heh heh, Magic...

Take the Magic: The Gathering 'What Color Are You?' Quiz.

Fortunate One

My Fortune Cookie told me: Inspiration is like a collection of old teaspoons, but I forget why. Get a cookie from Miss Fortune

And you thought I had dropped of the face of the planet

When, in fact, I have only been out of town. I had a relaxing week of nominally working on the West Wing study with my writing partner Amanda. I've been home this week running around like a chicken with my head cut off. Now I am returned.

DMing the Bible: Sometimes we sail

Introduction:
This week we move into the Noah sequence. Let me say a few things about the way I approach this text. This is a story, one that has important theological content, but a story none the less. I believe that having a Biblical faith does not require a literalist interpretation of these texts. I believe these texts resist such interpretation and therefor those who claim to be literalists are in fact selectivists (for more about this, consider reading this by Peter Gomes).
The Noah story gains meaning when moved from "history" to "myth." We can then consider what it is that the people who told this tale were trying to say about their God. Consider, briefly, another story about a world flood, the epic of Atrahasis. In this story the gods created humanity to do the labor the gods no longer wanted to do themselves. The people multiplied and became very noisy -- the gods could no longer sleep for all the ruckus. No matter what disaster the gods set upon the people in 1200 years they had shaken it off. The crankiest of the gods decides to flood where the humans live and kill them all, but a nicer god gives a heads up to a wise man to build a boat. When the flood commences the gods become frighten by the flood and hungry because the human sacrifices which had fed them were suddenly cut off. After the flood waters receded, the wise man emerges from his boat an offers a sacrifice. The gods are so happy with the meal that they make the man immortal. The decide they will never flood the world again, and are very cross with the god who did it in the first place, but to keep the human population in check they institute death in childbirth, barrenness, and infant mortality. What kind of gods are these? What kind of world does this story describe?
The Text:
Genesis 6:9 introduces the beginning of the priestly (p-source) flood narrative, and reintroduces us to Noah. We are told that he is a righteous man which would go along with what we learned about him in verse 8, that he had found favor in the sight of God. The world had become corrupt, even the earth was bent because humanity by-in-large was messed up. God resolved to wipe out the corruption of the earth and the people that caused it. God gives Noah precise instructions on making this ark. This boat would be roughly square or rectangular and would bear little resemblance to the stately craft this story usually calls to mind. God also gives clear instruction to preserve the multitude of creatures that God had created and declared "good." Now if you compare the instructional verses you will see what I mean about texts being resistant to literalism. 6:19 and 20 read, "And of every living thing, of all flesh, you shall bring two of every kind into the ark, to keep them alive with you; they shall be male and female. Of the birds according to their kinds, and of the animals according to their kinds, of every creeping thing of the ground according to its kind, two of every kind shall come in to you, to keep them alive." If you read on into chapter 7 however you'll discover verses 2 and 3, "Take with you seven pairs of all clean animals, the male and its mate; and a pair of the animals that are not clean, the male and its mate; and seven pairs of the birds of the air also, male and female, to keep their kind alive on the face of all the earth." Noah gets the creatures and loads everybody onto the boat. Then the waters came and flooded the earth.
What theologically can we draw from this part of the Noah story? As compared to the world and deities described in the Atrahasis epic, this narrative tradition has a world that was created good and people that were created in the image of God and called very good. The God of these tales is one that demands justice and rectitude, and though corrective action needed to be taken (which caused God grief cf 6:6), planned ahead for the survival of life.
The Game:
Full Disclosure: I am not a boating person. I have lived in landlocked parts of the US my whole life and have only spent fleeting vacations on the shores of great bodies of water.
Recently I've been playing rather than DMing, and in a couple of the campaigns we've been playing long distances need to be traveled, sometimes by land and horse, and rarely the most efficient path took the party by boat. Mostly these trips were undertaken with the assistance of a loyal crew under hire, so role-playing decisions regarding the piloting of crafts was fairly limited. Once the party did have to sail a large pirate ship without NPC assist. The role playing sounded a bit like The Princess Bride, "Hurry up. Move the thing! Um ... that other thing. Move it!" Clearly we were not up to snuff on our nautical lingo, but I had a great time and I think these sessions were some of the most fun of that campaign.
I can't help but think of Noah when ever I look back on those sessions. Here is a man who (nominally) is living in what would later become Iran/Iraq; he was probably painted as a person engaged in desert climate subsistence agriculture. In this world there is precious little water, but one day God shows up and says I've decided that you should build a boat, fill it with animals, and sail it aimlessly for the better part of a year while I cover the face of the planet with water enough to drown all life. Of course you'd want to take on such an important "save the cheerleader" kind of mission for God, that doesn't mean that you know how.
One of the appeals of fantasy role-playing games is that through a group imaginative process people can take part in steering characters who can achieve and preform beyond the abilities of the players in their real lives. This means, in part, that the characters know things that the players don't. While this usually has little impact on game mechanics, it does hamper role playing from time to time. Players worry that they will be penalized for saying or doing the wrong thing because of their own ignorance. I would guess that most of our role playing groups do not have access to stores of naval information and marine strategy. So what do we as DM's do? Avoid ocean going adventures? Make sure there is always a crew hanging around? Here are a few humble suggestions:

• Go on and buy the book: Wizards of the Coast is like a benevolent, but demanding god. There are so many great resources out there, so many pretty books and tiles and miniatures. But they are so very costly to own. However, if you anticipate spending much time on boats, the Stormwrack resource may be a wise expenditure of thirty-five bucks. Share relevant passages with your group, learn new things...educational and fun!
• Cheat, a little: If the point is to challenge players to the point that they no longer want to play, by all means do exhaustive research into vessel construction and navigation and require that they come up with realistic role playing. If, on the other hand, the point is to have fun and enjoy one another's company, you may choose to let "Hurry up. Move the thing! Um ... that other thing. Move it!" suffice for genuine docking procedure.
• Give them the tools: I have long loved the folding boat, a wondrous item in the DMG. I'm gaga for mounts that can shrink to statuettes. What if there was an artifact level item that had some of the elements of the folding boat but was also crewed by departed sailors. An interesting plot twist would be if these sailors are there by some kind of evil magic, then using said vessel would carry some kind of karmic penalty. One the other hand, this might be a little like an afterlife for sailors faithful to a certain god who after death continue to sail in the god's service on behalf of special chosen types.

Facebook

I have been cajoled and harangued into signing on with face book. You can find me there, though, if you've found me here you're likely to get more attention (as my friend Ryan says, I'm just saying).

Fight Club

So, clearly I was far far away from the civilized world in 2000 when the movie Fight Club was released. By the time I came back I knew enough to realize that I had missed something important, but didn't do anything to rectify the situation until this past Sunday evening.

This film is clearly one of the important films of the decade, and if you have missed it so far...go confess it to one of your friends who will help you out. You will find yourself watching it over and over again, and each time you will see something new.

Oh, btw, bring your brain -- there are plenty of scenes with guys beating the living snot out of each other and that is interesting, but that is not the major focus of the film.

Dming the Bible: PCs from beyond the Prime

Introduction:
The text for this week moves us from the genealogies of chapter 5 and into the Noah narrative of chapter 6 (which we will in theory cover next week). This prologue to the flood provides us with many bizarre details that interestingly enough get skipped by those who believe in the literal truth of the text.
The Text:
Genesis 6 opens with the natural result of all those generations having other sons and daughters. The world is beginning to feel full and there are a rather lot of unnamed women running about. Characters known as the sons of God decided that they would make swell wives. Now we can't be very sure who these sons were, whether they were human beings of great renown or holiness ( both things that might have resulted in appellation of the title) or spiritual beings who were actually the children of God and some mate (some in early Israel assumed that the Canaanite goddess Asherah was God's wife). This latter belief would not have been out of place in the ANE or even out of place well into the common era. The world was full of the unexplained and mysterious; it seemed a reasonable bet that the world in which we lived was full of supernatural agents who influenced the world and our lives in ways beyond our control. The gods of all the surrounding cultures got married and had children, some of whom had relationships with mortal men and women. In verse 4 we learn that the name of these half-breed children, Nephilim. The Nephilim were great warriors and legendary heros. Verse 5 says that people were getting pretty wicked, and the badness level was particularly high for a world of our size. Some have suggested that one of the signs of this depravity is the tale of the Nephilim; that the mixing of supernatural and human stocks was an affront to the natural order. In this story, however, there is no indication that the Nephilim were anything other than important and noble characters.
The world was getting it's wicked on, and that was something that irritated and angered God. Verse 6 tells us that God was sorry to have made humanity, "it grieved him to his heart." God resolves to wipe out humanity along with everything else. Then God remembered that he kinda liked Noah (who we'll talk more about later).
The Game:
In campaign settings like Forgotten Realms, the gods and goddesses are near-by, active in the world and meddlesome in the affairs of mortals. In addition to the recognized gods and goddesses there are a host of other spiritual beings (extra-planar creatures). Like in our text today, a world brimming with such creatures would inevitable spawn races of hybrids: in game terms, the elemental Genassi, the Aasimar and their lower planes brethren the Tifling.
I have been playing an Aasimar in a long ranging campaign in the Forgotten Realms setting, so I for the first time have been thinking about these races and how I would run them as a DM. The first consideration is, how weird are they: Planetouched characters are not all identical, like mutt puppies the various lineages show up differently in different individuals. ECL is your friend (and while it may not be the player's best friend it can be helpful to them too) use the ECL to determine how unexpected or odd the character should seem to the general populace. A character with and ECL of 1 will seem much more tame to NPCs than would an ECL 3 or 4 character. The second consideration is, how many are there: Is your party made up of planetouched, are there two or three, just one? The more planetouched you have in the party the more of an acceptance problem they're going to have, but it's a fabulous opportunity to move play off the prime. However if there is only one character, chances are that even if the evil wizard could spell her to some other plane, you're not going to want to run a single player adventure while everybody else gets bored and looses interest.
A third consideration on a more adventure writing note: maybe it does mess with the natural order of things. An interesting story line might involve PC's being asked by one god to keep other planar or spiritual beings from fiddling with a particular population and making more planetouched. Another story line might see the characters protecting infant or childling "Nephilim" from angry or regretful deities.

DMing the Bible: This guy begot What's his name

Introduction:
Ah, the begots...the foil of so many readers, the bane of study, the bore of the book, in this installment of DMing the Bible we're going to tackle all the first testament genealogies in one extravaganza blowout. While the modern reader may skip over these texts whenever they appear (and they appear with frequency), to the communities that handed done these texts first in oral then in written form they represented important, crucial information about who they were as a people and about their relationship to the land and to God.
The Text:
The genealogies in question begin at the end of Genesis 4, dominate Genesis 5, pick up again after the Noah narrative in Genesis 10 and 11, and are featured in Genesis 36, Exodus 6, Numbers 26, etc. Being able to claim connection to people in generations past imparted a bit of power to the present generation. The genealogies may well have been used by people in the ANE to establish legitimacy for office holders, or as a kind of calendar to track the when of seminal stories. They also held the people together, and, because so many places shared the names of important people in the lists of ancestors, held them to the land.
In the ANE, staying close to the land, having claim on it, was important not just for property reason. It was believed that gods had specific portfolios that applied not only to their domains (sun, fertility, harvest) but also to geographic regions and specific peoples. Therefore to lose one's connection to important ancestors meant not only losing claim on property or political office, but being disconnected from your god. Thus the genealogies in the First Testament carry not just political or chronographic information but theological information as well.
A prerequisite to any claim an individual could make power was a pedigree that demonstrated a god's involvement with your family. In the Bible this use of genealogies is used by the author of Chronicles. These books sought to show God's direct involvement with the history of the people of Israel, and the large sections devoted to lineages were included to show the deep connection between God, the land, and the people. This would have been especially important for the residents of Judea recovering from the shock of Babylonian Captivity.
The Game:
Biblical Genealogies kept the people of Israel connected to each other and to God. The people drew power (political, religious, personal) from the names of their ancestors. In the realm of D&D, player characters usually have to stand on their own two feet when it comes to claims of power. However I can think of a couple of ways to use this idea of pedigree= power.

• Ancestral Knowledge: lately I have become miffed with Bardic Knowledge, it seems to grant the Bard too much information too easily without any requirement that the Bard be able to show a clear connection to the source. If however the player could roll an ancestral knowledge check, then the character will mystically recall some forgotten lore that was known by a relative, now deceased. Clearly this wouldn't be an option for changelings and orphans who don't do research to discover their roots.
• V.I.F.: The very important family might be a feat that could be picked up first level, it would provide a +1 intimidate, +1 diplomacy, + 2 to two of the following Knowledge : Local, History, Nobility, Religion. When playing in the ancestral stomping ground these bonuses are increased by 1.
• Blood of Heros: This would be particularly the case for characters that wield an ancestral weapon, Characters who can trace themselves back to a particular hero gain bonuses in combat that make their opponent more likely to surrender or run away. This trait only works if the bad guys know anything about the legend of the heroic ancestor.

Alignment: another view

Not long ago another member of our role playing group and contributor/co-founder of stupidranger.com, Vanir, submitted an article about alignment (you can read it here). Vanir's article is well reasoned and entertainingly written, but I simply disagree. As a player and as a DM I find the alignment system in D&D to be helpful and enjoyably complex.
As a game system, D&D allows for many types and levels of play. Some of the most basic levels focus on broad and sweeping categories, campaign plots are simple, easily discerned (though perhaps challenging to carry out), and require little in the way of difficult choices. This is where many of us began as players and DMs. As we age, and in theory mature, we see that the world is not nearly as simple as we once thought. I call this the DC-Marvel shift, but that's the subject of another article. If this new understanding of the world doesn't send us into escapism, we are likely to include this more nuanced side of life in our role playing and in our characters.
Nuanced Characters rely more on shades of meaning than on broad categories. Some would say that the alignment system prevents nuanced characters. I say the way some people play alignments didn't mature with the rest of them. It's not the system (remember the system allows for many levels of play), it's the people. Consider this: in our real life world, many people rely solely on the good-evil spectrum when identifying someone's personality. In the D&D universe one would never consider having only one alignment.
There are many many ways to be Lawful, Ethically Neutral, Chaotic, Evil, Morally Neutral, and Good. When building a back-story I would urge players to discern carefully the alignment position, to determine what about this character's philosophy of life leads them to this or that alignment. A player might play six Neutral Good characters in a row and they might all have slightly different moral priorities. A character's alignment is a tool to be used for better role-playing; it is a precision instrument, not a sledgehammer. Thinking critically about a character's alignment before the game even begins can go a long way towards warding off metagaming and broad performances.
For my part, I hope that alignment sticks around for a long long time, and I also hope that the core rule books remain sufficiently vague on their behalf.

Also Check Out: Hero Builder's Guidebook. This work contains helpful chapters about adding nuance to the character creation process and demonstrates beautifully the "there are many ways to play each alignment thing" I was trying to describe above.

New Irking trend

Well not so much a new trend, as one that has recently begun to irk me. Churches that don't update their websites with important information regarding things like service times.
Carson and I have been trying to attend St. Paul, a UCC church in Pekin, IL for several weeks ...mostly it was our own faults that we hadn't attended, but the one Sunday we have our act together I checked the website at least six times (so there would be no mistakes). The site (an official site, as far as I could tell) said the church had two services one at 8:15 and one at 10:45 with church school in between.

We arrived at the church in plenty of time for the 10:45 service only to discover that the church has changed to having a 9:00 service with church school to follow. We snuck out of the church so as to avoid having to explain the problem. I don't feel people need to call to check out information that is published online on an official site.

Yes, I know that by in large church websites are maintained be volunteer amateurs. Yes I also know that if we had sucked it up and talked to someone at the church they would have been made aware that two of the most coveted church goers, the young couple first time visitor, had been unable to worship with them because their website has bad intel. Ouchy.

We still plan to attend worship at St. Paul's but I can imagine others who would simply move on to another congregation that demonstrated an understanding of how people my age seek out information.

DMing the Bible: Party Murder

Introduction:
While much is made in popular theology about Adam and Eve and the incident in the garden, the story does not, in fact, introduce human sinfulness into the Biblical narrative. The story we're talking about this week does. In this issue of DMing the Bible we will look at the story of Cain and Abel in greater depth and then talk some about party relationships.
The Text:
Genesis 4 continues with the Yahwist account (the j-source) of the family of Adam and Eve, this time focusing not on the parents but on the first two sons Cain and Abel. Cain is the first born, and shares in Adam's work with plants and agriculture; the second son Abel keeps the livestock. This is a fairly typical distribution of labor for inhabitants of the ANE.
Though God has not laid out a system of recommended giving (as will happen, at great length, in Exodus), Cain and Abel both come to make a gift to the Lord. The both bring gifts from their particular trade. Now when I was a kid in Church School, this story was illustrated and told with great frequency. The story and the pictures always showed Cain, almost Neanderthal in appearance, carelessly dropping of the rotten remainder of his crop (which were usually illustrated as new world crops like tomatoes and corns, but I digress). Clean, blond, somewhat frail, almost radiant Abel comes skipping along with the very first lambs of his flock. The suggestion in these tellings was that Cain and his offerings were clearly inferior to Abel and the offering of the lambs. The story doesn't paint such a clear picture. Abel did bring from the first of his flock, but the text merely tells us that Cain's offerings came from plants. Further it suggests that Cain cam first to make an offering, and Abel's gift was made in imitation. This is not all that surprising when one considers the meaning of their names: Cain calls to mind human creativity, Abel means "shadowy" and "nothing."
It is not clear why God accepts the Abel's offering and not Cain's. Biblical scholars and interpreters through the ages have offered several possible reasons: Abel's sacrifice really was better than Cain's, in later Israelite ritual animal sacrifices are preferred to vegetable, God favors the younger sons in most Biblical tales. The reason is less important to the story than simply that things have been tipped off kilter.
Cain is understandably upset, God has chosen his younger brother over him. God talks to Cain suggesting that the door to acceptance is not yet closed; look at the wording in verse 7, "If you do well, will you not be accepted? And if you do not do well , sin is lurking at the door; its desire is for you, but you must master it." Cain has an opportunity to do well, but God does give warning about what a bad choice will bring. The way sin is described in this story it is lying in wait on the doorstep like an lone roller skate looking for chance to trip you when you're already late. God holds out the possibility that Cain doesn't have to fall for it, and if he doesn't the world would be set right.
As we know it doesn't happen, Cain lures Abel out to the fields and kills him. From this point on in the Bible there in no sibling relationship that is free of tension.God asks Cain where Abel is, and Cain responds with the classic line "I don't know; am I my brother's keeper?" Cain, who had turned the disappointment of his relationship with God outward and onto his brother, is now claiming that Abel and Abel's life and accomplishments mean nothing to him -- that they have no bearing in his life. God knows too well where Abel is and what the consequence or Cain's activity will be. In this case, God is not the punishing agent. The ground is turned against Cain, and so he can no longer stay and be a farmer. Cain says the punishment is too heavy, leaving the land he knew, and being removed from the land meant separation from God. Cain was afraid anybody who met him would kill him (we'll talk about this when we get to Sodom and Gomorrah) but God makes it so that people who meet Cain will know he's connected and cannot be killed indiscriminately.
The Game:
PC parties are often strange things. They are cobbled together of different characters with different skill sets, different races, different values, and different gods (sometimes even different pantheons). Yet this group are not just traveling companions who may bid one another adieu at any time, they are supposed to be a team. Teams in general can pull together and work towards a common goal. All these differences can lead to conflict in a party, and that tension has to work itself out eventually. As a DM you have a chance to provide opportunities for inner-party conflicts to be worked out in such a way that the characters are closer at the conclusion. Here are some suggestions:

• Well that's one thing we've got: The chaotic evil fighter and the lawful good cleric can't agree on much, but they can agree that the demons that are taking over the town are bad. Keeping players focused on places where most everybody agrees might help to bridge some of the gaps in the team building process.
• We call that Improved Critical: Each character has a place to shine (assuming a well balanced party). One way to keep characters from each other's throats is making sure that each character gets a chance to show their usefulness to the party and their competence in general. This is particularly helpful in getting evil characters not to kill off the good ones.
• All Aboard! Express to Therapy: Yes, railroading players is not a good thing, it frequently backfires and annoys players. But, if you were to do it in a limited way...like in dreams or in the dungeon of a mad, but beneficent wizard. It may give a player character or two a chance to work out whatever needs working out. Dream sequences work particularly well between sessions.

They went and killed each other anyway. Well, don't you feel a little like God. What happens now?

• Res and repeat: D&D can at times make death seem cheap; for moderate level parties True Res is not that difficult to come by. This solution gets your plot back on track but ultimately sets things up for a bigger confrontation later.
• Time to Depart: The dead character stays dead or doesn't, but either way the killing character(s) are cast from the party. Your players can introduce new PC's as you see fit and now you have a handy new villain to reintroduce at some later date. The exiled PC's player may be helped to stay involved in the game if you allow a little input about what that character does next.

Quiz results are fun

My Inner D&D character:

After analyzing your answers with state-of-the-art medieval fantastic psychology profiling tools, Dungeon Mastering is confident that your inner D&D character is a Chaotic Good Halfling Rogue / Bard!

Thanks to Stupid Ranger for pointing this quiz out. You may go here to take it yourself.

All in all I am not that surprised with this outcome. Look a little later on for an article about alignment -- in my way of thinking I usually lie a little more neutral than chaotic. I couldn't point specifically to where I am like a Halfling, but it doesn't strike me as totally wrong. The least surprising part of these results is the Rogue thing. There is something in me that seems to gravitate that way. The last three characters I have played were rogue-like characters (even the cleric I'm currently playing has a prestige class that allows her to fill in as the party's rogue).

Heavy Cream

Carson and I like to dine out at a local pub that does a good hamburger, a very good potato coddle, and a decent full breakfast (I like the coddle and the hamburger, Carson is mad for the full breakfast) (yes we do know what's in black pudding, your point?). The ambiance is good, it sits right on the river, and they serve coke products.

What they don't do well is dessert. I'm not really sure why, but they routinely miss the mark. One of their best, most consistent desserts is their bread pudding. I like it in the traditional way served with heavy cream (they will also serve it with ice cream). The last time I was in, I ordered the bread pudding with heavy cream. When the dessert arrived it was clear the poor skinny waif had no idea what heavy cream was because instead of pudding with a bit of high-fat dairy I was served a bowl full of milk with a little bit of pudding. She had clearly understood "heavy cream" as "heavy on the cream."

It took me the better part of the night to figure out why she had drowned the bread pudding in milk; when I finally did, I couldn't stop laughing. Now when one of us misunderstands the other Carson and I will look over and say "heavy cream." We can't help but laugh. But seriously what has happened to our culinary traditions when waitresses don't know what heavy cream is? I despair sometimes.

DMing the Bible: Table Talk

Introduction:
Though this series not intended to be a verse by verse commentary, this third installment will focus on the third chapter in Genesis. In the first two chapters the world and all its fullness was created. The human species received gender and gave us our first cast of characters. Chapter three continues the distinctive j-source narrative as it explains why humans live in the desert instead of the lush garden setting for which God had created us.
The Text:
The first verse of chapter three introduces one further character, the serpent. The word used here is really garden variety snake, but in the Ancient Near East (ANE) the snake was viewed as a creature of supernatural quality. Because a snake will from time to time shed its skin and appear rejuvenated, they were believed to be immortal. Let's take a minute to talk about the serpent as it functions in this tale. I believe if we are to take this tale as a proto-"just so story," it would be inappropriate to draw the character of the serpent out as an allegorical figure. This is simply a character in a fable, and in the rest of our lives we do not need to identify talking animals in fables as agents or personifications of evil. The serpent approaches the woman and engages her in a conversation about the tree of the knowledge of Good and Evil
In Genesis 2:16-17, God explains to the human creature that the fruit of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil is off limits for eating. By the time Eve and the serpent discuss the fruit of said tree, she has constructed a second layer of defensive legislation that prohibits not just eating the fruit of the tree but also touching it. The serpent suggest that it is not true that eating the fruit will kill you, but that the reason God gave humanity this rule is to keep you from being like gods yourself. Indeed Eve eats the fruit and gives some to Adam who also eats (though without first debating the question as Eve had done), and it turns out that they didn't die. The realized all kinds of things about themselves and their situation.
God, in the habit of walking in the garden, finds the people and gets Adam to tattle on Eve. In the punishment phase of the trial God makes the world as people living in the ANE would find very familiar: snakes slither about and engender fear and loathing from people, pregnancy is difficult and dangerous for mother and child, the genders are not equal, and agriculture is difficult and thankless. As a kicker at the end of the story we discover that the knowledge of good and evil did make humanity like the gods, to protect them from immortality, God must send them away from the garden. And that's a story about why the world is the way it is.
The Game:
If this story were a game session, the plot places PC's (Adam and Eve) in a position where through conversation they must decide between competing claims of two NPC's. As a DM, I love running this kind of session. I enjoy the side of D&D that encourages people to think through problems and decide upon courses of action. This kind of play demands that people stay more or less in character during play; it certainly means that players need to avoid "table talk."
I define table talk thusly: conversation that sounds like it might just be happening in character. For example anything that would prompt a DM to exclaim "Did you really say THAT?!?!?" or "You did WHAT??" is probably table talk. Here are some solutions.

1. Character "voice":The group with whom I play includes only one or two players routinely use an alternate voice for their characters, and so they have fairly adroitly avoided having jokes the make wind up in the mouths of their characters. This doesn't mean of course everybody has to play with crazy accents or affected speech impediments, but it may mean that a character may have a particular phrase that only gets used in character particularly at the head of a dialogue block.
2. The White Flag: My husband, Carson, is the most likely of our group to wander afoul of table talk. He likes to play out alternatives to the scene during the session (alternatives that would probably have horrible horrible consequences). Our group has basically agreed to let Carson say whatever he wants, with the knowledge that it will be counted as "in-character" unless he holds aloft a piece of white paper set aside just for this task. Whatever Carson says when the paper is up doesn't count. This is a rule that we only apply to one person, but it works for us given the nature of the group.

DMing the Bible: Gender Games

Introduction:
Last time we looked at the beginning of the Bible and the first of the creation stories. This time I thought we might look at the second of these stories. The first creation account is poetic, almost liturgical, which is appropriate as the first story is believed to come from a scripturally forebear known as the "priestly source" or "p-source." The account that is featured in chapter 2 is drawn from what Christian Biblical Scholars call the Yahwist tradition or the "j-source" (because when Germans transliterate Hebrew the letter 'yod' becomes a 'j'). The account is more personal, a little more fable-like, and the one the one that is easier to put on Sunday School felt boards.

The Text:
God again creates the world out of an extant collection of matter. In the first tale the material was described as water; this time the land is described as barren and desolate for lack of moisture. God makes a man-creature, a dust-thing, as one of the first creative acts. Notice I didn't say man; the word in Hebrew is most closely related to the word for dirt. In translation, the word is sometimes rendered human or human-being; what is most important to keep in mind is that until we get to verse 23 "the man" does not indicate a male gendered person.

God places this creation in a garden where all sorts of fruits and vegetables veritably spring out of the ground (can you tell this account was written by desert subsistence farmers?). The garden is feed by the four great rivers that provided water for much of ancient Mesopotamia.

God gives the creature the task of managing the garden. God decides that being alone on the earth is not the way life should be for the creature. God makes all the animals just to see if the a match for the creature. God brings each animal not just for a blind date, but also so that the human can name all the other creatures. God and the human run through every animal, but no partner was found. Male and female are created when God splits the creature in two (check out Rabbinic interpretations of this story for very specific ideas about how the split took place).

The Game:
Most games of Dungeons and Dragons use as backdrops richly detailed worlds that have at their hearts the late middle ages or Renaissance Europe. This was not a time well noted for sweeping equality between the genders. Truth be told our own time is not known for sweeping equality between the genders. The designers of the third (and later) edition D&D took great pains to distribute gendered language evenly making it clear the they were trying to describe a world where men and women were equal partners in the waging of war and the building of civilizations. My interpretation of the text (Genesis 2:4b-25) suggests that in God's world design the genders were also supposed to be equal partners

With all of that said, it is very difficult to fully eradicate gender roles from role playing sessions. Here are some suggestions:
1. Watch your NPC's: Are your bar keeps always wenches? Is the head honcho of the land always the King, noble Lord, or Herr Mayor? Try writing against the period stereotype. If you use pre-generated materials see if they are balanced--most materials can be gender swapped on the fly (just give the physical description a look-see first, and tweak as needed
2. Consider the options: If there is simply no way to even the actual distribution of males to females, check out the wide spectrum of masculinity and femininity. Is it possible the Master at Arms is a gentle and nurturing man? Can the mayor's socialite wife lead the local athletic efforts?
3. Roll with it: Be unambiguous about the values of a society that does not hold either males or females in high regard. Use the tensions of unjust gender roles as a plot point or opportunity for players to shine in problem solving or role playing.

Neil Gaiman's Stardust

Carson and I went to see Stardust at the theater last night. He had been reluctant to go, having not read the book. I had been anticipating it for months before it was released. I was also a little apprehensive. The seeming over-emphasis in the publicity on the characters played by DeNiro and Pfeiffer concerned me. I was worried that the transition from novel to film would render a delicate and nuanced plot into a broad comedy or stereotypical witch and wizard fantasy (not of course that I mind either type of film in general). As we purchased our tickets the manager of the theater gave it a raving reveiw, saying that he had purhaps enjoyed the movie even more than he enjoyed the book.
Now, I don't have to tell any of you how exceptionally rare it is that a movie holds even a candle to a book let alone shine as brightly. Stardust however both as film and novel told a charming and sensitive story. I would recomend this film to just about anybody.

DMing the Bible: When God Began Creating

Introduction:
For our first outing into scripture I thought we might begin at the beginning. The beginnings of the Genesis (a book the by its very name talks about beginning) are not in fact believed to be the oldest parts of Scripture (that honor probably lies in the text of Job), but they are of course the most foundational. Humanity has been for time immemorial as concerned with what came before as with what happens next. Large portions of the oral tradition are dedicated to describing the beginnings of thing, and the traditions that contributed to the formation of the Bible were no exception. In Genesis we have two different stories about the making of the world.
The Text:
Genesis 1:1-2:4 is the first of these accounts, and the one I'd like to use as springboard this week. The text as it was written in Hebrew carries a bit more ambiguity that does any one English translation. For example "Bereshit bara Elohim et hashamayim ve'et ha'arets." Can satisfactorily be translated "When God began to create the heavens and the earth", "In the beginning when God created the heaven and the earth", or "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." In this account of the creation though there was matter already present there was still the need for divine creative endeavor to render either heavens or earth as fully created.
The matter that existed prior to creation was all jumbled up and God set about making things better (or good if you prefer). God sends the divine breath, or wind, or Spirit out over the world as it stood and separates light from dark, rain and clouds from terrestrial waters, water from dry land, and seasons from one another. Once proper order had been established the earth could bring forth plants and animals of every sort. After all of this God says (to somebody, but we're left to wonder who) lets make women and men in our image, lets make humankind like us in this natural world. Having done all these things God declares it all very good and takes a day to reflect on the labor of creation.
The Game:
This seems like a lovely text to keep as a conversation partner when considering what was once called the ethical alignments (i.e. Law and Chaos). While it may be argued that the struggle between the moral alignments (Good and Evil) lies at the heart of the majority of global conflicts in fantasy settings, it is not to say that it is the only way it has to be. The campaign setting of Dragonlance, for example, features the lawfully aligned people of Krynn, good and evil alike, battling against the forces of chaos.
It is fairly safe to say that God, as described in Genesis, is operating in a Lawful world view. However unlike many constructed worlds in role playing, there is not a diametrically opposed deity featured in the story. The chaos just is, and God's effort on the behalf of order are not explicitly opposed.
As a DM, it is sometimes tempting to make things tidy and symmetrical for your players. Lawful paladins find natural enmity with the chaotic Robber-king. Having an interesting villain lends face to the forces of disquietude that have been raising the anxiety of local town halls or noble lords. What about the times when things just are? While I would not suggest making a villain-less plot line the major feature of your next campaign, it may be interesting to engage lawful characters of mid to high levels in rectifying chaos caused by a world/ plane's natural process.

DMing the Bible: the beginning

Apologia:
As the series title has indubitably raised anxiety in a few of you let me first of all spend some time talking about Role Play (in particular D&D), religion, and civility. As my user profile notes I am both a minister of the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) and an enthusiast of role playing games (btw the Christian Church (Disciples of Christ) is a denomination of withing the wider religion of Christianity Check this out for more info). I see no inherent contradiction between the two in much the same way Christian Cubs fans see no basic conflict in their love of God and their enjoyment of Wrigley Field and baseball.
This section is called Apologia because I want to give an explanation I hope will persuade those who are uncertain. Though wittier people than I have placed fingers to keyboard as apologists of role playing to the Christian community, I would like to throw in my two cents. As a Christian I believe that in the person of Jesus, God redeems the world. Reconciling all things through the power of God's amazing love. This activity of reconciliation and redemption is lived out on both the individual and the cosmic scale. On the individual scale God calls people away from broken lives and into new a life and an experience of unparalleled wholeness. Nothing in the experience of a healthy role-playing group damages a person's ability to live such a wholly holy life.
Children, listen to me; if you take part in a group where you do not feel you are safe to be the person you are called to be, if you find yourself in the midst of a group of people who will not accept you as a unique and lovely Child of God-- I don't care where you met these people: at church, at role-playing, at school --get away from them post-haste. People like that are not pursuing a hobby, worshiping God, or attending to their studies they are being abusive. Call it what it is and find yourself a new group with whom to hang.

Methodology:
Here on out I will be looking at Biblical texts with the eyes of a Biblical Scholar and as a Dungeon Master. I will select these texts at whim. I have in mind to talk some about character classes of all types, alignments, play techniques, campaign settings, plot devices, and combat mechanics (oh it's in there, and I won't even have to stretch). Biblical Quotes will come from the New Revised Standard Version, and role playing materials will come mostly from core rulebooks of Dungeons and Dragons version 3.5. You may find it handy to have access to these materials.

Return of the bride of Where I've Been

I know that in general blogs only are useful if they are updated from time to time. This, however has been one of the most serious weak points of any of the blogs yours truly has attempted to begin.
During the Summer months I was away working in a local congregation as their substitute senior minister. It was an amazing experience, and one that I know will ride close in my heart for a long while to come.
I am back now...and Wry Juxtaposition has received a face-lift in honor of a new series I am beginning in just a few minutes that will hopefully be a weekly feature of this blog

Hair Cut?

I'm thinking about cutting my hair. Click here for some samples.

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I dreamt I died last night

I had a pretty rough time of it last night. In my first dream a woke up before a home invader could rape me and in the third I dreamt I drove a 15 passenger van off a bridge and into the Ohio River.



The second dream had snakes and I woke up whimpering.



What's worst about this dream where I drove off the bridge is that after the van left the bridge the dream held in a steady cam wide angle of the bridge as some cars stopped so the people could look down and out of frame to where the van went into the river and other cars continued on. After about twenty seconds of this I thought, "I think I died." But the dream didn't end and I began to freak out that this was what actually happened after you died. Of course, freaking out is what broke the dream and I woke up. It was 6:15, and I decided not to try and get any more sleep.

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Where I've been 2

I was away a while ago, geographically, away from the internet more or less, but I've been here at home for over a week now. I seem to have been away from you, my dear imaginary readers. I wonder, really, who reads this. I got nothing. I've been listening to David Sedaris read Dress Your Family in Denim and Corduroy. His dry simple delivery the nonchalance over the important ...the crystal clear observation of the mundane. It was what I had always hoped for a blog, or book, or conversation, or sermon, but realize now that I want it too much to achieve, crushing really. I too had wanted to tell a story about nothing but in such a way as the story was quite more than nothing it would become a statement about American life and the emptiness of being modern. The big things I've been doing, attending funerals, traveling across the country, preaching, interviews, employment there are many stories to tell, but my heart for telling them has departed.



I dreamt last night that Jamie Eubanks and I went grocery shopping. We were living in an apparent police state, and Jamie had been wanted by the state police, but had tricked them into arresting somebody else (now that I type it, that's really horrible). He seemed uninterested in produce; I bought limes because my father was coming to town, oranges and orange rinds  (for the zest I guess, and they were so much cheaper than the whole orange), candied fruit for a fruitcake, hot dog buns because Jamie had eaten the last of them in a post-church camp frenzy (that's the explanation he gave me, said frenzy did not occur in the dream) I awoke as I was considering whether or not I needed to buy eggs. strange dream.

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Where I've been

I haven't posted in the last couple of weeks, and mostly I have no real excuse. The only thing I could offer is that I have been to Louisville twice in the last six weeks, which at 6 and a half hours one way is saying something.

This week I am with my friend Amanda during the funeral for her grandmother and a few days afterward. Last time Amanda and I finally finished the format for the Bible Study we've been working on all year.

I may not post again until I get back home to Peoria, but until then at least y'all aren't in the dark.

Slow and Steady

It occurs to me that this expression we have "slow and steady wins the race" is really rather silly. Slow and Steady definitely beats "fast and faltering," but what really wins the race is fast and steady. Could it be that when we teach our children to be slow and steady we are in effect training them to be stoic, stolid losers?

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So where is Peoria?

While I am looking for a church job, I am also on the search for a secular job, and so I have career builder email me links to job postings. These are the towns that Careerbuilder.com thinks are around Peoria:

• Davenport, IA: 98 miles from Peoria
  
  
• Warrenville: 152 miles from Peoria
• Lisle: 142 miles from Peoria
• Saint Charles: 154 miles from Peoria
• West Chicago: 146 miles from Peoria
• Carol Stream: 157 miles from Peoria
• Elgin: 174 miles from Peoria
• Burr Ridge: 137 miles from Peoria
• Streamwood: 159 miles from Peoria
• Oakbrook Terrace: 144 miles from Peoria
• Hanover Park: 156 miles from Peoria
• Elmhurst: 157 miles from Peoria
• Franklin Park: 153 miles from Peoria
• Rolling Meadows: 165 miles from Peoria
• Oak Park: 159 miles from Peoria
• Schaumburg: 164 miles from Peoria
• Niles: 169 miles from Peoria
• Northbrook: 173 miles from Peoria
• Evanston: 168 miles from Peoria
• Glenveiw: 171 miles from Peoria
• Skokie: 171 miles from Peoria

All of these with the exception of Davenport (which is in Iowa) are suburbs or encapsulated cities in and around Chicago. It is very vexing; especially since from time to time they actually list jobs that I might have a shot at.

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Another Quiz from the boys

What Be Your Nerd Type? Your Result: Literature Nerd   Does sitting by a nice cozy fire, with a cup of hot tea/chocolate, and a book you can read for hours even when your eyes grow red and dry and you look sort of scary sitting there with your insomniac appearance? Then you fit this category perfectly! You love the power of the written word and it's eloquence; and you may like to read/write poetry or novels. You contribute to the smart people of today's society, however you can probably be overly-critical of works. It's okay. I understand.
Drama Nerd	 
Gamer/Computer Nerd	 
Social Nerd	 
Artistic Nerd	 
Musician	 
Science/Math Nerd	 
Anime Nerd	 
What Be Your Nerd Type? Quizzes for MySpace

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Big Fish story

Carson and I have this on going fact, truth, meaning debate. Last night we watched Big Fish (2003) which brought this right up to the surface. In the film the point isn't whether the stories are factual or not (though Carson and the son spent the whole time doing this very thing), the point is the way lives are given meaning by the way we tell the stories. In that these are the stories that tell of something important in the life of a man, they are true. It's a nice bonus (for me) that they had some grounding in fact.

In this debate, discussion, argument, discourse, language is becoming more and more an issue. Finding different words to use so as not to confuse the other is quiet difficult. But we muddle through. It's all we can do.

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Ok so now I know why, but I still don't think we should

For an explanation of children and Palm Sunday click here

Still (a word I am finding I over use) perhaps it is time for us all to move on.

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A New (to me) Favorite Hymn Writer

Oh there are many of course, and so many writers of favorite hymns whose names are lost to history. There are a few though, who seem to do no wrong in the field of hymn writing. Bren Wren has long led that pack in my opinion, but a name I have just added to the list id Thomas H. Troeger.



Troeger is the wordsmith who gave the world "A Cheering Chanting Dizzy Crowd" (my new favorite Palm Sunday hymn), "God Made from One Blood" (a good hymn for many occasions), "How Long, O God, How Long" (a meditation on loss in short meter), and "Source and Sovereign, Rock and Cloud" (a superb hymn about not pigeon-holing God). This is just a sample, and only a few of his contributions to The Chalice Hymnal (my denomination's hymnal). Look this guy up. Use his hymns; sing new songs!

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My new favorite addicting Game

http://addictinggames.com/fantan.html



can't read any of the instructions, but it's really easy to figure out what's going on. And I just love the animation when the yellow player-thing loses.

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heh heh, Dice

You are the rare, the overlooked, yet incredibly useful dodecahedron: the d12. You are a creative, romantic soul. You often act without thinking, but make up for your lack of plans with plenty of heart. You easily solve problems that stump others, but your answers tend to put you into even deeper trouble. You write long, detailed backgrounds for all your characters, and are most likely to dress up as one or get involved in cos-play. You can be silly at times and are easily distracted by your own day dreams, but are, at the end of the day, someone who can be depended on.

Take the quiz: http://dicepool.com/catalog/quiz.php

Short post about wii

how fun is that!!! we went to a video game party last night and played on all these systems. The DDR was fun (I danced along with Jen, Ryan's wife, she did better than me, but we were both pretty bad), but it was the wii that got me. My goodness that was fun. I think the most amusing thing, though, would have been to watch me trying to box. It turns out I'm good at the hitting sports. I'm really old on my fitness age though (71, eek).

Palm Sunday

Today is Palm Sunday, which is a weird weird holy day in the Christian Church (by which I mean the one holy catholic and apostolic, to borrow language from the Nicene Creed). In many ways each Sunday is a lifting of the Lenten burden. If you are fasting, you don't fast on Sundays --etc. Palm Sunday which remembers the triumphant entry into Jerusalem is a little more festive than other Sundays in Lent. The difficulty is, for me at least, how does one celebrate with the crowds who welcomed Jesus without flashing forward to the end of the week and remembering the behavior of these same people or recalling why this is holy week at all.



I think about the disciples and how pumped they must have been it would have felt like all the hard work and suffering they had gone through for the last three years was now finally paying off. I think about the crowd, so many of them in from the surrounding countryside, what it must have felt like to have been a first time visitor in Jerusalem for passover. I think about the way that every year or so somebody would come along promising to rid Israel of the Roman Occupation/ restore the splendor of the old Kingdom. I think about all of these people looking to Jesus to give them something, some kind of hope, having all these expectations of him.



As a Christian in this modern era, I interpret the observation of Palm Sunday in this way: We stand with the disciples and the members of the crowd. We too are among people who are looking for Jesus to give us something, to change something about us, to give us some hope, to make the world a better place, to make us rich, to smite our enemies, to agree with our judgment of others, whatever. We have all have things that we want to project onto Jesus, ways in which we want to classify and pigeonhole him. Palm Sunday reminds us of our place in the massive crowd of people who still have room to grow in our understanding of who/ what Jesus was, and what he was up to.



To that end I have some suggestions about changing the way we celebrate Palm Sunday. Let's stop making Palm Sunday the day where we parade the children around the church. It's not scripturally accurate anyway. Let's say words about the ways we seek to define Jesus rather than letting him define us (I like responsive litanies for this). Finally we should refrain from preaching holy week and certainly refrain from preaching Easter on Palm Sunday and just preach Palm Sunday.

Last Night I dreamt I returned to Memphis

Actually, I'm there often in my dreams; I just like the line. No last night had had three pretty good ones.

1) While out for a walk in the neighborhood where I grew up I noticed that the smoothie/coffee bar on the corner appeared to have gone out of business. I noted to my brother, John, that it was unfortunate because it had nice ambiance and a good feel. I tried to predict what would take its place. I voted for one of those modern head shops. It could have jewelry, incense, t-shirts with naughty sayings, music, home (mother's basement) decor, absurd shoes, and the like.
John got tired of the conversation and announced that he was going to go to lunch, but we had to change. So we went home and John changed into colonial period clothes, which were very dashing. I was having trouble getting into my colonial period clothes. John implied that it was because I was too large a woman for the period (which just isn't true, there have always been fat women), but I pointed out that it was the petticoats I was having trouble with. He jot mad and left and I changed back into my jeans. This is the point at which the dream becomes weird.
Because of the zombies outside, I had to be very careful as I walked to the campus of the boarding school. I also had to be careful because I had neglected to put on shoes. Turns out this school was a boys school and the smaller kids were all quite frightened. The older boys were just mean, but they thought they knew of a place where there wouldn't be zombies. SO we begin walking. I goof and imply to one of the boys that because he died as a character in a Stephen King novel he was pretty much a goner here. That freaked him out and so I had to take it all back. At one point we had to descend into a storm drain, it was handy though, because some one had cached a rather lot of supplies (including shoes). All the shoes were too big for me, but one of the pairs were canvas tennis shoes which I could wrench down pretty tight so that it basically fit.
We walked out of the drain into a snowed over urban landscape, somebody had plowed the roads but we had to walk in the roadway because the side walks were clogged up. While we were underground the zombies had learned to drive, so walking in the road was not the safest of all the options. Meanwhile a pregnant zombie had crept up behind us. She blamed us for the death of her baby (totally unfair charge, her baby died when she became on one the undead, which we had nothing to do with). She came around the front of me and I tried to convince her to be happy instead with a pizza box I had found by the road; it diverted her for a while, but then she came after me again so I ran back towards a back hoe. Two more zombies came at me from the side, and I tried to take them all out with the shovel of the hoe, but it was frozen stuck. I woke up, and had a hell of a time going back to sleep.

2) I was a counselor at a summer camp that was being run by Admiral Adama. The seemed to be a serial killer on the loose. Also all these teens were in spiritual crisis, so taking a break from hunting down the killer I delivered a kick-ass sermon about using more metaphors for God than just the disapproving Father. It was beautiful and poetic, and such a sweet speech that when I was done Adama dumped a cooler of Gatorade on me. I then had to find a way to modestly walk to the back of the field for my jacket as I had been wearing a white shirt. When I got to the back of the field I put on my jacket and looked up into one of the trees. There was a kid up there hanging in the tree. I let out a Hollywood worthy scream. Adama came over, his son was very upset (not the son from the show, younger like a really young James Franco) because he had really liked the kid in the tree. Adama, spotting a roll of scotch double-sided tape, called up for the kid to come down and stop fooling around. He explained that the kid had been seeking some attention. We didn't find the real killer because I woke up.

3) The third one is very very long, and a bit disjointed so I'll pass on telling it. But it had to do with travel and planes and hotels and airports, It was crazy. Trust me.

Things I thought of while in the tub

Why don't they make a device for your bathroom that shows you when your hot water heater is done doing its thing? If you had that, you wouldn't turn the water on until it was ready (premature hot water requests slow down the heater, don't they?).

There should be a thing like a poncho with snaps around the border that you could attach to the tub to make a warm air tent. It could be made of two layers of stretchy terry cloth separated by a thin flexible layer of plastic and have hand holes. It would keep cold air out, warm air in, and would enable book-safe bathtub reading. They could market different shapes: rectangle, round, and oval; they you would pick the best match based on the tub. The snaps would attach to the tub with some sort of water-proof, but non-permanent adhesive, so that you could move them if you weren't happy with their placement.

What I read this month

Elizabeth Lowell: The Wrong Hostage
Jayne Ann Krentz: White Lies
Kasey Michaels: High Heels and Homicide
Steve Martini: The Jury, abridged on audiobook (abridged audiobooks is a rant for another day)
Simon R. Green: Hex and the City
Christopher Moore: Coyote Blue

books that I have read but can't remember if it was this month or last month
Terry Pratchett and Neil Gaiman: Good Omens
Matthew Pearl: The Dante Club

and finally a book I continue to work on, having been unable thus far to finish it.
Susanne Clark: Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrel

Second Life Rant

So I signed on to second life this week. Then I signed of, deleted my account and uninstalled the software. Why? It turns out I am just hopelessly naive. Here is the response to the question I gave the people who maintain Second Life.

When I signed up with second life, I expected to find a global community working to perfect cyber-civilization, eschewing the divisions of class and rank, and endeavoring to reach the highest achievement in philosophy, discourse, aesthetics, and harmony. Instead I found a tawdry and perverted landscape dominated by casinos that were little more than fronts for pyramid schemes and spam baiting and pathetic sex clubs which seem to be the only place brand new members can find employment within SL. I was saddened, then disgusted, and finally disillusioned, which is why I am canceling my account and uninstalling the client.

So in the end I lost a couple day's productivity, had to abandon an email address I had used since college, and found that some small part of my optimism had died. Thanks Second Life, for nothing.

Yeah I'm guilty

Already letting the blog slip a bit, oh well. I'm back. It was a pretty busy week. Last Sunday I was supplying in Cuba, IL at a really nice, friendly small town church. The sermon wasn't all I was hoping it would be, but the service was quite a nice one. Then Tuesday morning I had an ill-begotten interview with local company Multi-Ad seeking what's know in the ministry as tent-making work (after Paul's secular work so that he could pay his own way in ministry and not be a burden on the Corinthian church)(though of course he did accept money from the Philippians, so read into that what you will). Tuesday evening it was my turn to bring a sermon to the area church Lenten worship series. The sermon was a really good one, but would have been better if I hadn't stumbled once or twice on delivery. Then things calmed down a bit; I was declined for the job. We Role played on Friday night until we were all too tired to see straight (except for Carson and Matt who were still on whatever kind of high the two of them experience at role playing, I can only hope they're not like that at work). Sunday I was back at Cuba for the second Sunday of a two week engagement. This time the sermon went a good deal better, which is nice, though Carson thought there were two sermons in what I was preaching (though of course they were a different two than the ones I would have picked out). Boy this is a long paragraph.

I've decided to start keeping a journal that is not online as well, to track what I've done during the day and what kind of day it was for me. Also, I'm trying not to be paranoid about the mail carrier, though I'm almost sure she's stealing mail.

Amanda has some really great ideas about finishing up the west wing project, starting some new projects, working with Thoughtful Christian, and submitting things to Disciplesworld (our denominational magazine). So it's good to have something to keep myself busy. I also have the seemingly unending flooring project, I see it coming to an end soon though.

Lost day

Last night I dreamt I got the job at Multi-Ad.

Carson and I were driving into work, I fell asleep in the car. I woke up -- what I could have sworn was only a few moments later, but turned out was the next day. I was worried that I would lose my new found job because of my lost day (I didn't know where my desk was, what I was working on, etc). Carson said it would be fine.

We got to the office, but now there was a major hospital attached to the building. We went in the nearest door, but it was clear that we were nowhere near the Web/Development/Testing area. At one point arson left to go to his desk and I was left wandering around this hospital looking for my boss's office. I found the pediatrics department (the floors there were waxed to a high sheen and I slipped and fell. A nurse made fun of me; it was traumatic).

Eventually I found my boss's office and she asked me to take her daughter to the pediatrician in the building. We headed out and got to the department. When she was done we walked through the shopping mall on our way back to the office (the building having taken on airport perportions at this point) we decided that the Ralph Lauren spring collection looked a better set of clothes for me than for her (they were like ocean fairy clothes, stuff I'm pretty sure Ralph didn't design)

Just before we got to the last staircase before we were back in the office, this guy I knew from CPE, a guy who I'm pretty sure is totally unfit for the ministry, came walking in. He was shocked to see me, and claimed that he had picked being a chaplain at this hospital so no one who knew him would have to work with him again. I explained that I wasn't working as a chaplain but for a technical wing of this hospital in testing. He totally freaked out my boss's daughter, so I told him we had to go. After that I think I stopped dreaming for a while because the next dream had something to do with floods and river rafts and 300 as a football game.

Moving On?

Every now and then I get sudden, serious wanderlust. It's never convenient and to be perfectly frank I have never followed through. Last night as I was preparing for a Lenten service coming up this Tuesday and I suddenly got the urge to move to Oceania. I'm totally, irrationally afraid of snakes so Australia is right out. New Zealand though, well I think I fell in love with the scenery of NZ through film and television.

I was encouraged to dream about NZ because of the rather lot of exciting liturgical work that is going on there (and Australia, but I refer you above). Really, the only modern work in metrical psalms that I have seen of late comes out of this continent.

Apparently, the NZIS (which just looks wrong doesn't it?) has a category of immigration requests from people in fields of long-term shortage. They even have a little quiz thing so see if you are qualified enough. Carson, my husband is really really qualified, but I'm not quite qualified enough. The two of us together might make a really skilled immigrant couple.

Realistic things like mortages and interviews and such makes this little day dream a bit moot. Still it's always fun to dream.

About the title

I once knew a guy who had a personal game where he would attempt to develop the most exquisite complements for people he knew. When he finally got around to me, he decided that I was a wry juxtaposition of something and something else (he actually had words in place of the somethings, but the memory of them has faded) (it was something like innocence and a mouth like a sailor or intelligence and humor). At first I was not a happy camper. It seemed to me that this was not a complement at all (I was about 16). However the idea of my personally being made up of disparate parts, a personality formed by holding these parts in uneasy relationship with one another, that stuck with me.

I am really bad about blogging. This is actually the third or fourth attempt at a blog. I make no promises about being better. What I do promise is that what I post here will be true, and it will undoubtedly be a little weird.