Necessary Closure

If anyone were ever to find this blog and read it in case I never stumble upon it again (having done social history, who knows if it'll be in a textbook in 500 years), I'll add some necessary closure:
I have married an old exgf I've written about previously.  We have two children.  And I finish my MDiv next week and am set to be ordained in the Lutheran Church.

Pax Christi Vobiscum social historians of 2500

Moments in Time you Remember

I was thinking today on the toilet while eating cheetos and trying to figure out what my game strategy was going to be for returning to World of Warcraft and being married with a baby on the way.

Anyway, I was thinking: If you were in The Delorean, and you had to pick a year - month - day - hour - minute - second, how many times could you honestly remember?  I mean, we tend to remember events but not in terms of when they happened.  It made me gleefully romantic - in the sense of hating the physical sciences, not in the plebian sense of emotional.

One moment I remember was the turn of the millennia.  December 31st, 1999, 11:59 PM.  My friend Cam and I were toasting champagnade like good Baptists, and playing Pokemon Yellow (eschewing any psychic pokemon - as good Baptists).  That night we had a BIG party at Mill Run, and my parents had a bunch of friends over.  I remember staying up till 4am in the pitch black Pink Room with Cam, my brothers, and Nathan (josh's friend) and we all being terrified as Jer walked Claire Redfield through the Racoon City Police department (Resident Evil 2 for N64).

In some ways life was beautiful then., In some ways not so much.

Then I started thinking about Nathan.  He was one of the nicest people I've ever met.  I think we went to the same high school.  His dad was a cop who taught me the gospel.  But I don't remember When.  And as I drove to Mill Run tonight, I thought about how much it would cost to hire a private detective to investigate Nathan and tell me what he's been up to all these years.  But then I remembered I'm poor.

Clerks & Kool-Aid

So this morning I made a list of all the things I wanted to do and wanted to avoid. With a few minor slip ups I managed to get everything done. However I didn't avoid what I wished to avoid. Nonetheless I found it funny how things compound. When I'd finished all the work I'd assigned to myself, I just became scrupulous over minor details. Then I felt I had to keep going and going, making myself feel guilty for enjoying myself after all that work.



Clerks. I watched the first movie and the sequel today (I'd seen the second one before). I'm amazed at how relevant these movies are to people my age, and shocked I hadn't watched the first one before or appreciated them more. It's funny because at one point Dante keeps saying he can't change himself. And yet everything kinda works out for him in the end. I liked that optimistic ending. It was kind of like real life though. He never really progressed, just took minor steps to better himself and eventually made it, and was content.

Kevin Smith. Smart guy apparently. Jersey Catholic as well I believe.

I also got some writing done tonight for the novel, it was very cathartic, I think the Lord thinks regular writing will help me. I always forget how relaxing it is to write.

I also prayed a rosary for my friend who I normally pray for during Lent. I hope I'm not the only Lutheran who prays to the Blessed Virgin / prays the Rosary.

Aeeernyway, I have a hankering for juice. I can't believe how awesome it is. I have orange kool aid... maybe I'll make that instead.




Now is my favourite part of the day. I get a drink of some kind, Lay down in bed, and slowly drift off to sleep praying for forgiveness and watching the simpsons or some other show and relaxing.

Since you've been gone...

Howdy internets.

So much crazy stuff has happened in the last 2 years.

Religion (always first with me):
After being confirmed a Roman Catholic on April 11, 2009, I reverted to Protestantism (of sorts) and on December 18, 2011, I was confirmed a Lutheran (Confessional/High Church). I've been that for several months now, and it's cool I guess. I still live a spiritually catholic life, I go to confession with my Pastor, and the highlight of my week is Holy Communion (which I can actually receive now that I don't have to be shriven sacramentally beforehand).

Philosophy:
I've had a violent reaction to Aristotelian-Thomism, going to the sort of opposite extreme of Kierkegaardian Existentialism, and trying to find a balance in Kantianism.

Family:
Like me more now that I'm not a Papist.

Friends:
RC friends don't talk to me anymore.
New Lutheran friends are WASP snobs. I miss my working-class RC brethren sometimes.

School:
half way done my MA in History

Life:
living during the week in a new town an hour from home.

Love:
still flirting with ex-gfs, who are still crazy (except Hannah).

Regrets:
I wish I applied for theology not history.
I wish my Catholic friends were still talking cordially to me.
I wish I had done more work on my reading break this week :P

Recreation:
Watching Top Gear a lot. Not playing WoW, but nostalgic.

Where Philosophy Gets Fun

We / I interrupt your regularly scheduled shitty stories to bring you a short philosophy blurb.

"A little philosophy inclineth man's mind to atheism, but depth in philosophy bringeth men's minds about to religion." - Francis Bacon

I've been listening to the work of Alan Watts, a Zen Buddhist philosopher and ex-Episcopal (Anglican) priest, etc. I've enjoyed it because for once it isn't a debate over idiotic modern questions like evolution or atheism. The smartest philosophers in the world are not Atheists. They aren't generally Christians either. Usually they hold to either Pantheism, a form of Deism, or some kind of Eastern religious tradition.

My favourite philosophy is philosophical theology or religious philosophy. I find it much more intriguing learning about Islam and different Mystic views and then analyzing them by the light of reason, than hacking it out with a 20-something ex-Baptist who is angry at everyone, and thinks Richard Dawkins is the messiah. That's not real philosophy. It's like my fellow Brock students who think they're Buddhists, but don't actually believe that the Dalai Lama is an incarnation of God, don't believe in Karma, and believe in the self, etc.

Comparative religious study is fun. It's like that line in Hamlet "there's more in Heaven and on earth than is dreamt of in our philosophy".

The last fun thing about real philosophy that makes it fun, is that I don't have all the answers (yet). There are many more questions that I come to where the answer I have (St. Thomas Aquinas' answer usually) isn't something I've actually come to know for myself. Living is the thrill of the realist philosopher because life is where the theories of philosophy encounter the testing ground.

Story (7) - A New Home

Karl woke up with a headache. The light was way too bright, and he still smelled, not having showered in a while. What the hell had he got himself into? Slowly things started to click. He was in Virginia, he was in the process of shaping a life around a computer game. His new friends were possibly the weirdest people he'd ever met. Gord, a middle-aged ex-military carpenter. Ben and his mom, 2 random Jews living in the Old South. Strangest of all were the 2 Asians, one which didn't even speak english.

He decided to check his emails. Overwhelming fear. There was an email from his boss. The email explained that he had been fired (Karl remembered he had put his address on his resume).

Breakfast was interesting. Dewey and the Asian girl were up and looked like they could've been going into a job interview. Suits and propriety. Karl's stereotypes of Asians were definately being reinforced by this experience. It was the three of them. No one knew where everyone else was, Gord's truck was gone. Trying to make things less odd, Karl tried to strike up a conversation with the serious businessman sitting across from him.

Apparently they were both from Vietnam and had worked in Japan for Sony. They were contacted by Ben through a forum. (how else do gamers communicate?) D thought that it would take less than a week for them to get things up and running.
Karl asked some questions about Vietnam and let them know that he was from Canada and thus didn't take part in the "war of American aggression" as they called it (or so he'd read on Wikipedia the night before).

More interesting news: the girl was something van something, which meant she was the French Catholic minority in the country, many of them left after the war, hence the Japan thing. It was all starting to make more sense now. Karl tried a bit of his high school French. It worked. She began speaking way too fast for him, using a very different accent. "je n'ai pas vite avec ce langue, je suis tres ugh.. ma francais est terrible" she got the general message. Her face turned back to the cereal, clearly disappointed.

Karl decided to have a shower after breakfast, it was akward being in someone's house who he barely knew, eating their food and using their bathroom. It was like a strange version of Goldilocks.

While Karl was getting out of the shower the door opened a bit. It was Ben telling him that they were back from somewhere Karl hadn't heard of and had bought groceries and some electronic stuff. Not knowing what to do really, Karl just said 'great' and was shocked at both the etiquette and the excitement of this kid. He really wanted to get this game up and running. Hosting them was like a game to Ben, all of his dreams had come true, without any of the crap beforehand that most of them had endured before making the decision to come States-side.

As Karl walked into the living room he was greeted by Anna (ben's mom) and was surprised to see and hear another guild member. Ben was on skype talking to their Scottish off-tank. She was as amazed as everyone else seemed to be that this was really happening.

Gord was calling from the yard for Karl to come out and help him.

*** 1 hour later ***

While Ben and Dewey were trying to set up the server, with the occassional help of Van (which Karl now called the Asian girl, as he hadn't been able to ask her name) who seemed to drift between the two camps.

Anna, Karl, and Gord were outside in jeans and fitted with leather gardening gloves. Gord was giving them all the battle plan as they attempted to clear out the barn. Karl was glad to have something concrete to do. People might think he was lazy for being fired and skipping work, but really it was meaningful work he sought. In this case, there was a clear goal in mind.

They went to work fairly quickly, and were making good time. The place had been useless for a long time, and Anna was glad to have it cleaned up. The thing Karl loved about the work was that they were doing it the easy-stupid way. Instead of slow and careful planning, they just shop-vacced the floor, put a giant cheap carpet on the floor, and begun placing bunk-beds inside. The place had electricity and by night time, they had beds, a freezer, a table with their laptops, and of course, an important selection of posters up inside. It was the coolest fusion of dorm-room, camp cabin, and internet cafe that Karl had ever been in. They had a digital project to watch movies on the wall, an old tv and some consoles Gord had brought, as well as various other utilitarian features. To most adults, or to the cast of those designer make-over shows, this place was an utter failure.

It was a scene that didn't belong. A somewhat ugly rag-tag room, with occupants to match. They didn't care, Karl enjoyed not belonging together with these people.

The final touches were put in place when the guild assembled inside and decided on a name (Dewey translated for Van, who was in quite good spirits as well). In the end, they had quite a selection of possibilities, ranging from the boring HQ and Base Camp, to the nerdier "New Norrath" (The name of the land in Everquest) and "East Virginia Common Lands" (East Commonlands is a popular EQ hangout). Finally, they agreed on a Tolkien reference: New Valinor.

After attempting to make popcorn on the wood stove in the barn and failing miserably, they used a microwave. Very appropriately, for the first night in their new home, they watched Lord of the Rings (with French subtitles for Van).

Karl kept having the same feeling over and over again. Disbelief. What a peculiar place he had arrived at. If it had been any other day, he would've just gone home, but now, less than a week since that fateful missed day, and Karl had found a new home. It was all too much to keep thinking about, and he eventually drifted off to sleep.

Story (6) - Contact

After the door opened and Karl began hearing their voices things were much better. He found out that his host Zee's real name was Ben. Everyone also began calling him Karl, which was close enough to his avatar (Kast) that it proved easy to remember.

Ben lived in what Karl would've described as Jewtopia. The inside of the outwardly run-down home was immaculate. Clean carpets, giant landscape pictures of Jerusalem and scenes from all over Israel, a minora, and a nice selection of books on Yiddish, to Zen-Judaism to Israeli history to books with Hebrew titles. As for Ben himself, he was perfectly average, brown curly hair, glasses, probably 17-18, and a Ramones t-shirt. Ben was the most normal of the crowd though, and wasn't alone in this Hebrew home, three others had already arrived.

The second person whose hand Karl shook was that of Gord, 'Corporal Gordon James'. Looking at him Karl didn't think he belonged in the scene, but after a little while, Karl began to imagine that there never was a place on Earth where Gord would seem to fit in. Immediately he recognized the voice of the group's Ogre Shaman, always very easily excitable and optimistic, but Karl probably imagined he was a 20-something who lived in his parents basement like most of his other online friends. On the contrary, Gord was a unique character. He found out that day over their initial ice-breaking group beers that Gord had been a soldier specializing in communications during Desert Storm. Though the closest he actually came to the action was when a bomb went off beside the office he was working in. He was the first to call in the medical team and secured the area - which is where he got his rank of Corporal. Karl thought it was kind of silly that he took so much pride in such an arbitrary event, but realized he shouldn't say anything. More interesting than this pseudo-glory story, Karl found what Gord left out to be more informative. It seems that after Gord saw the civilian who died from the bomb on the road and did his duty that day, he requested to leave and received an honorable discharge. Since then he had worked in renovations with some friends of his fathers, all the while becoming more and more addicted to EQ - like the rest of them. Gord hardly looked like a 'war hero' at 6 feet, 40 years of age, and some 300 pounds, he looked more like an out of shape, balding, ex-professional wrestler. Aside from this seemingly adult exterior and life, there was something child-like in his excitement and talk about anything from the most trivial aspects of 'the game' to boring details on how long it took him to drive to Fredericksburg from Ohio.

The two other people were Asian and very quiet. When they didn't say anything beyond 'hi' Karl wondered if there was issues. As it turns out, they weren't members of the guild and when Ben looked at them it he appeared to be quite pleased with himself. The girl was probably 20ish and the boy looked like he was 18. Ben explained that they worked for Sony in Japan and had since been fired from their jobs as GMs and game programmers. They saw our guild's messageboard online and that we were planning on starting a new server, and they thought that they could possibly rebuild some form of the game with their knowledge and maybe make some money charging the other near-suicidal EQ addicts who had been desperate for any return to Norrath possible.

While Ben seemed to think this was perfect and that it would save him alot of time programming, Karl felt uneasy about it (as did Gord), there just seemed something wrong with the guy. There was no way, Karl thought, that he could have been a GM, he was still a kid.

Aside from the awkward vibe that "Duong" gave him (Karl desperately held back laughter after hearing his name, and Ben suggested they just call him Dewey), there was a much more real problem they had to deal with. Dewey spoke a bit of broken English, but the girl spoke none. She sat very quietly on the couch drinking some tea and looking suspiciously from one face to the next.

It all seemed very odd to Karl. It wasn't like he expected. So far, no work had gone into rebuilding the game, as Ben had his SATs to write and very little time as it was approaching the end of the school year. Gord had been staying in his truck like Karl and been planning a way to turn Ben's barn into 'HQ' (headquarters) for them. This all seemed much more normal and easier to understand than the Asian couple sitting together speaking in a hushed language as Dewey probably informed her of who the newcomer was.

There were so many questions left, but Karl felt peaceful as they sat down for dinner that Anna had made them. He wondered what Ben's (fairly young) Mom thought about all these weird visitors. Obviously she was ok with it, and she seemed to enjoy cooking for them and cleaning. Anna seemed very interested in Karl and asked him questions all about himself and his family. She even talked to him about Spinoza a bit, after finding out he himself was a budding philosophe. Apparently she was a writer of some sort, and her husband had been a photographer from Israel. Once she had referred to her husband using the perfect tense Karl realized he must have died and began imagining all the middle eastern violence he'd seen on TV (only to find out later that it was a car accident).

As the 4 north americans chatted away and the 2 asians sat silently (at least they were smiling now) Karl was in for the last surprise of the day. Before they got up from Dinner, Anna raised her hands and extended them towards Ben and Gord on either side of her. Ben took one and after much hesitation Gord took the other. Eventually they were all holding hands, and Anna closed her eyes and said a prayer. It seemed fairly normal to Karl, excepting the few references to 'Adonai' and 'Shalom' for the strangers at the table. When they finished Karl out of instinct crossed himself as did the asian girl. Karl, ever the Canadian, worried that he might've often Anna and Ben, but they didn't seem bothered or even to notice at all. But intrigued by this connection both Karl and the girl now were staring at each other in wonder. It was as if suddenly they had discovered they were long lost relatives, that indeed they might've spoken the same language after all, in at least some way.

***

Gord lit a cigar outside as he and Karl sat on lawnchairs and looked at the stars. After a few minutes Ben's vicious dalmation stopped barking long enough for Gord and Karl to have a great chat about Winston Churchill, and then a long and serious discussion about how long it would be till they could log on again. Gord had some great plans for the barn, and indeed had already bought a bunch of supplies for the job. They agreed to join financial forces (Karl was oddly glad that Gord didn't have much more than he did) and Anna said if they fixed up the old barn, they could stay there as long as they wanted.

Once again as night set in, Karl crawled into his truck and turned on some music on his laptop. As Schubert played him to sleep Karl decidedly put out of his mind all the strange people he had met in the day and all the strange things he'd learned. Eventually he drifted off to sleep.