Results of Ruminations

Many years ago, I was enjoying this music video by Muse. The video is immaterial, save for why a lot of people were watching it: The song, "Supermassive Black Hole" was featured on the then-most recent Twilight  soundtrack. I made the nigh-criminal mistake of checking out the comments of the video--comments now so deeply buried that it isn't worth the effort to find them--and was bemused by one of the poster's worry. "Muse fans," he (probably a he...and I'm paraphrasing, despite the quotes) wrote, "we are being overrun by Twihards! We can't let them ruin good music!" I've thought about that sentiment a lot over the years, rolling over the implications of what the poster was trying to say. I find it bizarre that he thinks that this one of many Muse videos would be a rallying point for anti- Twilight  fans to congregate (I guess? To whom is he speaking when he writes "Muse fans"?). His use of the plural "we" is like...

I've been thinking a lot about death this life, and I still don't understand it. Not the physiology of it (though my understanding of how the human body works is rudimentary and fractured) or the psychology of those who survive it (for a little bit of time, anyway). Those are fairly clear. For many, death invokes what Shakespeare wrote in King John . In Constance's words: Grief fills the room up of my absent child, Lies in his bed, walks up and down with me, Puts on his pretty looks, repeats his words, Remembers me of all his gracious parts, Stuffs out his vacant garments with his form; Then, have I reason to be fond of grief? Fare you well: had you such a loss as I, I could give better comfort than you do. I will not keep this form upon my head, When there is such disorder in my wit. O Lord! my boy, my Arthur, my fair son! My life, my joy, my food, my all the world! My widow-comfort, and my sorrows' cure!  It isn't mourning that I'm...

I was originally going to write about the irony that, despite the fact that I've figured a way to carve out enough time to update my blog, I haven't worked consistently on any of my book projects lately. Instead, I read an email. One of my former students--who had left for his LDS mission to Tallahassee a couple weeks ago--is returning home because of, if I'm reading the email correctly, serious thoughts about suicide. As I mentioned before , suicide is thematic in a lot of the world's literature.* In my course, we'll be talking about Inferno  (as mentioned), Hamlet  (he contemplates suicide--Ophelia may or may not have killed herself), Les Miserables  (Javert), Things Fall Apart  (Okonkwo), All Quiet on the Western Front  (Paul...maybe), and Maus  (Anja Spiegelman). It haunts us, it worries us, and the way we think about it has changed over the years. It doesn't go away, however, no matter how much we talk about it--or ignore it or stigmatize it or dis...

Since there are a lot of bumbling and conflicting ideas floating out there about the SCOTUS ruling with regards to marriage equality, I felt the need to document some of my thoughts and try to cobble them together here. My Religion and Marriage Equality According to a simple Google search, those who self-identify as a member of the Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-day Saints--or an LDS (I guess, grammatically, that's what you'd have to write)--make up approximately two- or three percent of the United States. The numbers can be tricky: The Church's numbers can include children and those who've left the Church but haven't taken their names off the records. Surveys by the PEW and others have pointed to a lower number (since they'd be interested in adults and those who self-identify as being a member), but I think ballpark statistics bear out the point I'm headed toward: There are roughly the same number of self-identifying Mormons as there are self-ide...

I am one of those people who, after 32 years of birthdays, still likes getting older. Well, I suppose I should clarify that: I love having a birthday. When I was about to turn 24, my first son was born. In fact, it was the day before my own birthday when he came into this world. In part because I was happy to be a dad, and in part because he almost didn't stay in the world for long, I enveloped Peter's birthday into my own. The one day's difference didn't bother me (even though, as a child, I secretly hated my younger brother for having a birthday in March), and I have always deeply enjoyed celebrating my son's birthday with my own. Part of my love of a birthday is from growing up. In a family of four kids, there were plenty of ways in which I could get attention from my parents, but I was always content to just kind of...be there. I didn't do a lot of sports, extra-curricular activities, or trouble. I was pretty content to cruise, rarely doing much out...

One of my greatest fears has been realized, something that I dreaded since the trauma of Peter's heart condition began to fade into its familiar numbness: Kids can be mean. Peter came home from school the other day, and, after crawling into his mother's lap, talked to her about his experience thus far in kindergarten. He explained that, yet again, he had not had any friends to play with during recess. In fact, on the whole, he doesn't feel that he has friends in his class at all. "It didn't work, Mommy," he said. "What didn't work, Peter?" she asked. "Being nice. You said that being nice will make other kids be nice to me and that's how I get friends. But it didn't work." Then he started to cry. Hearing this story stabs me right to my heart. It could be, as Hamlet says, by "thinking too precisely on the event", and thus this is an overwrought analysis, but I can't help but wonder if the things we did to...

I saw the movie Anonymous  last night. I'm sure the Internet has sounded off all over this thing, but, as an unabashed Bardolator, I feel like I ought to put down my thoughts. The movie has to be judged in two ways, and neither has anything to do with the other. On the one hand, it is a film--a piece of entertainment and fiction--and ought to be graded and regarded as such. On the other hand, it is a dramatized posit of a hare-brained (pun intended: Shakespeare coined that phrase) conspiracy that has real world parallels. The Film As a film, I liked it well enough. Then again, I like most every film I watch, as I love being able to relax and appreciate the entertainment, so that isn't really a glowing commendation. There were some problems with the acting--the young Queen Elizabeth, in particular, really bothered me. So did the Earl of Essex. There's a way to shout emotionally and there's a way to sound like a moron with a loud voice. Much like the Queen in Snow W...

NOTE: As always, there's a standing spoiler alert for any game I discuss on this blog. Here, I will be talking about Metal Gear Solid for the first PlayStation. Most of the discussion will focus on and spoil only that storyline, but because the five games that comprise the saga (as of this writing, with MGS: Portable Ops taking a necessary place) are linked, it's important to know that some things may get spoiled if you haven't played everything. ------------------------------------------------------------------------------ On Liquid In a certain sense, Metal Gear Solid is Liquid's game. Ever one to want to emulate the Patriots--albeit a type of radical, hate-twisted emulation, similar to the one that he has for Big Boss--Liquid takes it upon himself to manipulate, control, and twist Snake's progress. If anyone controls Snake, it should be Liquid, not the gamer. The controller in the hands of the audience is happenstance, for the entire ballet of Shadow Moses is...

There's a gap, somewhere, as necessary as a space between words, yet perplexing all the same. Video games are unique in many ways, but the most important here is the unreality of the experience, connected via a tiny umbilical cord (now wireless) streaming from the participant to the spectacle. This is not 'naïve realism' versus 'representative realism' or any other philosophical thought experiment. Instead, this is the real experiment of what can constitute definitions of reality, but placed inside of a virtual realm. The game is flat, despite having 3D graphics (or the redundant title of 'stereoscopic vision' being added to give the illusion of dimensional depth to games). The game is silent, despite having 7.1 Dolby Digital sound pumping through the speakers. The game is independent, despite being a console attached to a wall attached to a TV attached to a gamer. Perhaps in a quasi-Buddhist way, we could ask, “If no one is around to play the game, is it...