regulations that strangle our economy and sends many of our jobs overseas. I'm an Eagle Scout who grew up reading American history and appreciating who we really are and what we are called to be as a nation. I believe that our strength as a nation is reliant upon the force of our arms... but not as much as it is upon the humility of our hearts. I believe that Robert E. Lee was the most perfect example of a Christian gentleman that our country is likely to know. I'm a guy who shifted his schedule like mad in order to make a long drive (after an already longer one) to our nation's capitol to watch the horse-drawn procession bearing the casket of the man who won the Cold War without firing a shot and then spent 7 hours in line to file past that casket.

Conventional wisdom would have me pegged as a conservative. Not that I believe in conventional wisdom, but there you go.

I'm a white male who's a member of an independent Baptist church that might be described as "fundamentalist", who doesn't believe in abortion or gay marriage and Ronald Reagan was my hero. And I'm not voting for the Democrat candidate. By all accounts I should not only be voting for the other candidate, I should also be defending his good name on Internet message boards. But I'm not.

I don't want to do this because I hate anyone, or any group of people. Nor do I want to do it out of burning anger: there may be a few embers still glowing from that, but the last thing I do is let them become a consuming rage in my heart. Those should be allowed to die, not given new life.

What I'm thinking of doing isn't for any candidate or any party. I may cast a vote for someone to be President, but it won't be one of the two that will doubtless win it. Instead I may hold my hand and have faith that God's will cannot be thrawted, no matter who it is that wins the race or how much they might mess up this country. I'm that confident in His will at least.

I'm thinking of doing it because there's a lot of stories coming out about this kind of thing and worse going down all over the place, and considering that I still want this country to be one that my own children someday can enjoy as I did in my own youth, maybe I should have already spoken up more about it a long time ago. I'm thinking of posting my account of what happened, and then let fate and the wind take it where they may.

Besides, after this week the whole world is watching the blogs now. And the evil lil' "id monster" in the dark recesses of my heart is wondering if anyone would take notice of a guy who has a story to tell about how George W. Bush once sent hired muscle to threaten a cub reporter with arrest before telling him to "get the fuck out of here!" (pardon me ladies, but that's what he said) because the reporter was trying to do his job.

Yeah, wondering if it would get noticed. And wondering what kind of havoc... 'scuse me, *response* that it would evoke.

Like I said, I'm just thinking about it is all.

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The only "wasted" vote is a lazy vote, Doctor Hollowell

Dr. Kelly Hollowell is another writer over at World Net Daily that I enjoy reading from time to time. I appreciate that, admittedly, she's got a better mind for some things than I do: there's no way I could wrap my noggin around the stuff that a Ph.D in Molecular and Cellular Biology demands. And that she's got a tremendous working knowledge of the legal system. And that she's a fellow Christian. And going by the pictures I've found of her that she's a very beautiful young lass with a sincere smile and eyes that seem to radiate a pure love of God.

But in regards to her new column "Your vote: a terrible thing to waste" she's wrong. She's HORRIBLY wrong! She's so wrong on this that "wrong" doesn't even begin to describe it: I would go so far as to describe it as "spiritually lukewarm". And as much as she (without having actually met her) is most likely a wonderful sister in Christ, someone has to call her out on this.

Dr. Hollowell spends the entirety of her piece this week telling voters why they should not consider voting for a party or person outside the Big Two. Specifically, that they should stay on the Republican side of the fence. Ironically this comes on the heels of her previous article "GOP tent: How big is too big?". In that piece she warns that unless single-issue voters accept - however grudgingly - the incrementalism that the current party leadership has decreed is the only way to win on social issues like abortion, then "the only alternative is to abandon the Republican Party." She then ended it with this: "Pro-lifers won't turncoat to the Dems but neither will they support an unfaithful spouse."

If the Republican Party was supposed to be the unfaithful spouse, now Hollowell offers up a glorified spin on the old argument for why a battered wife returns to that spouse: "because where else are ya gonna go, baby?"

Dr. Hollowell said that in the wake of her previous column many readers responded with their exuberance about the Constitution Party: "Some actually wrote this party's candidates are currently electable, which they are not." I'm enough of a realist to admit that there's at least a 99.44% probability the next President of the United States is going to be either a Democrat or a Republican, but whether or not someone is "currently electable" isn't the criteria that some people are gauging their vote by. An increasing number of people, by the way. Neither are these people "willing to cast their lot in a completely meaningless direction to make a point that will be largely ignored," as she states that it is.

I'm one of the former Republicans that Dr. Hollowell has been pondering lately. It might interest her to know that the very first thing I did on my eighteenth birthday was register to vote. Holding up my end of the responsibilities that comes with being a citizen by taking part in this process was something that mattered an awful lot to me. I was a registered Democrat for almost three years before leaving that party: it no longer represented me, and I wasn't going to try to persuade it to either because I knew that nothing I said within it would really matter. In that regard the Republicans looked far more promising... but after almost ten years in the Republican Party I came to realize how much of a chasing after the wind that has been also.

The fact of the matter is, Dr. Hollowell, that neither major party really cares about what we think, or holds us in serious consideration. The Democrats have long been the shining example of this: does anyone seriously believe that the leadership of that party could genuinely be interested in "abortion rights", "gay marriage", African-American issues, Hispanic-American issues, radical environmentalism, AIDS, children's welfare, labor unions, anti-nuclear activism, and everything else that's trying to ride that poor donkey? Because they don't care, and the only reason that all of those interests have even agreed to be under the same umbrella is because they've been convinced that the Democratic Party is their vehicle to freedom. Rarely do any of them realize how much of a ride the Democrats have taken them for.

And now it should be painfully obvious - to all but those who refuse to see - that the Republicans have become just as bad, if not worse. I say "worse" because at least the Democrats never relied on the spiritual slothfulness of a core contingency while also claiming to be its best friend. Christians have become to the Republican Party what black Americans have been to the Democrats for the past half-century: a numerical asset and nothing more. And it happened because we failed to take the words of the apostle Paul to heart when he instructed the believers at Rome to "...be not conformed to this world: but be ye transformed by the renewing of your mind, that you might prove what is good, and acceptable..."

The typical American Christian hasn't cared for the renewing of his mind. That mind is, for the most part, still consumed by the temptations of this world. It is enamored with political glory and enraptured by military might. It is so enthralled with the spectacle of the flag and the eagle and the salute and the gun that it dares not consider itself in the shadow of the humble cross. Indeed, the cross justifies these things, or so such a mind has been trained to believe: now humility is anathema, and might makes right.

If we cannot let our old minds die to the things of this world, the inevitable ramification is that our minds will grow enslaved to the things of this world and to those that control such things. So it is that for all the delusions we give ourselves about our freedom, the state of professing Christianity in America is one of bondage. We have become the willing dupes of the Republican Party: heck even Karl Rove, President Bush's top political advisor, has strongly alluded to devout Christians being needed only for the numbers they bring to the polls. But I can't really blame the Republicans for any of this: in our apathy we would have become the dupes of any party that quoted from scripture or raised the flag high enough.

That we as Christians would become little more than tools and that anyone - especially someone who is apparently a fellow believer - would dare insist that we remain tools... Christian though I try to be, I must admit to the lesser angels of my nature wanting to vent some venal vocabulary about this. C.S. Lewis said that those things that are not eternal are eternally worthless. Well, I can't think of anything more worthless here and now than a political party... and we're supposed to hitch our Christian identities on this thing?!

The only thing I see that's really being furthered from any of this - and regardless of which of these two parties "wins" elections - is government's power over private individuals. But if you want an uglier word for it, let's call it what it really is: "socialism". And socialism killed more people in the twentieth century than anything else. Why should anyone with a conscience be expected to sign on and stick with a party that is dragging America - however slowly - toward that?

Dr. Hollowell is trying to make the case that the Republican Party is the best means that well-meaning people realistically have to effect the changes for good that they so desire. But only if the Republican Party is entrusted with more power. This ignores the fact that the purpose of the two major parties is about nothing but power: its accumulation and retention, and holding that power over others.

The Republicans have held the White House, and both chambers of Congress, for most of the past four years. They could have effected a lot of change for the better in this country... if they had really wanted to. They could have used the weight of respect that most Americans still have toward the offices of President and Senator to convince enough hearts that abortion is wrong, that taxes must be lowered and increased spending halted. Those have been planks in the Republican platform for the past two decades at least anyway: but when given a chance to step up to the plate the only thing that the Republican party has done to satisfactorily pursue those goals has been... well, not much of anything. So why should we trust them with more time? More to the point, why should we trust them with more power?

Arguing that we need to keep working for the election of Republicans because "they can appoint conservatives to the judiciary" doesn't cut the mustard either. As high upon Olympus as the Supreme Court and even lower ones such as the bizarre Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals have been made out to preside over lesser mortals, the judicial bench is still not the final arbiter of this nation's legal identity. It is now and always has been quite answerable to both the legislative and the executive branches. There exists no reason whatsoever why President George W. Bush could not have already signed an executive order effectively rescinding Roe v. Wade, and maybe someone should tell him that - and not campaigning for Republican politicians - is the REAL core of the president's checking power against the judiciary. If the Republicans didn't desire being so bold they could have always brought an amendment outlawing abortion to the forefront of debate after introducing it in Congress. Or Bush could have signed the order and insisted that Congress consider an amendment affirming the order, thus making members of Congress answerable to their constituents: the American people.

Or could it be that enough high-level politicians from the Republican party don't seriously want to end abortion? I don't want to elaborate on why that may or may not be, but insisting that abortion is only going to end after a period of incrementalism shouldn't pass the smell test with any rational citizen. It looks more like trying to pass the buck for someone else to worry about later.

To her credit, Dr. Hollowell does acknowledge later in her column that, "I recognize for now the religious right is in a large sense an ineffective voting block on cultural issues held captive by the Republican Party. This explains why little more than bones and rhetoric are tossed at the religious right on cultural issues. They have nowhere to go and no widely accepted strategy to change their current ineffectiveness." She makes a far greater leap than many Christians I have come to know, who sincerely do hold that the Republican Party is favored of God and that the Democrats are the perdition-bound thralls of Lucifer. But with all due respect to her being a Christian and a scientist, arguing that we should remain on the plantation and still expect things to get better is illogical to the extreme. Albert Einstein was even more blunt: "Insanity is doing the same thing over and over again and expecting a different result," he once said.

But I think that the real reason that Dr. Hollowell argues for staying faithful to the Republicans has not so much to do with spiritual apathy, or lust for power, or our failure to test the spirits as it does with something she brings up as the primary argument for voting Republican: because it keeps the Democrats out of power. And that still isn't reason enough for a person to vote against his conscience... nor does it address the root problem that ultimately separates those who slave themselves to The Two Parties and those who have knocked the dust from their sandals and walked away...

Fear.

That will be either Bush or Kerry getting sworn into office this coming January. I accept that. But I also accept that it's only because the vast majority of the American people are afraid of change that this is even possible. The better part of this past century saw our government, our media, our schools, and even our churches demand that we frame practically every aspect of our lives around a false dichotomy. And we've let it happen for so long that most Americans not only can't conceive of breaking out of the two-party trap, they don't want to leave it. Even though both parties are spent of vitality, devoid of principle and spiraling us all into national stagnancy, most people still want them to stick around because they're too comfortable with believing they still know what to expect from them.

Most Americans are like Brooks Hatlen in The Shawshank Redemption: we're so institutionalized that all we've come to know is our prison, and it feels like we'd practically kill to stay behind the walls. We're too paralyzed with fear to grasp for real freedom. We know what's in here... but we're too afraid of whatever might be lurking out there.

Well, I've enough faith in God that if we did have the courage to finally walk away from our captors, that we would find that our life would be far more enjoyable without them defining whatever it is that we must and must not be.

Dr. Hollowell, if by some cosmic twist of fate you happen to find and read this (and have gotten this far), please understand this: that I can't speak for anyone else. But for my own part it is my unwillingness to perpetuate - or to help perpetuate in any way - a fraud on my fellow American citizens that keeps them locked into a mindset of bondage that makes me dispute your position. I would rather see the American people as free as they can be, to follow their hearts and use whatever talents that God has bestowed them. The modern American political system that plays Democrats against Republicans - and demands that we join this pointless pursuit if we are to be considered legitimate citizens - is nothing but a charade put on by evil men to distract us from the things that really make our lives on this earth meaningful, while they sap at our energies and make a trade of our souls. And I refuse to let my time and passions be used by either side of it, in any way, anymore.

It has to stop, Dr. Hollowell.

And not tomorrow. Nor can it be a "wait until the next election but not this one because we have to vote 'them' out" either. You and me and everyone else with a brain knows that "next election" is a polite codeword for "never".

We are free by the grace of God, not the grace of other men. And definitely not men like John Ashcroft, or Ted Kennedy, or Jesse Jackson, or Pat Robertson, or even George W. Bush or John Kerry.

That's why I cannot go back into the tent that either of the two parties would welcome me under, Dr. Hollowell. I know what real freedom is like too much now.

I know the price that other men paid for me to have it.

I know that God has entrusted it to each of us as Americans, to uphold and defend as a sacred stewardship.

I know that my fellow Americans would most likely enjoy being free.

I know enough to understand that I can't trust the Democrats or Republicans with letting them enjoy being free, much less leading them to freedom in the first place.

I know that my responsibilities as a citizen exclude me from being afforded the luxury of being so lazy with my vote as to play the "either-or" game with the two major parties without considering whether or not one of them deserves my vote.

I know that, despite everything that the politicians and the press and the pundits and even some pastors have told me, it is not a vain and worthless gesture to say "no" to what they have already said "yes" to.

Because "electable" has nothing to do with it. Because whenever I say "no I won't" to their "yes you will"... I win. Every time.

And I want other people to boldly proclaim the same.

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9/11: thoughts and confessions three years later

It was a little before 9 AM, three years ago this morning, when the phone rang.

I'd been asleep on the sofa in the living room of my apartment, still groggy from the night before: September 11th was the day Lucasfilm was lifting the media embargo on their upcoming DVD release of Star Wars Episode I. The whole staff of TheForce.net had been up 'til about 3 that morning (US Eastern Time... TFN's staff was spread all over the world) getting stories and graphics ready to publish for the big day, including editor Joshua Griffin's report from Skywalker Ranch (he got to see George Lucas in person... lucky guy :-) With that work behind me and only going into work at Best Buy that afternoon to really look forward to, I was contentedly crashed until getting up to answer the phone.

It was Mom.

"Are you watching television?" I told her no, that this was the first time I'd been up all morning. "Well turn it on, a plane just hit the World Trade Center!"

Accident. That's the first thing that popped into mind. A plane crashed into the side of the Empire State Building back in the Forties after all. Hey, giant tall things sticking up in the air like that, planes coming in and out of the nearby airports every minute... it had to happen sooner or later, right?

"It hit one tower then just a few minutes later ANOTHER plane hit the OTHER tower!"

Now, that's no accident.

I called my landladies to see if they were watching this, then dialed into the net and started talking over AOL Instant Messenger to Ed, my old college roomie who was at work. The way my desk was situated, I had to turn my head somewhat to the right to look at the television. And then about 10 o'clock (screen names changed)...

Chris: was taking a nap this morning: it was a big night for TFN, we had our TPM DVD coverage. i was taking a nap when Mom called and said to watch this
Chris: now reporting a car bomb exploded outside the State Dept. building
Ed: yeah, I had heard something right before I came back to my office...
Chris: the WTC towers are leaning to one side now
Chris: one might collapse entirely
Ed: I had heard that they have already collapsed...or at least the top sections had
Ed: but I am watching the CSpan feed and wondering why there are so many stupid people in this country
Chris: they're "sheeple"
Chris: they think and say just as they're told to say
Chris: what the...
Chris: ummm did i miss something just now?
Ed: what are you talking about?
Chris: wasn't there a tower there just a few seconds ago?
Ed: *nod* the live feed on CSpan just showed it collapse....like the implosions I have seen on TV..
Chris: i mean... all i'm seeing now is
Ed: the top just fell onto the rest of the building and it went down...
Chris: Ed... oh holy [expletive], smoke's going ALL over the city
Ed: *nod*
Chris: man this is too much. i've never said "f" like that before
Chris: holy [expletive]
Chris: it's...
Chris4: Ed are you seeing this?
Chris: we just saw the World Trade Center... just go
WeirdEd007: *nod*

Don't normally use expletives like that... but then nothing was exactly "normal" that morning, was it? My entire day was spent watching coverage, along with just about everyone else on the planet with a television. Also called my girlfriend to make sure she was okay (a few hours later they cancelled classes at University of Georgia where she was a grad student at).

Was so glued to the set that I didn't want to leave for work but I'm glad now that I did: I needed to get away, get my mind on other things. It didn't help that from 5 until 10 that night we had probably less than 20 customers total who came into the store at all and my department - computers and accessories - saw only two.

I got home, called Lisa again and spoke with her for awhile, then got back on with AOL IM. My best friend Chad was online, under other circumstances he would have been doing news for Sports Illustrated's website at the CNN Building in Atlanta. Tonight they had nothing to report, so we spent the next several hours - until about 1 the following morning - sharing stories from that day, sending links to newspapers that were running extra editions... and talking about a lot of things.

It was a day that's been burned into my mind to be sure. Even now, three years later, I can remember everything about what happened from that morning when Mom called.

A few months later I asked Lisa to marry me. That had been planned out for months anyway, but seeing as how 9/11 affected everyone on some level... I must admit that being confronted with that magnitude a scope on human mortality made me want to spend the rest of my life with her that much moreso. And in a way it was my - ours, rather - way of affirming that life goes on. That we have to still live and love... and laugh, despite circumstances.

And I'm ready to share this much also now: when I proposed to Lisa the way that I did on TheForce.net website, that had been an idea in my mind for three months before 9/11. The attacks made me want to pull off that stunt even more... and you know why? Because I knew that people - a LOT of people, I was praying - would find that to be funny! They would be laughing at this geek with a lightsaber who was proposing to his girlfriend ("Geeks have girlfriends?!" someone asked) over the Internet. Now, do YOU think that the sight of a Star Wars fan proposing with a lightsaber is hilarious? 'Cuz I thought so, and so did Chad when I shared my thoughts with him on it: he said "yeah they'd laugh, that'd be a real trip!"

When Chad says something is "a real trip", that means it's golden.

We didn't have enough things to laugh about in the weeks following 9/11. I wanted to give everyone something to laugh at, and I wasn't afraid to use myself to make it so. Because I was going to be laughing at myself too. And hey, she did say "yes" after that lil' stunt (and a few other things that happened on our side of the monitor... but that's for another day's post): far from being the "revenge of the nerd", doesn't the notion of the geek getting the girl warm the cockles of your heart a bit? I wasn't afraid to do any of that, so long as I believed that people left the sight of that smiling just a bit more than they had before.

That was how I ultimately reacted to 9/11: it was as much an act of defiance against those who would take our joy away from us, as it was the first step on a new path my life would soon be taking.

But in the three years since 9/11, I can't help but believe that we haven't been defiant enough as a people.

We made a mistake in the days following 9/11: we let our government direct the course of our national anger, instead of letting we as the American people be angry on our own. And in doing so we let this government build up and then play off of our fears. Since 9/11 I've watched practically every part of the Bill of Rights trampled into irrelevance because of the PATRIOT Act or some sly judicial ruling that was demanded by the executive branch. I've seen old people manhandled at airports, ordinary citizens afraid to speak out on something because they're afraid of being turned in to Homeland Security (as fascist a name for an agency as is likely to be), debate stifled, people with legitimate reasons for dissent bullied and even arrested for their beliefs, and just about everything else that my teachers told me years ago only went on in the Soviet Union. "It can't happen here," they told me.

It's happening here. Now. Every day since 9/11, because though I cannot find any reason to believe that anyone in our own government was complicit in it happening, it happened to have opened the window for things being done to this country that had long only existed as the envisioned designs of evil men.

I'm not a liberal, or even really a conservative. My vote won't be going to either Kerry or Bush this November: it won't be Kerry because I'm very strongly against abortion, and because of some other issues. But at least Kerry hasn't actively demonstrated that he's willing to embrace the tactics of a fascist state to be in power. How then, as a Christian and a historian and an American, can I cast my vote for Bush either?

I want my country back, the way it was before 9/11. Any less than that is giving those who attacked us that day even more than anything they could have imagined in their wildest dreams.

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Whip it good: Kyle Williams lashes out against American immaturity

I love Kyle Williams, for a whole heckuva lotta reasons. And I really love pointing others toward his work as a columnist. In this week's piece over at World Net Daily "the young master Kyle" as I like to call him sends up a brilliant piece to Americans twice his age and more and for all intents and purposes asks aloud "why are you being such idiots?!" Kyle, yer hitting on all the right cylinders here so I won't steal your thunder by discussing it any in this space... but here's a preview:

Entertainment and politics in the modern society of America has created a deadly mix and a blow to the integrity of our national debate. In this election cycle, think of the severe case of P. Diddy and his entourage crashing a Young Republicans meeting in New York City, shouting his shallow views through a megaphone and broadcasting it over MTV. Of course, all this MTV and Choose or Lose business is built on the history of the relationship between media and politics over the past 50 years. Nightly news from the Big Three can be credited with beginning this disastrous mix that some call "Infotainment."

Punch here for the rest.

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And twenty-hours later still...

...it looks like Dan Rather had his ducks all lined up in a row. Tonight's edition of the CBS Evening News has apparently buried beyond any reasonable doubt the claims that the memos from their "60 Minutes" piece the other night on President Bush and his time in the Texas Air National Guard were forgeries.

Now folks, this is responsible journalism: when you have backed up and documented everything to the best of your ability. Say what you might of this story and its repercussions, but you gotta respect Rather for making sure every "i" was dotted and every "t" was crossed (and every "th" superscripted for that matter).

Meanwhile, millions of armchair font specialists across the fruited plain are wondering why the heck did they just spend the past 48 hours studying forty-year old IBM Selectric typewriters with the "golf ball" print heads. To paraphrase the wise sage William Shatner, "get away from your stupid blogs AND GET A LIFE!!"

(But at least more people have now come to realize that Microsoft Corporation did not invent the Times New Roman font).

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Wanna see a whole bunch of handmade deadly sharp implements?!

I'll be spending part of this coming weekend at the SouthEastern Custom Knife Show, sponsored by the North Carolina Custom Knifemakers Guild. This is the tenth annual event that the guild has organized and it just keeps getting better and better with each passing year (it's already become considered one of the premiere crafting events of its kind in the country). I first attended back in '98 and have been quite a few times since then. This isn't the kind of cutlery that you buy in a store, mind ya: these are handmade - either by stock-removing from "blanks" of steel or forging 'em out the old fashioned way on an anvil - by people who've dedicated a lot of time and love into a craft that can only be called a high artform. I've no idea if he'll be there this time but the past few years have seen Bill Moran as one of the guests (Moran is the dude who about thirty years ago re-discovered, after it being lost for hundreds of years, the secret for making Damascus, or multi-layered, steel) and having met him a number of times I can tell you that it's a real treat to meet a real American legend as he is. I did hear that Ed Halligan, creator of the innovative K.I.S.S. knife, would probably be there. The symposium this year will include Knife World editor Mark Zalesky and Dr. James Batson discussing the history of the Bowie knife (I've sat through one and believe me, it's a pretty colorful thing to listen to) and Buddy Thomason talking about Scagel knives (of which he is a collector and authority of). The show runs this coming Saturday and Sunday, September 11th-12th at the Benton Convention Center in Winston-Salem, North Carolina.

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The lull between Frances and Ivan

Early this evening I called to check up on one of my friends in Asheville, to see if she was good after what was left of Hurricane Frances came through the state yesterday. By the time it reached this far inland much of its strength had been sapped away without anymore warm moisture from the ocean to feed upon... but there was plenty enough punch left in the system to thrash things from the mountains on east. There are some places here that saw streets completely covered and some falling debris, but that was nothing compared to what it did further west: Black Mountain had 17 inches of rain and one person said that Old Fort "looks entirely washed out." My friend in Asheville said that the French Broad River (which I had my apartment overlooking from the west side) was 17 feet above normal and had water reaching the bottom of the windows on most of the warehouses on the other bank. The Biltmore Village area is completely flooded, the same for Swannoa and she said that as of this evening much of Asheville was without power or running water. I've heard that the side of town east of Tunnel Road has been completely dark ever since yesterday. It gets worse further west: the towns of Canton and Clyde are under curfew and severe mudslides have been reported in the area.

Meanwhile, I've got family in Florida, between Palm Bay and West Palm Beach and however we've been seeing it on television, the situation sounds much worse. They didn't even know 'til the other night when we told them that there was another hurricane on the charts headed this way: Ivan is now a Category 5, and maybe the third strongest since records have been kept. It now looks poised to tear into the western side of Florida sometime later this weekend and however much Frances kicked the slats out of the place, it very well might prove to have been a prelude to a far worse catastrophe.

And yet... I must admit that there is something horribly fascinating about a hurricane. As much devastation and death as they cause, their structure and strength really does make them a miracle of nature worthy of not just our healthy respect and fear, but our awe. And they do play a much-needed role in God's design for our planet: hurricanes are the "release valve" for our oceans' accumulated heat. Were it not for the thermal energies that hurricanes absorb and then redistribute, the ocean temperatures would be considerably warmer than we know them to be. For all the curse that hurricanes have become of late, we might do well to be thankful that in the larger scheme of things, they stand in the way of our having to face a much more severe climate.

But in the meantime, I'm going to keep saying a prayer for the people of Jamaica, and Cuba, and Florida, and anywhere else that Ivan may be threatening over the next few days.

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Twenty-four hours of loathing the way things are

I didn't watch last night's "60 Minutes" with Dan Rather's story about the former Texas official who supposedly pulled strings to get young George W. Bush out of serving in Vietnam. But I've followed the aftermath on and off throughout the day: enough to know that old IBM Selectric typewriters are about to become as synonymous with this presidency as paper shredders were to Reagan's, what broccoli was to Bush the First and what cigars have been to Clinton.

As everyone who's a nut for this sort of thing knows by now, the interview with Ben Barnes was a red herring for the REAL supposed bombshell: documents from the files of the late Jerry Killian, who as a colonel in the Texas Air National Guard in the early 1970s was squadron commander of Bush's unit. The memos that CBS News is said to have obtained show Killian praising Bush, then ordering him to submit to a physical examination, then suspending him for failing to follow a direct order. And then complaining that he did not like showing favoritism toward the young Bush at the behest of others. It is this final memo that has come under fire for its dubious origins.

If the documents are real, Bush should face up to it, come clean before the American people and admit that he got away with doing some things that a young man at the time from less fortunate circumstances would probably have never gotten away with, and let the people make a judgement on him. If the documents are forgeries, CBS News should own up to it and somewhere, the appropriate heads should roll. If Dan Rather himself knew about them being forgeries all along, he should admit to it on live television before an audience of millions and then - both for himself and his chosen professoin - do the honorable thing and resign from CBS News. He would at least be thankful that CBS was not owned by Japanese management that would have recommended he perform on-air seppuku.

I've let my feelings for Bush be known already: I can't vote for the guy because I don't trust him, on the basis of a lot of things. But I damned well don't want to see him - or anyone else for that matter - suffer injury in the arena of ideas when the ideas being leveraged against him have nothing but a fraudulent foundation beneath them.

I'm probably going to write more about this later, but in all honesty I would feel disgusted either way - if Bush had rigged the system so that he wouldn't have to serve in Vietnam as others were being made to, or if this whole thing was a con by a major television network - were it not for the fact that at this point I couldn't care less. I'm too exhausted by everything that's happened leading up to this election to really give a damn anymore about which one between Bush and Kerry may or may not win. I know that realistically one of them is going to win this year, but that doesn't obligate me to believe that one of them deserves it more than the other... because despite what the mobs around me demand that I buy into, neither one of them deserves to be President of the United States.

Will pour out my frustration on this subject later. I'm going to watch my DVD of "Hellboy" in the meantime.

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Despite Frances, Labor Day weekend was "Dynamite"

The lovely lil' spousal overunit and I intended to drive down to her parents' place in Georgia three days ago (Friday) for Labor Day weekend. That was before we conferred that afternoon about whether we should go ahead with it after all the projections for the path of Frances showed the storm plowing through Georgia after it entered the Gulf from Florida. Lisa has never experienced a hurricane before. I've gone through plenty... enough to know that fun as they can be to ride out if you're fairly far enough inland, you do not want to drive headlong into one. Especially considering that there'd probably be a few million evacuees on the road between here and there.

So, we didn't go, and spent the weekend here, even though it looks like Frances is now going to be a day or so longer in getting to that part of Georgia. Better to have been safe than sorry though, although I do regret a few things. For one, we were going to make a stop at Williamson Bros. Bar-B-Q in Marietta - which just might be the best barbecue joint on the planet - to stock up on more of their barbecue sauce. We started this summer with six bottles of the stuff and doled out the final drop last weekend on some ribs we did on the grill, so we desperately need to replenish our supply. Not this weekend though, but Lord willing we'll get down there sometime soon and get reloaded. When we do I'll offer up a full review of the joint.

This weekend was also when the annual Dragon*Con science-fiction convention was being held in downtown Atlanta. I've been to two of them (in 2001 and 2002) and wanted to hook up with some friends at it this year, had the low-pressure system from Hell known as Frances not played havoc (have heard from lots of folks that they chose not to go 'cuz of it so we're in good company). Would have been fun to have posted some pics from Dragon*Con here, 'cuz the thing really is an amazing assault on the senses, but maybe next year.

In the meantime, we did occupy ourselves with a few things, including spending Saturday afternoon finally catching a flick that I'd heard nothing but very good things about for the past month or so...




Napoleon Dynamite is the movie that I wish had been made back when I was in high school 15 years or so ago. Yes, I admit it: I was Napoleon Dynamite, and I'm not ashamed to say it. Lots of guys were Napoleon Dynamite. Lots of girls were also Deb. And wherever or whoever they might be there was a Pedro in our life. There's plenty of things that people like me can identify with this movie about. What we didn't have then is an icon, a banner, a symbol behind to which rally behind and assert ourselves for all the world to know that yes, we ARE different from you... and that is why we succeed!

That's the best moral that I can attempt to gain from Napoleon Dynamite: to simply be yourself, no matter how quirky or offbeat or defeated the world around you considers you to be. If you were to ask me to be explicit about plot, I couldn't tell you because there really is no plot at work here. There's Napoleon and his weird family and his small circle of friends... and that's it.

Napoleon Dynamite (played by Jon Heder) lives in small-town Idaho with his grandmother and Kip (Aaron Ruell), his 32-year old brother who doesn't work and spends all day on the Internet in romance chat rooms. Oh yeah, and Tina: Granny's pet llama. Napoleon contentedly spends his life as a high school student drawing fantasy animals and making action figures do death-defying stunts from moving schoolbuses. So it is as an outsider that he finds a best friend in new student Pedro Sanchez (Efren Ramirez) who has just moved from Mexico. About the same time Granny Dynamite busts her tailbone after flying off of an ATV so while she's rejuvenating, Uncle Rico (Jon Gries) moves in and immediately takes over the joint with his hair-brained schemes involving herbal supplements and mail-order time machines.

The rest of the movie involves... well, truth be known I can't really remember what it's about, except that Napoleon and Pedro's friend Deb (Tina Marjarino) is trying to get her "glamour shots" business going from her parents' basement and Pedro winds up running for student body president. And something about Future Farmers of America, and a shotgun, and tetherball, and a big dance, and... whatever.

But for some reason, Napoleon Dynamite has been resonating with me a lot in the two days since we saw it. And, it's still making me laugh! For a movie with no real plot or point, it's by far one of the funniest that I've seen in quite awhile. I can't wait to get a copy of it on DVD and show it to friends when they come over if they haven't seen it yet. After a summer of sequels, schlock and silliness, Napoleon Dynamite wound up being a very fine and satisfying way to end this season on.

Oh yeah, if you wind up going to see it (something that I'd heartily recommend) DO NOT LEAVE when the credits begin rolling. Stick around, and wait for EVERYTHING to finish because there is an entire scene that's been added to the original cut that picks up two months after the rest of the movie. You definitely don't want to miss it.

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It would be ironic if it weren't so sad...

...that just minutes after posting the last entry the news came over the wire that former President Bill Clinton is at this hour having quadruple bypass after suffering a heart attack.

Wherever you were with the guy, please say a prayer for him and his family this afternoon. Bypass surgery is nowhere as hazardous a thing to go through as it used to be but still... it's an awful serious thing to go through regardless. Here's to praying that the 42nd President of the United States has a swift and thorough recovery and that God's hand will rest upon him and his family today.

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If he's supposed to be "Daddy" can someone please make me an orphan?

For me, this is all the more funny because I've a VERY good memory and I remember the night of October 15th 1992 very well. That was the night of the second presidential debate between then-President George Bush, Arkansas governor Bill Clinton and billionaire character Ross Perot (who I gladly campaigned and voted for that year... the things you do when you're eighteen and drunk with newfound voting power). It was also the night that Dad and I got back from Asheboro with a cocker spaniel puppy for my sister's birthday, but anyhoo...

This particular debate, coming from Richmond, Virginia, was a rare informal "town hall" format moderated by Carole Simpson. For ninety minutes all three candidates were hit with questions from an audience of supposedly uncommitted voters. It was a pretty good show but by far the thing that made me groan the hardest was this one guy, this long-haired guy who I'm pretty sure said he worked with kids, and he implored the three candidates to "think of us as your children."

Of the three candidates that night, one of them would have certainly told him to grow up and start his own business like any self-respecting billionaire and another would have probably agreed with what the first candidate said. Only one of them not only readily agreed with the man but alluded that government should be almost an inescapable father figure looking over us.

Guess which one of the three won the election that year?

But that was something that came from a member of the debate audience: it was NOT something that the Clinton campaign initiated on its own. And it's not like the George W. Bush campaign would say something that heavily socialist on its own, right?

Right?!?

From the September 2nd 2004 Boston Globe...

Card says president sees America as a child needing a parent

By Sarah Schweitzer, Globe Staff | September 2, 2004

NEW YORK -- White House Chief of Staff Andrew Card said yesterday that President Bush views America as a ''10-year-old child" in need of the sort of protection provided by a parent.

Card's remark, criticized later by Democrat John F. Kerry's campaign as ''condescending," came in a speech to Republican delegates from Maine and Massachusetts that was threaded with references to Bush's role as protector of the country. Republicans have sounded that theme repeatedly at the GOP convention as they discuss the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks and the war in Iraq.

''It struck me as I was speaking to people in Bangor, Maine, that this president sees America as we think about a 10-year-old child," Card said. ''I know as a parent I would sacrifice all for my children."

The comment underscored an argument put forth some by political pundits, such as MSNBC talk-show host Chris Matthews, that the Republican Party has cast itself as the ''daddy party."

A Kerry spokesman, seizing on Card's characterization of Bush as a parental figure for the nation, contended that the president had failed.

**snip**

''The Democrats who met in Boston had a wonderful party, because Boston hosted a wonderful opportunity for them to get together," said Card, a former state representative from Holbrook. ''But they tended to talk about yesterday, and our president knows that leadership is all about tomorrow."

Card, the person who informed the president nearly three years ago about the attack on the second World Trade Center tower, also sought to cast Bush as a decisive leader who chose to remain seated in a Florida classroom after hearing the news in order to avoid creating fear.

''The president accepted my words but did not introduce fear to any of those young students or through the national media to the American people," Card said. ''After an appropriate period of time, he excused himself from the classroom . . . and exercised the ultimate responsibility of a president."

He added, ''But there is no doubt about the president's commitment to make sure that he protects us no matter what the polls may say, no matter what focus groups might suggest, no matter what the UN gave permission to."

**snip**

There ya have it from Bush's press secretary: the President of the United States sees us as children. And he's the father. Exactly as Bill Clinton saw himself twelve years ago.

I'm not a drinking man but if this is the way America is supposed to be, I'll gladly toast the occassion when I become an orphan.

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Want a Gmail address invite for free?

Just noticed that my Google e-mail address has been given 6 invitations. I don't know what to do with 'em and I'm in a good mood at the moment, so if anyone reading this wants a FREE Gmail invitation, shoot a mail to theknightshift@gmail.com and the first six ones that come in will get an invite sent to them.

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Doom 3 review: Once again, "the sanest place is behind a trigger"

It was a hot, sultry Tuesday evening in May of 1994 when Doom first entered my life. My good friend Johnny came by the house so we could drive together over to the nearby community college for an American history class we had one evening a week. Before we left he gave me a box that he picked up for about two bucks at the local K-Mart. “Here, try this. It’s pretty wild,” he told me.

I didn’t actually install the game ‘til about 2 the next afternoon and when I finally looked at my clock after that it was darn nearly 7:30 PM. Dad came by my room earlier, just after I’d first discovered the chainsaw: I pulled it out and ran toward a Former Human Sergeant: “watch that raw meat fly, Dad!!” He just shook his head and walked away with a wry grin, saying he’d never seen anything THAT gruesome before.

Good lord, how many nights did we lose to that game? I did four things that summer: bussed tables at a restaurant, traveled some, played TIE Fighter when it came out, and played Doom. Lots of Doom. The original shareware episode wasn’t enough: I wound up mail-ordering away for the complete game. Then I heard that people had started modifying the game, adding on levels and changing the monsters. And then it got worse…

This wasn’t long after I first discovered online bulletin board systems (we didn’t have full-blown Internet yet). There was a BBS in Kansas City that was dedicated to nothing but Doom files. I racked up a forty-dollar phone call to the thing one night, downloading nothing but Doom stuff. But at least I got to transform the Baron of Hell into Barney the Dinosaur to show for it.

Doom 2 followed in October of 1994: basically the same game but with more monsters and larger maps. The hardware demands also ratcheted up a bit: my snazzy lil’ 486 SX at 25 MHZ was doing so well… until the Icon of Sin in the final level. That damned grinning goat skull spat out so many monsters out of its exposed forehead that my computer slowed down to about 10 frames per minute. When I got a faster system a few years later I was finally able to take it down (and didn’t even have to do the “turn no-clipping on so you can walk behind the wall and shoot at John Romero’s head on a stick” trick either!).

I haven’t shown it to Johnny yet but if he thought that was rough he’ll probably scream and poke his eyeballs out when he takes a gander at Doom 3 the next time he comes over. Ten years, the Quake series and countless times of being asked “is it done?” later, id Software last month finally released the follow-up that may have had only slightly less anticipation than the Second Coming.

Other than the original I never played any of the Quake games, but everyone I’ve spoken with has said that Doom 3 is the strongest effort yet that id has poured into an actual plot for one of its games. It’s not a straightforward sequel but actually a retelling of the original Doom story, but apart from a few details the story’s basically the same: a hundred and fifty years from now you play a hardened space marine that’s been assigned to duty on Mars. Specifically, at a research facility run by Union Aerospace Corporation (think of the nefarious “Company” from the Alien movies and you’ll know already where this is going). Seems that the UAC has been doing some experiments in teleportation and matter transfer, and then decided to get really ambitious. So it is that just after you arrive and have finished up some introductory levels on moving around the game, that something starts pouring out of the gateway at the mysterious Delta Labs complex and everything, literally, goes straight to Hell. From that point on its you as the space marine on a quest not only for your own survival but also to turn off the portal to Hades lest it damn not just the bad dead folks, but the good live ones too.

I upgraded my system after this past Christmas so that it could effortlessly run Star Wars Galaxies. Even so, Doom 3 is so hoggish on resources that I’m forced to run the game on medium settings. However, after “tweaking” the configuration file in the Doom 3 directory (there’s a bunch of resources online on how to do this, on sites like Doom World and Planet Doom) I got it averaging about 45 frame per second on a 2 GHZ AMD system with a 128 MB Nvidia card. Only at 600x800 resolution mind ya, but even there… the graphics are stunning. And scary.

This is quite possibly the most realistic computer game yet published. Project lead John Carmack intended from the getgo that Doom 3 would have realistic lighting and he succeeded wildly: the Doom 3 graphical engine calculates light sources and surfaces (the bulk of the processing requirements). In layman’s terms it means that everything in the game casts a shadow or reflects light, exactly as it would in the real world. Go inside the restroom during the first minutes of the game and you’ll see yourself reflected back in the mirror (return there later and you’ll see… other things… reflected back also). Walk into a blackened room later on and you’ll genuinely hesitate, wondering just what the heck could be lurking in there that you can’t see yet, if at all. The effect is enhanced by having a flashlight to illuminate darkened corners with: try not to scream when you see something jumping out at you from the edge of the cone of light that it casts.

Fortunately, that’s not all you have as you navigate the dark recesses of UAC’s Mars City. Prior to your first mission (during which Hell erupts) you are issued a pistol. But soon you complement that with real firepower: the classic shotgun. Along with the rest of Doom’s signature armaments: the chaingun, the plasma rifle, the rocket launcher, and for the first time you can throw (or drop) grenades. There is also something called the “soul cube”, but any more on that would be major spoilerage. And of course, the BFG 9000… and the legendary chainsaw, which for the first time in a Doom series you finally come to understand why it is that chainsaws have been left laying around Mars to begin with.

That bit of info, along with many others, comes to you via one of the innovations that makes Doom 3 such a treat for the single player: you are armed with a personal data assistant (PDA) that you can call up anytime in-game, to read your incoming e-mail or watch videos that you download during the game. You can also read the PDAs of other, less fortunate characters that are found laying around the corpse-strewn facility. Make sure to read all the PDAs – and listen to the audio logs on them – as you move ahead, as they not only progress the story but give you much-needed information that you’ll need later on (like locker combinations and clues on defeating the baddies).

Most of the classic Doom enemies have returned for this retelling (but not all: sorry, no Spider Mastermind this time but that never seemed very demonic to me anyway). Most of the humans in the facility have been “zombified” by the outpouring demons so don’t feel too bad about capping them full of lead… they sure won’t hesitate to do the same (or worse) to you. This time though the former humans do not look identical to each other: you really do get the impression that these are hapless individuals that got turned undead (okay, apart from those really really fat zombies walking around that look pretty much the same: however good the UAC is at colonizing planets, they suck bigtime at combating morbid obesity). They come in a bunch more flavors this time than just “Former Humans”, “Former Human Sergeants” and “Chaingun Dudes”: there’s former human civilians, scientists, maintenance workers, security guards, marines, commandos… everyone but you and a few brave souls that escaped the holocaust that you meet along the way.

And then… the rest. Remember the Imps, those brown spiky guys that threw fireballs at you? They’re back, with more eyes and a LOT faster! They’ve also brought their cousins the Wraiths with them. The “Pinky” demons have been brought back for another round, albeit bigger and nastier than before. You’ll also have to once again contend with Revenants, Lost Souls, Cacodemons and Arch-Viles (but thankfully they don’t seem to have as much “resurrection power” as they did in Doom 2) along with an entire horde of new demons (like the spidery Trites, which look a LOT like the “Norris-things” from John Carpenter’s The Thing). Possibly the most beautiful/horrifying redefinitions have got to be for the Mancubus (the big waddling fat guys with plasma launchers for hands from Doom 2) and the new take on the Cyberdemon. But so far as new bad guys go, the Cherubs take the prize for most disturbing addition to the Doom canon: think tiny little babies. With claws. And insect wings. That scream “ma-ma”. Whoever thought up these things is one disturbed sicko. I pray he seeks counseling from a good therapist somewhere.

And if you do disturb easily, you might seriously wanna consider whether you really want to play Doom 3. The guys at id included a pamphlet in the box that suggests playing the game in a darkened room with the door locked and the sound turned up (I haven’t even begun to describe the haunting work that went into the sounds for this game) and that’s exactly how I played this for the week and a half that it took me to finish the game, playing mostly at night. There are things in this game that once you see, you can’t “unsee” if you know what I mean. After awhile it begins to SERIOUSLY play games with your head: strange lights in a dark corner that disappear when you get closer, things that move for no reason, things thrown at you but no assailant visible, and a disquieting woman’s voice enticing you to come “over here” before telling you that “they took my baby” (there’s more, but I don’t wanna think about it right now).

All of this makes for what is easily the most engaging, involving game experience that I’ve ever known for a single player. If there’s anything more that I wish it could have, it would be that most of the levels could have been larger, longer, and seeming not quite so “linear” in gameplay: one of the original Doom’s charms was just running around finding secrets or working your way through any sorts of puzzles that blocked your path. Those are still here also, but not nearly as hard to figure your way through (which, when you have demons on your tail makes the time that much more nerve-wracking… and fun). Most of the rooms seemed too “confined” also, and not as open as the original Doom games had them.

But the good news is that as with the originals, id Software has embraced the open-ended architecture that has made the Doom series so legendary (“Doom will never die, only the players,” as one of its programmers put it years ago) but to a far greater degree. Doom 3 comes complete with a built-in editor that’s accessible through its command console (hit CTRL plus ALT and ~ to bring it up) and already there are several user-written editors on the way. id is also set to soon release – for free – its Doom 3 developer’s toolkit, including the devised-but-not-used player-driven vehicle. And already there are numerous player-driven projects involving Doom 3 in the works, including at least two sequels (both called “Hell on Earth” by the way) and a reworking of the original Doom using the Doom 3 engine. Whatever faults the game may have, they will no doubt be soon eradicated by an army of dedicated Doomers.

Who knows: maybe someone among the new generation of Doom designers will create an updated version of Barney the Dinosaur for me to slaughter with my chainsaw again.

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Zell Miller's speech last night

I've spent roughly the same amount of time watching the Republican National Convention as I did watching the Democrat National Convention a few weeks earlier: meaning, none at all. Nor have I really kept up with any coverage about it, except that the Bush twins told some really bad jokes and Ah-nuldt stopped short of bringing Dana Carvey back for a "Saturday Nite Live" sketch.

But a little while ago I read Zell Miller's speech from last night and, though I've yet to be convinced that Bush should be trusted again with the Oval Office, it must be said that Miller is by far one of the most passionately effective speakers of our day. He should get bigtime props for last night's speech no matter where ya are on the political spectrum (even from those of us off of it).

Zell Miller is pure Georgia boy. I first heard about him when he spoke at the Democrat National Convention in 1992 but don't think I really understood his charm until I began driving over to Georgia on a regular basis to date the girl who later on became my wife. Every now and then Zell Miller would come into conversation between someone down there and myself and it made a real impression on me how beloved a figure he is. I've now come to understand why that is.

Agree with him on some things or not, Miller is still one of the scarce few statesmen in this country who sincerely means what he says and has enough confidence to let the chips fall where they may. Whatever he believes in, he's not a pretender about it. It's a shame that most other politicians/statesmen/whatever don't feel compelled to follow his example, or that of Ron Paul or Tom Tancredo or a few others that are in high office today.

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Playing around with photos...

A friend told me the other day that Blogger now has a photo hosting thingy that you can upload pics with through an instant messenger client. So I thought I might give it a shot and post something with a bit more lively color to this otherwise dreary dull blog...

It's me and "Weird Al" Yankovic from August 2003, after a concert that he gave at Carowinds.

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On leadership and humility and history

My first article for The Washington Dispatch was posted on that site a little while ago. Titled "George W. Bush and History", it examines the flawed perspective that the man is taking in regards to his place in history: not exactly a throwaway thing when we're dealing with the President of the United States, after all. Anyway, I've long believed that the greatest leaders were those with the most humbleness and didn't try to make more of their lives than what God has given them already. They're the ones who don't try to frame the world in reference to themselves, because they understand that they are just one small part of it, and not the whole.

Too bad that the modern American celebritocracy tolerates nobody but those who really do believe that the world revolves around themselves.

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