A monster story, rounding out a week of posts designed to draw those with short attention spans who keep saying they'd read my blog but it's too long.

Once upon a time, it was Thursday. And on Thursdays, the Timothy monster had to go to work. Which, boys and girls, is like a job, if ya believe it.

And at his work, the Timothy monster talked to very many people. But not so many as some days. So things were goin' pretty good.

But there was a problem at work. A problem that didn't have to do with work at all! It was a puzzler. In fact, it was related to the puzzle that he had posted in his Timothy monster blog earlier in the week. That puzzle was broken. Just a little bit. But ienough that it could be a frustration. And the Timothy monster hated that kind of frustration. So he fixed it. But that took a lot of time.

Then, after he fixed it, he got some long calls that took all of his attention. Although he tried very hard, he didn't finish his intended Timothy monster blog post for the day. He'd done lots of work, but it just wasn't done!

Which isn't so bad, except he'd promised that he would do a blog post every single day. Now, he was a ways in, and he could post it unfinished, but what fun would that be? None at all, boys and girls. So he decided to be extra, super fancy, and release a 2-part blog all in one day. And that day was Friday. Which, if you ask me, may be the best off all the days.

Yeah. I'm dumb.

Right. There's a typo in the puzzle. Or two. That's what I get for not triple-checking.
So here it is AGAIN. All of it. To make it up to you, and so you have more to play with, I've added a couple lines of me being nice.

It's important to note that spaces are included. Capitals, no. Capitol, yes.
HINT: There are 26 letters in the alphabet. This is an interesting number, dimensionally.
NEW HINT: The specific symbols can be relevant.
NEWEST HINT: N is adjacent to all.

PUZZLE

Metablogging, part: a lot.

Jill has a fever of epic proportions, and I've just learned that I'll be leaving to take her to the doctor at lunch. So what you see here this may be the extent of my posting for the day. But we'll see. Maybe I'll acquire some fly blogging skillz and post again later in the day.

All I really want to write about today (or for the past three days if you want the truth) is the lack of chemical stimulants in my bloodstream. Mostly because I find it hard to get the energy up to write without them. Every time since Friday that I've peddled up to the blank screen, it's been harder to push over that first hill than it was any day last week. So I find myself craving DMND, or coffee, not because I want to feel more awake, but because I want to write with passion. I suppose that'll come eventually. But, you may see a decrease in the sharpness of my writing until I can get over this dependence business.

Besides the obvious detriments of dependence on any substance (excepting our old friend aitch to the o!, of course), the main reason I quit goes all the way back to Tim Keel's series on elemental faith last year. He surveyed the themes of fire and air and water and earth in the Bible. The one on earth stuck with me most. Basically, the message was that we're made of dust. That is, people are creatures, made of the stuff of the earth. We have to eat and drink and sleep and poop like creatures. And to embody that body-ness that God made us with, it's important to treat our bodies well. To recognize that the natural rhythms of sleep and eating and excreting are normal.

So, in that light, caffeine is right out since it disrupts sleep patterns, for one. Because it cheapens a lot of the natural rhythms of life. On caffeine, I need less sleep, and I need to exercise less, and my appetite is reduced. But sleep and exercise are good. And controlling my eating is more beneficial if I'm doing it myself. Take a look at meth, another stimulant. A lot harsher than caffeine, obviously, but the main problem with meth isn't what it does to you directly, rather that it keeps you up for days on end, and you don't feel like eating. Caffeine's meth's little brother. Not nearly as mean, but that doesn't mean it's not gonna mess up your face up if it can.

But all that, unfortunately, means that without caffeine I actually have to have the acumen to go to bed on time, eat less, exercise, and work up enough to passion to write on my own. So, boo. 'Cause I'm a lazy one, I is, I is.

I'd write more, stuff on Thoureu, and how quitting caffeine is a political statement, and more about rhythms, and about the correlation of dust to rabbi-following, but I've got to leave in 10 minutes, and what more I have to say on this will take at least a good 15 minutes of writing. So, I'm done. For now. Goodbye.

Puzzle is fine

I changed it to Photobucket, which tried to scam my cell phone. But the link in the Monday post works now.

Because Amanda said that I should continue my short posting theme from yesterday to its logical conclusion today.

Our roast hen cloister,
greasy fingers strumming loaves,
laughs. Is it moral?

Notes from the Weekend

NOTE: Sam and Adam and I went to the Crave Cafe last night. Hung out for about an hour and just talked about life. Found out it's closing for a couple weeks, starting today. Turns out they've got new ownership who is going to clean it up, throw some fresh paint on the walls, a'that. The barista with the chopped brown hair seems to think it's a good idea, and I have to agree with her having looked at the walls in the TV room.

I like coffee houses so much more than coffee shops. Something about the odd shape and hominess of a place that used to be a house. Like The Inner Bean in Emporia. Now, that place rules. I only mention Crave because it is the site of my last caffeine. A 16 oz. vanilla latte at about 8:00. So, yeah. . .

NOTE: I'm seriously fighting the haze of caffeine withdrawal. Saturday night into Sunday, I slept 11 hours, and barely made it up to hang out with the youth at church. Last night, although I went to bed pretty early, and hadn't had any caffeine since Friday, I popped awake off and on all night. Of course, part of it is that Jill and I both need new pillows and the one I'm on makes it so I end up sleeping on my arms, which fall asleep, which then wakes me up. And then there the odd sensation I wake up with like I've been lifting weights with my sternum muscles all night. Stretching my sternum feels good. Which is not a stretch I'm used to. It's not the pecs or anything. I'm talking ster-num. So odd . . .

NOTE: so tired. Seriously . . .

NOTE: It's hard to write for more than 30 seconds without getting distracted by the internet, or anything else, really. Caffeine is the great focuser. I spent most of the weekend tired . . .

NOTE: Even at Jones and Eric's wedding on Saturday. Had a headache the whole time. Sleepy eyes. Canya guess why? One of the best weddings I've been to, though. The pastor had lots of funny things to say about the two of them that showed he really knew them. Which is better than a lot of weddings where, even though the guy says he did councilling with them, you feel like the pastor is just reading off of a similar script the whole time. Then, even better, he talked about how singleness is a valid state of being, just like being married. Which, I think, you never hear often enough at weddings. He said the big problem was alone-ness vs. togetherness, not single-ness vs. marriedness. Which is something I've felt pretty deeply for a long time. Which is odd considering how long I've been married . . .

NOTE: Speaking of long, on Sunday afternoon, Brett and I played the Blue Valley Park disk golf course because Rosedale was full of tournament. We played six holes in an hour. This is a long time, I can tell you. This is at least one and a half times as long as it usually takes to play this game. The hills are long and rolling, and every hole feeling like it's at the top of the hill. The signs even indicate elevation. But it was good to get out there and play again it's been a long while. Even though I stretched, my shoulder muscles hurt like a sternum. And it's always nice to hang out with Brett.

We took 27th street into the park, and it is the most depressing street I have ever driven down. I can see why someone living near there would want to leave the city. Abandoned houses and businesses all the way from Prospect into the park itself. It's puzzling how a whole area could go down the tubes like that. How rows upon rows of businesses could be there, and then disappear . . .

NOTE: Speaking of puzzles, in honor of Friday's post, here's one. I would have made it more complex, but I wanted it to come out soon. It's important to note that spaces are included. Capitals, no. Capitol, yes.

*PUZZLE REDACTED. SEE POST ENTITLED 'YEAH, I'M DUMB"

NOTE: Today's late post is brought to you by annoying calling people, and Blogger.com being down. Today's truncated length post is brought to you by all the people who complain that I write too much, also, my complete lack of attention span today oh look a ball!

Play to whine.

Last night at Eric's Bachelor Party, I got embroiled in a couple of interesting conversations. Sam started one about gender roles with a work-in-progress theory that there are maybe things beyond biology that differentiate masculine and feminine identities. Something on a mystical or mythic scale, maybe. Brent said that for this to be true, there would need to be attributes, then, that one could point to, that would be specifically different for men and women. Aspects that a man would have, that a woman would not, or vice versa. But Sam said he couldn't come up with any yet, that he was still working it all out. I couldn't think of any.

But in the light of this morning, I came up with an answer of sorts: I think that there may be a continuum of attriubutal intensity for which a man would generally rate lower than a woman, or vice versa. For example, while men and women can both be nurturing, for a graphical representation of a hill in which the bottom represents punching babies, and the top represents the selfless dedication of Duncan Idaho to a blossoming Maud'Dib, women in general will always be in a more strategic rock-throwing position than men.

In the other conversation, I joined Lucas and Steve mid-stream, discussing what it means to be good. I'm over-simplifying, and I'm not trying to be syllogistic here, but the conclusion we came to was that, given that goodness is primarily based in action, and action based in how one relates to others, and that God is relational, that to pursue goodness in and of itself is to pursue God. That is, trying to be good always means trying to know God. Also that you could never achieve absolute goodness, but you could and should pursue it anyway. This of course assumes a pre-existing belief in God, which the three of us have.

Then, Adam and my Dad jumped in and we escalated the debate to whether a person could do anything good at all, still with the assumption there is a God driving it. Steve says no, never, that while we can choose to do lots of evil things, like throwing a bike at a guy for no reason, or intentionally running over a small child with a truck, we can never choose to be good.

And the rest of us were saying that you can choose to do good things, and while that is a product of letting God change you in order to be able to do it, it's still a choice that you can make to submit to the change. to let god be good through you, essentially. We bounced around through historical surveys of Christianity, and all kinds of scripture, and Jeremy McKean walking through and saying that "What is good, is board games." In the end, we were at least able to agree that whether one can choose to do good or not, the actions one would engage in, are pretty much the same either way you believe.

I'm sure that a lot of people, like the Jill for example, would think the conversation was a bust, and a waste of time, considering how nobody changed their mind, and that we agreed in the end that the "How Should We Then Live?" question had pretty much the same answer either way. And there was lots of arguing about something that may not be that important, which bugs the Jill to no end. But I found that it helped me clarify some of my own thoughts on the subject, which is nice. Plus it stretched me to think. And I like thinking.

Also, as it was winding down, Jeremy's comment propelled me to bow out, sit down, draw a tall glass from the root beer keg, and play a board game with five other people. Ok, technically, Shadowfist is a collectible card game, but still, it's a game. And as most people who know me can testify (I don't needa WITness), I really like games. Board games, card games, tabletop games, console games, puzzle games, flash games, PC games, handheld games, amersandetceteraadinfinium.

To explain why I like games so much, why I would rather play a game than, say, watch a movie or continue engaging in a stimulating debate on the nature of goodness, I have to explain why multi-player Halo 2 for the Xbox, a game I hardly ever play anymore, is my favorite game of all time. Cross-platform, cross-genre, evar.

I could go into a lot of details about the weapon balance, and the wonderful map design, and the great game types, but the real reason I love Halo 2 has mostly to do with the fact that no one plays Scrabble with me anymore. I mean, Dave and Terry (and Smitty if he's miraculously crawled his way out of his personal pit of despair for once) do on some Wednesdays at Borders, but that's it. And we've mostly moved on to Three-Dragon Ante and Chez Geek and Ticket to Ride: Marklin, anyway. My Scrabble boards sit in the basement in the Box of Games that Never Get Played. One of the copies obviously never gets played because it is my Chris Wood Special Edition for Timothy Scrabble that includes 26 Qs. And I think I lost one of the Ss in my anniversary edition with the rotating board. But the travel version, and the other regular board are down there, just gathering dust under the laundry table.

But why does no one play with me? First, because I win. A lot. Almost every time. And when I win at Scrabble, I win, not because I'm sooo good, per se, because believe me, Dave beats me at least half the time, and Jill beats me almost as much when she is actually willing to play, and I've never taken the time to study the game seriously, but because I'm good at games in general. I know how to work the system, to find shortcuts that make it easier for me. It's the same reason I'm good at tests.

With Scrabble, it's no exception. I break down my letters to figure out what combos are most versitile, and then spot places on the board that if I can get into, will score a lot of points, Then I use a lot of two and three-letter words to make a high-scoring play off of a word using those letter combos. Most people like to play crosswords style, keeping the board open. I like to play adjacent to existing words, which keeps it tight. That unorthodox play style, combined with early high scores, demoralizes my opponent and makes it even easer to win. So yeah, I play myself out of being able to play. If only I could apply such complex strategies to writing a book, or finding a career. But, fat chance. The way I play makes it hard for other people to want to play with me.

But what does that have to do with Halo 2? Well, back when I played Halo 2 twenty hours a week, I could always find a game on Xbox Live. So I never had to worry about convincing someone to play. And more than that, with Halo 2's matchmaking ranking system, I was always playing people just slightly better or worse at the game than I was. And my ability to find shortcut strategies, while very useful in creating the unexpected moment here or there, won't win every game of Halo 2. I had to actually be skilled at the game, to be able to use the battle rifle to hit someone in the head three times in a row, or 4 if I miss one of the headshots. I had to remember the two separate spawn times for the sniper rifles in Ascension, and who had each one, if I want to ever wanted to use a sniper in a big game. I had to make each crouchjump up the sides of the doorways on Lockout if I wanted to be able to do a speed return on 1-flag capture the flag. If was trying to play on a team, maverick tactics only go so far, teamwork and communication became key. I had to be able to concentrate in the face of being down two flags to nil on Sanctuary, where the sword spawn time comes into play. And the BXB and BXR button combos? Skill heaven, no matter what Bungie says about them being cheating. So, I actually had to continue to get better at the game if I wanted to continue to enjoy to play. Skill was more important than novelty. And I get by with novelty way way way too often. Mostly because I'm clever and lazy.

With Scrabble, it's tough, because I want people to play with me, so I'm always tempted to pull my punches, to play a word that gets someone back in the game, or not concentrate as hard as I could. Because if someone feels like they're doing well, they'll keep playing. No such thing with Halo 2. When I'm playing I don't have to pull any punches. Everybody else is trying just as hard. I play as absolutely as hard as I can, and there will always be people better than I am, just a matchmaking lobby away.

Now, when I go to the game store, and I sit downto play Ra, or The Scepter of Zavendor, or even Runebound, I usually don't win. I'm not sure why this is exactly, but it's partially because I don't turn my brain on all the way. I know it sounds odd. But it's like I have to very intentionally concentrate to strategize and plan, or I just don't.

One New Years Eve, like, four or five years ago, I played Matt McCann in chess. The first two games he dominated me. I don't know why, but I hadn't turned my brain on yet. So I did. I told him that I was going to pay attention. I don't know if he believed me at first, but then I beat him four games straight. Another reason that I loved Halo 2 is that turning my brain on became automatic. Sit in half the tandem lawn chair, turn on the TV, put on the headset and the headphones over the top, take off the wedding ring to free up the left trigger finger and place the ring on the headset wire, there comes the opening music and I'm locked. I don't concentrate that hard very often, but when I do, it's like water to an immortal who's forgotten he was thirsty.

So that Xbox my family got for for Christmas along with Halo 2 so long ago turned out to be the best present ever. I got good at Halo 2. I learned the maps and improved my skills. And I made some really good friends, which is also a huge part of it. I really liked getting to know Spence and Jasmine, and spend time with people I already knew like Nicholas, and Zack, and Will, and Josiah. That's a huge huge part of all of it. I like doing things with people.

I don't I don't play much anymore. Not really. I mean, once in a great while I get to sit down and play splitscreen at a party or whatever and I love it. I can't tell you how much I appreciate the opportunity to play you guys. But it's not like it used to be. The world has moved on, as they say. So it goes.

I gave it up entirely, cold turkey, while I was looking for a job to replace teaching. And since that took until January the following year, I got out of the habit of playing. I was months behind on the strategies, and very out of practice. And by then, most of the people had moved on to Halo 3 on the 360. Which I don't own, and doubt I ever will. For the same reason that I don't play much Halo 2 anymore. Which is the same reason that I mentioned yesterday for why find myself getting weary of 'issues'. There are far more relevant and pressing things right around me. Far more living to be done. Everything else has pushed its way into my life. Jesus has barged right in, even. Gotten to cleaning house, as it were. And even only ten hours of Halo 2 a week can't enter into it. Did I mention that I have a hard time spending enough time with the inner circle kinds of people anymore?

Why then do I play games at all, if there are so many things around me that I should pay more attention to? Heck if I know, man, quit bothering me with your intrusive questions.

Uh . . . I mean, I like the challenge. And I like a fun activity to do with good friends while we're hanging out. There's a great deal of bonding that goes on. I like the feeling of figuring something out. I don't know. I play games instead of interacting with a person as little as possible. Video game alone, you say? Scoff, I say. Hardly ever happens anymore. I think I'd like to get into deep personal conversations more than play games at a party, though. Talk about life and then go out and live it. But then Dan and Jenny say we didn't do anything, and leave the party before we get down to playing something. And that hardly ever happens. Because I like games. And it insulates me from living. And Arkham Horror is a good proxy for living. Isn't it?

Maybe the whole thing is really a deeper question. Not, "Should I play a game when I'm hanging out with someone?" but "What should I being doing at all?" And that's when it gets complicated. More on that some other time, then; I'm gonna go home and hang with the Muse. Learn more about a medical co-op we joined. See if she wants to play X-Men Legends . . .

All I really wanted to write about today is faeries.

What I planned to write today about was camping, masculinity, Bly and Eldridge's concept of the father wound, and mythopoetic thinking in general. Maybe tomorrow. But this afternoon, as I was writing that post, I read that the Federal government is going to give me six hundred bucks because a) I have a job, and b) apparently a bunch of people all over the country bought houses they couldn't afford and this is directly causing economists to get a lot of face time on TV shows shouting about how the sky is recessing, the sky is recessing! So I got distracted and wrote this.

I could spend an awful lot of time talking about how insulted I am that the government couldn't afford to give me my own six-hundred bucks back before antisavvy house-buyers overextended themselves with loans with interest rates that every person in the world knew would eventually go up, but now Congress has mystically made room in the cyclopean budget for me to get that money back. And also how insulting it is how much this smacks of the assumption that all that money is supposed to be the government's in the first place, and all of us widdle incompetent idiots get a pat on the head and a check for six-hundred bucks and are sent on our happy way to the candy store to pick out something for our very, very own. It reminds me of the insult of affirmative action, "Aw, you poor widdle minority-status person. We know you could never make it into our institution of awesome learning on your own. So, just because of the color of your skin, and our own sense of guilt-built-in superiority, we're gonna let you right through the doors. Good luck, now. Too bad you're too dumb to do it yourself."

But this is just another brick stacked on an already towering pile of very important 'national issues' that I am getting completely fed up with. No, not fed up with, I'm still very interested in the issues. Uh . . . how about 'weary of.' Yes. That works. I am weary of all of these issues. Issues, that, like I said, I care about. I care about the economy doing well, and people paying less taxes, and Ron Paul becoming president, and homeless people in New Orleans having a place to live, and people not starving in Africa, and Lukashenka not being a bastard, and people wanting to live in a country where they have a chance to fail that also provides them a change to succeed, and people in Africa having clean water to drink, and people in Manila not having to live in shacks, but I'm as worn out as (get ready for it) using an innuendo as a simile for 'worn out'.

I'm not trying to repeal my own person Monroe Doctrine here. I can't bring myself to preach personal isolationism. I really do care about people around the county, and around the world. But I've got so much going on within my immediate purvey that I can't keep up with as it is: Kansas City politics, and Kansas City racial tensions, and Kansas city homeless people, and trying to know my neighbors, and people I know who are hurting that I need to weep with, and human trafficking in Kansas City, and maintaining deep friendships, and building new friendships with people unlike me, and sacrificing myself for my enemies, and keeping my own yard neat (let alone the whole environment nearby), and keeping my house clean enough to be a good host, and when and where and should we move, and when and where and should we have kids,and spending time with with the muse-Jill, and maintaining a relationship with that deific being who created the universe, and Guilder to frame for it. I'm swamped.

I just want to shut down and avoid the chaos. Oh, hey, I guess this does tie in to what I wanted to write about originally, how guys want to shut down and get passive in unfamiliar situations And how my default post-situational self-examination defaults to WARNING! -failure- no matter what actually happened. But that's still a whole other day's post.

The problem with seriously investing myself emotionally in all of these things that I don't have a direct impact on, things miles and miles from my influence, is that I'm trying to follow Jesus. Trying to shape my entire life around his teachings. Which, as Steve and Paul of Tarsus his very self will tell you, I will always fail at. (But I don't think that doesn't mean I shouldn't try). Anyway, I've said this before, but Jesus says that his 'kingdom' is not part of the dominant worldviews of the time (the kosmos, that is). That is, all the stuff that Jesus is talking about, all his loving other people and family of God stuff, and vine and branches business is not necessarily tied up in the systems that we try to use. Our politics and governments and businesses and most of our ways of wanting to do things, and a'that.

I think that it's all more personal, and all more communal than those things. That, as a person or a small group of people trying to follow Jesus, I or we need to address the problems that I or we see with the people around me or us, and put myself or ourselves in situations with those kinds of problems. So, I'll end up not caring about dunDUN . . . The Homeless, but care about Kevin and Lolo and know them and try to help them with what they need personally. And I won't care about . . . The Coming Recession, but rather help out someone I know were they to lose their job. So with whatever system is out there, whoever gets to rule the world from on high, I've still got a mandate and a plan of action to help ad love people I see.

(Which, again, is why I like Ron Paul, because I feel like his system is the one that would make me most likely to have to choose something good if I wanted to see anything get better. I'm kind of forced into it. There isn't any big impersonal government to pitch in. I mean, I agree with Barack Obama that 'the people' need an advocate, but I don't think that advocate is the government, I think it's just everyday people who see needs around them.)

But part of the problem is, with the internet and TV, I'm omnivisual. I see it all. Everything comes to my doorstep and says, "Hey, what's goin' on here? Bad crap is hitting the fan over here in Indonesia" Or Maldives, or Belarus, or Darfur, or Kenya. I want to help, and don't know if I can. I think Ron Paul's idea of foreign policy is challenging and interesting: the one in which Americans wouldn't be able to just send the military to solve problems other places in the world, where if you wanted to see a war end somewhere, get on a plane and go stand in the way. But I don't know if I would be able to do that.

And being a person trying to follow Jesus doesn't help much in this tension of proximity and appropriate action. It's not like Jesus lived in a time in which he would say, "When you see a person starving on TV, but you haven't seen a starving person near you lately, do X," or "When you live in a society in which everyone is richer than the kings of my day, do Y." He lived in a time where almost his entire audience was taxed past poverty into destitution. All he said was to love your enemy, and love God, and blessed are the poor, and love everybody better than you love yourself. I mean, if I'm in trouble, I want someone who lives near me to help i, AND I want someone in England to help me too. How should I then treat the people I see with my eyes vs. the people I read about on Fark?

So instead of addressing these really big worldwide issues, issues I care about in which people are dying in Darfur or starving in Indonesia, my first response is to blow it off because those things aren't immediately around me, and the things around me require me attention. This is all tied up then, in being present where I am.

Then the question becomes, "Do I change where I am to be with people even worse off than the people around me now?" Seems like a Jesusy idea. But in the meantime, I can't ignore what I see in my immediate vicinity. This is the chaos and the confusion that I find myself needing to step into, to surf in, even it it means I might fall and get lost in the maelstrom.

Which is why I'm putting off exploring myth and manhood for today, because I think it's a lot more important for me to ask myself the question, "Who is my neighbor?" than , "What does it mean to be masculine given what I know about Kings Elessar and David?" Mostly because I just think the first question is a lot closer to home. And because the asking is the first step to the answering, which is the first step to action. And I want to be a Man of Action. Which, I think, also, is another post for another day.

So, g'night. And all peace to you. I've been home for 40 minutes after Eric's bachelor party writing the last few paragraphs while the muse-Jill has been keeping the bed warm. So I'm off.

PLACEHOLDER II

In a world. Where I answer 45 calls in a day. And change my blog topic far after noon. The post will be late.

A short faerie story featuring tons and tons of unlinked potential links.

Once upon a time (this morning), in land very far away (ok, Westport. Which is far away for, say, Jeremy McKean and Dan, apparently.), Timothy woke up refreshed and awake for the first time in a great while. He assembled the various Dell laptop accessories strewn along the side of his bed from the previous evening's pre-sleep browsing, and zipped them all up tight into his laptop satchel. Then, after taking a shower and completing his toilet, he kissed the Jill, and sat in the living room, reading the morning Gawker Media Empire site updates on this laptop (shoutouts to Lifehacker, Consumerist, io9, Kotaku, Gizmodo, and I'm not too embarrassed to say, Jezebel). Then, the Jill came out of the bedroom and kissed Timothy on her way to grabbing her cell phone so she could use its alarm wake up on time. That was delightful and Timothy felt even better about the potential of the day.

Soon after, Adam pulled up in the driveway and Timothy threw his laptop into the satchel and after a brief stint in the cold out-of-doors, found himself sitting in Adam's car, zooming down the highway, munching on the butter rum muffin that Adam had so thoughtfully procured for the trip from the local SunFresh. They had pleasant morning drive types of conversations in which Adam revealed his complete disdain for the Oscar-nominated There Will Be Blood, which Timothy had yet to see.

Once at work, Timothy overheard a conversation about Dan's tattoo raging in the next aisle. He threw his two cents into the ring, and whisked off with Dan to the Hy-Vee convenience store, but not before almost forgetting his cup from the day before, an error that would have likely cost him a whole ten cents had he not caught it.

At the convenience store, Timothy filled his new, smaller 44 oz. cup with DMND. After Dan made his daily comments about the weather to Sam, the Hy-Vee convenience store manager, the one with the possibly Australian accent, and to the other woman whose name escapes your fearless narrator just now, the two of them gallivanted back to work, and seated themselves in their cubes to be ready for the day. All signs pointed to a good day. And you should know that the DMND was quite delicious.

And here's where, dear reader, our story takes a darker turn. First off, Timothy's wireless headset had not properly made the connection to the base, so Timothy would have to use the static-y wired one all morning. Then. as usual, Timothy opened his web browser to Gmail. And he opened his web browser to the ticket taking system. And he even opened his web browser to Fark to check the headlines. But, dear reader, when he opened his Blogger.com page, the text box was blank, and he had no ideas of how to fill it.

Oh, he read Tim Keels' blog, which led him to discovering The Khrusty Brothers, who he thought were great, and he rifled through Digg, and even saw the latest issue of The Compounded, which is as wonderful as he ever imagined it could be back in its planning stages oh-so-many months ago. He saw the Wednesday Penny-Arcade comic, and read PVP, and checked Order of the Stick twice to be sure it hadn't updated. It hadn't, but Rick is sick apparently, and updates completely at random, three times per week-ish. He had already read the Drew and Natalie comics at home, but Revolution in Jesusland had an interesting Jim Wallis interview even.

But he still had no ideas for cloudthreads at all.

The first two calls of the day certainly didn't help Timothy's day to go any better. In the first one, the caller had a very hard time typing the web address that Timothy told her to type. At first, she didn't type the three letters M-L-S when he told her to do so. Then she added an additional S before the M once she did type M-L-S. It took almost 5 minutes to get her to type a website address into her address bar. Ah well.

The next caller led Timothy to believe that he knew how to minimize or maximize a window in the operating system that he had chosen to use, one aptly called Windows of all things, but Timothy's faith in this man's ability to do so without great coaxing and overexplanation was completely unfounded.

Time passed, ages it seemed, and yet there was no idea for a blog. Timothy took his lunch; he played chess against the computer with the French opening, his favorite. He played some Trilby's Art of the Theft. He listened to Beethoven's Sixth Symphony. No ideas yet.

He read other websites, and created a Pandora station for acoustic guitar hip-hop, and IMed Dan, and Jeremy McKean, and Brianna, and Jill, and Lolo, and Steve, and Matthew Landes, but none of those wonderful people inspired a blog idea. He even read a nice 16 page scholarly essay on J.R.R. Tolkien's use of sexuality in his Middle Earth writings.

See, the problem is, most days, before he even sits down at the computer, Timothy has an idea of what cloudthreads to pluck out of the air and drop on the page for other people to read. Even if it's something small, he can nurture it into something interesting and composed of ohmygoodness, so many pages. The day before, or the morning of, he decides, and then he's ready to go when he sits down. This day, he hadn't thought of anything. So he promised himself right then and there, to come with an idea for the next blog before getting to work, or he would just end up writing another metablog filler post like he did today.

Oh, and there was a pixie who totally stole a quarter from his desk. This isn't true, but I needed something fantastical to make it a real faerie story.

EDIT: Ah yes. as Jill so kindly reminded me, she is a muse, therefore one of the fey, and the requirement of faeriekind had been met in the first paragraph. Much apologies.

Control Eye

Right when the credits started last night, the guy behind me who had been talking through most of movie anyway, booed and then walked out. It was pretty funny, and a bunch of people laughed when he did it. I think that's because a lot of them agreed with the boo. I didn't. I liked Cloverfield. Not my favorite movie by any stretch. Not in my top 20 or anything. But it totally fits into what I look for in a movie. And it annoyed me because I think he didn't give the movie a chance to be itself. Instead, he brought in his own precon idea of what it was supposed to be and got disappointed.

Last week Katie and Steve and Jake wanted to watch a movie, so they were sifting through our DVDs looking for something to borrow. At first, it looked they would grab Garden State, which is a solid and interesting movie with a great soundtrack as you know, and an ending that I think was a very bold choice on Zach Braff's part considering how most writers wouldn't have cared enough about their characters to make that choice. But then I discovered that none of them had seen The Life Aquatic with Steve Zissou, so I made them take that because it is one of my favorite movies, in the top 5 even. Steve hated it. Katie fell asleep. And Jake was meh. In retrospect, I think Garden State would have been a better choice for that group.

The funny thing is that I like Garden State and Life Aquatic for pretty much the same reasons. The same reasons I like Cloverfield, and Juno, and Naploeon Dynamite, and Stranger Than Fiction - movies that people I know don't care for, but I love.

Movies I love fall into two categories. In the first one, I find the broadest common ground with other people's tastes: movies with stories that resonate with deep parts of me, and I'm not sure exactly why. You might call these Mythic Movies. The Lord of the Rings, The Matrix, Star Wars, Stranger Than Fiction, even. Break down all the other aspects of those kinds of movies and what you get at the core is a good story. And I love good stories. Ones that feel like they grew out of the author's mind like a jungle, and you get to explore it with them and find the hidden temples with ancient runes inscribed on mysterious circular tablets.

Even though I have an English degree and I'm supposed to like the really artsy kinds of books with substantive vocabulary and complex themes, the books with stories you get lost exploring are the ones I like the most. I like the vocab and the themes and especially the complexity, but the story is what really gets me. Who's my favorite author? Conrad? Joyce? Stafford? Cather? Faulkner? McKay? Nope. Stephen King. You're not going to read a lot of him in college level English classes, I can tell you that from first hand experience. But I love his stories. Who cares if he's popular? The stories flow from that guy. Rolling and mythic.

Maybe it's that with my background of holycrapIreadalotofbooksgrowingup and my choice of degree, I feel like the best medium for telling a really good story is a book, or maybe it's that I feel like movies are over-commercial, something which annoys me because I think film is a potentially deep and expressive art form, but the second category of kinds of movies that I like drags me to a movie theatre a lot quicker a good story. It's hard for me to describe, but the first thing that comes to mind is "movies that are their own.' Or maybe 'Quirky Movies'.

What I think I mean by that is that I like movies that feel fresh, or look at things in new ways. Where the characters, like real people, feel unique and mysterious. I don't know any real people who I have all figured out. Even if I know them really well, I still get a sense of wonder when someone makes a straight-up decision about something. Even Jill. Her choice for swordfish for dinner, or who to invite to a party, or what to wear to impress someone startles me in the best kind of way. Specificity fascinates me. People are intriguing. So in a movie, I want to see characters that I don't already know, who will choose things that I would never choose. And that's also how I like the movies to be themselves. That is, I like movies that feel like real people, that make bold choices about things, that are each unique and quirky and odd in their own way. Movies with personality.

(I'm going to give some quick examples here, so if you haven't seen one of these example movies, you can skip to the next one so you don't get anything spoiled.)

Take Juno, for example. Here's the plot: a teenage girl gets pregnant and then gives the baby up for adoption. Also, she learns that she loves the baby's father and they together at the end. Not much of a plot when you get down to it. But the story is all about who this self-confident Juno girl is and the why she gives up the baby, and to whom, and why she gets together with the father, who looks like he is cool without trying but actually tries very hard. But even more so than the story (which I really like) is that I love who Juno is and the choices she makes and the whys of those choices. She feels unique. So do her parents and her friends. Juno does things unlike any other movie. It's got its own groove. And the actors nail the world to the wall; it's like they're really there.

For another example, I know a lot of people didn't like Napoleon Dynamite. Mostly because it was pop-culture popular before they saw it, and annoying kids totally overquoted it. But the number one complaint I hear is that it was stupid. I don't think it was. Most of the characters were immature (which you might mistake for stupidity), but that doesn't make the movie itself stupid. The movie wasn't about the jokes, although they were funny. It was about the story and the individuality of the place and the personality of the world. Now, I loved the story. I like seeing a guy who was self-absorbed and friendless learn how to not only have friends, but also care more about other people than himself. Great story, like I said. But what I loved even more was the way the directorwriters gave us a world of precise specificity. Where they have skitdances as part of the school president race and there's a suit like that in a thrift store and cheap steak's a dinner staple and where you think to sell boondoggle keychains or do basement glamour shots to earn money for college. Oh, and the specific characterization the actors brought to the table . . . genius. John Gries' arm and shoulder movements alone are worth the price of admission, slash, price of borrowing it from a friend.

It's pretty much the same story for The Life Aquatic. I like the story, how a self-absorbed guy learns how to care about someone other than himself. But the specificity of the world and the characters is why I keep coming back to it. Call it whimsy, call it what you will. I mean, it's a world in which marine life is stop-motion and David Bowie's been translated into Portuguese ,and where there is international film festival recognition for possibly-fabricated oceanic documentaries. Oh, and the interns share a Glock. And all of that against a backdrop of people who make group decisions without communicating. Where hurt runs deep, but nobody talks about it. And people love their own visions of people rather than the people themselves. That's interesting.

While I can't place it nearly as high on my mental spreadsheet of movies I love as the one above, Cloverfield goes so far in its individuality as to make it so I barely even care about the story. The characters aren't that interesting, per se, nothing out of the ordinary, and the plot itself isn't even that unique. But the movie tells the story in so its own way, that I can't help but like it. Harry Knowles says it best when he mentions that in the world of this movie, there's a general who's saying they need to nuke the monster, and a president saying they can't because it'll hurt people, and a press debating what they should do, and a reporter trying to get news out of the locked down areas, and a scientist with a theory of how to kill it. But you don't see any of that. It's a movie about the people running down the street pointing at Godzilla. I guess someone expecting to see something else would be disappointed. But that's pretty much why I see movies: to have my expectations foiled and delighted at the same time.

Heck, I would even count The Lord of the Rings and The Matrix and Star Wars in the list of quirky movies. I mean, of course they are much higher in the Story Quotient Index than Quirk's Table of Value, but they're all still telling their own stories it their own way, like nobody had done before.

(/spoil)

Not that I'm saying you have to like these movies because I think they're good. I don't know that I want to convince anyone to like anything they don't like. I've given up on objectivity. I mean, I used to be a hardcore objectivist. I thought that anything worth knowing could be known just by observation and by stepping further back. And that I could convince anyone of anything I believed by just logic-ing it all out for them. But now I've come to realize that an objective perspective (objective perspective, what's your function?) is impossible. And anyone who says otherwise is selling something. So like I said, my point isn't that you should like these movies if you don't. My point is, and I don't think this is as big a stretch as it seems, I want to quit treating people like notpeople. Because it's really easy to reduce people to concepts. To simmer them down into a stock of my own expectations. Walsh and Keesmaat say that greed is same as lust (and I might add gluttony) all the way down at the bottom because both of them are interested in just feeding an appetite for feeding, ignoring the substance of what you're interacting with and fakesatisfying the appetite. It fell in with my sense of objectivity from way back. The idea that I could see things best. That I had a lens on reality that I could take off. That the movie I came to see was the movie that I would see.

I think I've come a long way towards this. Learning to ride the wave of a relationship, rather than trying to stick to the known buoys that I laid down myself. Learning not to recommend movies that I love to people who wouldn't love them, too (fat chance). Learning to love people for who they are, not who I expected them to be on the way it the theatre. Learning that a pretty woman on a screen's more than a biological pleasure trigger. It's a long road. Take that guy talking and booing at Cloverfield last night. I'd like to just assume he's a jerk and blow him off. But I think he's got to be just as specific as I am. Just as faceted and worth knowing. Just as lonely and happy depending on the day.

I talk to realtors all day long. (Notice what this spelling is not capitalizing.) Most of them know nothing about computers, and less about the most basic tenets of problem solving. That's annoying. A pop-up is blocked and at the top of the screen there's a button that tells them to click there to allow the pop-up and they don't' think to click it. They ask me what a phrase means, and the very best explanation is to simply define the words in the phrase. Temporary means that it's ok to delete it since it wasn't supposed to be around for very long anyway. And that's the kind of person I'm talking about, the kind of person I want to see like I see Juno or Napoleon or SteveZ. Because even if the script I'm reading isn't showing the parts of them I like, the quirky and interesting parts, that doesn't mean they aren't there. And that I need to treat them like that's true.

Sunday, talky Sunday.

For the longest time, the thing we did at church on Sundays didn't make the least bit of sense to me. I think it was supposed to be for worshiping God, but it always seemed weird to get together for an early-morning theater performance every week, where some people got up and sang some songs with cloying arrangements, and then they led us in singing some more songs that weren't nearly as cloying. Then we heard highlights of upcoming events that were also mentioned in the program that a guy in a suit handed us in the way in, and the audience was invited to make a brief attempt at personal connection by 'standing and greeting' (HAIL, GOOD SIR, HOW FARES YOUR FINE FAMILY THIS MORNING?). After that, a guy stood up and talked to God for a second so we knew he was starting a message and then said some good things and some hard things about Jesus or the Bible or sometimes the nation and then talked to God again to let us know when he was done speaking. Then we sang another song while there was some fancy choreography with offering plates being passed down alternate rows, after which someone talked to God as a closer or reminded us of another upcoming event and then we put the chairs away for Awanas on Wednesday or the women's aerobic class on Tuesday.

A lot of the time, at the end, we would all bow our heads and close our eyes and the announcement guy or the speaker asked us if, based on the message we had just heard, we wanted to become a Christian, and if so, there was a way you could do that. And if you were already a Christian and you wanted to rededicate your life, there was a way to do that too. Then he talked to God in some predetermined prayers about either becoming a Christian or rededicating oneself to being one. Nobody saw who it was that wanted to do these things because he made everyone keep their eyes closed. So he was the only person who saw who wanted to say the prayers with him. I always wanted to know. I thought it was exciting.

And then we went out for lunch. I liked Fazoli's best, because it's cheap and delicious, and gluten makes me feel warm and fuzzy like I'm wearing a stocking cap.

However, If you didn't make it to church, you might be sinning, because church on Sunday was where you were supposed to be if you wanted to be a Christian. And if someone didn't go, you could be pretty darn sure they weren't trying to be a Christian. Also, you were supposed to invite your friends to Sunday Church Theater so they could talk to God in that prayer at the end and then become people who went to church on Sundays.

At least, that's how it seemed, even if I knew that's not what the people who organized things intended it.

Don't get me wrong. I liked church a lot of the time. I'm not trying to bash it. Sometimes the songs we sang were very inspiring, and it felt like I was talking to God right in my head, and he was right there with me listening. And most of the time I found that the message the guy told to us was very inspiring and made me want to live better and love people more, and I learned a lot about who God is and what's in the Bible. I really loved the people there, too. Like a great big extended family where people know your name.

But I didn't get why we did Sunday church. It was supposed to be this necessary thing that you did as a Christian; I knew that. But first off, it was really early in the morning for a weekend, especially if you were a teenager, or a young adult, or a me, so I was usually tired when I came in. Which is not helpful for trying to pay attention, let alone worshiping someone.

And then, most of the program felt like the kind of theatre where the people on stage just perform at the audience, without any interaction. It was more like a seminar or a presentation that I showed up to every week, thrown by one group of people, all so I could show my devotion to some other person. Sometimes it felt like he showed up, and sometimes it felt like we just talked a lot about him from a distance

After a while, Jill and I switched churches. I don't like to think that it was a consumerist decision, but it very well might have been. We just felt like we fit in better at Jacob's Well. The music was much more our style. And overall, it felt more like I was part of the performance, rather than the audience. And then there was the fact that most of the time, there was an opportunity to respond to what the speaker was saying, so it didn't feel so much like we were being talked at, but rather talked to. And believe me, whenever I get the chance for someone to hear my opinion, I'm so in.

The funny thing is, at our old church, I sometimes got in trouble for talking. I once got kicked out of a Sunday School class for dominating the conversation. Not to mention all the dirty stares I used to get in youth group when I asked a lot of questions and speedily answered all the speaker's questions.

Back in high school I used to sit in the front row of class. Usually to the right. And if there were ever a kid you didn't want in your class, it was me. I was Darwinian: I figured that since I wanted to learn, I would get as much of the teacher's time as possible. I mean, if the other students wanted any attention, they were going to have to speak up. Survival of the talkiest, said I.

Teachers of teachers will tell you that you're supposed to wait at least 12 seconds after you answer a question before you move on to the next one, or add to it. That gives most people enough time to respond if they have an answer. I was the kid who didn't believe in wait times. Heck, I usually had an answer before the teacher was done asking the question. Always trying to impress people with my brain power, that's me.

But anyway, yeah, I liked the new church a lot more. I felt more at home. And on the talking front, I have even had people say they appreciate the things I have to say. Which is pretty warming because I'm always afraid that I'm speaking up too much. One Sunday, when Moe spoke, she even said she had hoped I would say something and when I almost didn't, it felt odd. Like me talking in church made her feel more comfortable.

That's not to say I haven't totally opened my mouth at the wrong time at Jacob's Well. I think me dominating conversations is part of the reason some people never came back to our small group after the first time. And I really think I answer questions too much in the service. Some weeks, I have lots of things to say, but I just keep my mouth shut because I don't want to be the guy who talks too much. It's hard though because I really really like my own opinions, as yo might be able to tell.

But even with how much I liked Jacob's Well and the services, I still didn't get why we were doing the Sunday morning thing (well, Sunday evening there). In the stories in the Bible, God seemed to always come to people in the middle of nowhere. Out in the desert mostly. When they were thirsty or alone.

Then after a while, once the people who followed God established a country of their own, and built a temple, which is like a church building, they still didn't so much do theatre presentations as they celebrated festivals with tents and long walks and mutton. Also, they killed animals to deomonstrate that they had to depend on God for their security rather than their livestock and wealth.

Or then later, when Jesus came along, he also liked nature and the wilderness, and he walked all over the place and the people walked with him and listened to him speak and teach on mountaintops and in valleys and by lakes. But he was supposed to be God, not just a guy who liked God a lot. So that's different, I think.

At that time, even if you wanted to follow God seriously and you didn't follow Jesus, you still walked around right behind the teacher you wanted to follow, trying to live like he did. You went where he went and did what he did. There's even a story when a guy hid out under his teacher's bed so he could even try to be like his teacher when having sex.

And then still later, after Jesus wasn't around anymore, people got together in each others houses and mostly ate meals together.

None of these is much like a Sunday Morning Theatre Experience at all.

One of the church events I like most at Jacob's Well is the community forums. Once a quarter or so, and sometimes more often, the church sponsors a discussion group on a topic. Like 'Combating Slavery in Kansas City', or 'Living Simply', or 'How to Deal with Having Kids With Mental Disabilities'. People crowd into the sanctuary or the common room up on the third floor, which you want to get to early because there are some leather couches that are so comfortable the Spanish Inquisition might take interest, and talk it out together. Someone leads the discussion, and usually there is a presenter with experience in the area that we're talking about.
It's all very egalitarian and anyone who wants to say something can just speak up and be heard. Again, if you're there, and I'm there, you're going to hear me say something; I like to talk.

Sometimes, when there's something that requires more in-depth discussion, the community forum goes for more than one week. Usually when that happens, it's because there's a good book that worth reading and discussing with other people. Like, Colossians Remixed by Walsh and Keesmaat, for example, or Irresistible Revolution by Shane Claiborne. One of the books we read was Lauren Winner's Real Sex, which is a really down-to-earth and honest look, even for married people, at practicing the discipline of chastity.

The last week of the forum, Lauren Winner her very self came and spoke on a Saturday night, and then Sunday at church. She has a real laid-back style, and she teaches college somewhere so she uses words that even I had to look up, which, I can tell you, is rare in a speaker. She had lots of good things to say about sex and how it relates to trying to follow Jesus. How the way that you approach sex can be a spiritual practice. And how because what one person does sexually affects the people around them, that sex is a community issue not a personal issue even if it is private and not public.

Tim Keel mentioned some of this yesterday in his sermon, too, about how everything we do forms us and shapes us and those around us. How the stories we hear and the stories we tell, and the things we do with our bodies really matter in shaping who we become. Not in a legalistic way, where you get to tell other people what to do and look down on them if they don't do the same things as you, but more like a person training to be the best at an Olympic sport. All of this also falls in with my theory that the mystical and the mundane are the same thing. But that's a post for another day.

Anyway, one of the things Lauren mentioned was that Sunday church was another spiritual discipline like chastity or fasting or reading your Bible. And that finally clicked for me. That's a legitimate reason to get together on Sundays the way we do. Not that Sunday church is the thing you do to prove you want to follow God, or your central activity as a Christian, it's just a beneficial practice for personal growth. I can get behind that. Finally a reason that makes sense.

Now if I can only restrain myself and not tell everyone my opinion on it.

Oh wait.

Part II/II of the top ten list of things I think should be on a top ten list.

Aaaaannnndd, we're back, folks. Welcome back to my ongoing blog popularity drive. Today's entry is part II of the top ten things I think should be on a top ten list. Here we go:

Top ten list of things I think belong on a top ten list. PART II

5. The Violet Burning
What is it? An independent rock-n-roll band.

Grammatically correct this time, ya whiners: On what top ten lists might you find it? Top ten unsigned bands. Top ten phrases that if you remove a letter become William Tecumseh Sherman tactic references. Top ten bands who have a song for which we totally sing the bridge wrong at church. Top ten bands you've never heard of that will rock your face off. Top ten phrases on t-shirts that Timothy and Jill own. Top ten live bands in a small venue. Top ten bands that are Timothy's favorite band evar.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? Independent anythings need publicity. Here's some publicity. But also, have you listened to Demonstrates Plastic and Elastic all the way through? Lipstick and the Dynamite Wonder (also called self titled)? If not, what are you waiting for? Their CDs are, like, 8 bucks right now on the website. Pick up Faith and Devotions of a Satellite Heart and Drop-Dead while you're at it. That's less than $30 for a ton of amazing music on four very different CDs. Just ask Nicholas, he's so in, too. I mean, look, how often to I actually link to something? It's gotta be good. And if you have heard of them (which you should have by now) go listen. I'll wait. If you haven't listened to a Violet Burning song today, it's been too long.

4. Role-playing
What is it? A situation in which people pretend to be other people within a given set of parameters.

You know, like they're playing a role. In a thing. Role. Playing. How do I explain this? You know, when a person loves to hear themselves talk, and . . . . no, that's not quite right, uh . . . . Got it. It's like acting, only without an audience.

AHA! So that's it. And . . .

On what top ten lists might you find it? Top ten kinds of games that decrease your chances of getting a girlfriend unless the game is from White Wolf, but then, do you really want a girlfriend who LARPed Gehenna in a ballroom with 5000 other people back in aught four and now drops hints of how she couldn't pass in human society without the help of the Coils of the Dragon discipline? Top ten ways to spice up your sex life (No, seriously, like, every list with a title like that not only includes role-playing every time, but is also in all ways exactly the same as all the others excepting a different byline stock photo.). Top ten ways to make grief counseling fun. Top ten no seriously if you ever want to get a girlfriend and you don't already have one don't start playing these kinds of games and let's not even start talking about LARPing you guys. Top ten most annoying seminar activities. Top ten words that have a an honored letter place in the the most addicting acronym of all time: MMORPG.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? In a word, versatility. Role-playing can be dropped into all kinds of situations and be considered appropriate, or at the very least, apropos.

For example, want to sit in a basement and imagine you're a thousand year old vampire who somehow still doesn't have the knowledge of the great mysteries of the Sabbat that the masked figure played by your DM's friend has? Role-playing can help. Got a hankerin' to sit in a basement and imagine you're a dual greatsword wielding Barbarian 2 / Fighter 4/ Frenzied Berserker 4/Dervish 10 with about a billion attacks? Done. Want to slave alone in your basement at a computer for 18 hours a day pretending to be a Paladin with an epic mount doing epic instances to get epic equipment so you can do more epic instances to get more epic equipment? Role-playing is so in. Want to pay $75 /hour to act out a conversation with a fifty year old woman who dresses in clothes made from sofa upholstery in order to assuage your anger at your absent father? Role-playing's got you covered. Want to feel awkward in front of a hotel ballroom full of people while pretending to sell lingerie to an overweight guy with a mustache and a pony tail who is pretending to be an irate female customer but is also giving you tips on how to sell him lingerie as you go? Again, done. Let's not even mention the possibilities for weekend camp-outs where you crawl through a river for an hour to sneak up and kill a troll, only to find that out your 'character' has neither the swim skill nor the sneak skill so all your real like work was for naught and you didn't actually do that, so take it back. Oh yeah, role-playing brings the love. Heck, I hear you can even spice up your love life.

So, by now, you may be asking yourself if role-playing is a panacea. But you don't have to ask yourself. You can pretend that your dog is me, and ask him. Go ahead. Get in the spirit. Once he gets into character, I'm sure he'll bark once for yes.










3. Items of the Month
What is it? Something that comes every month, but you don't know what it's going to be until it arrives. And it rocks.

On what top ten lists might you find it? Top ten clubs you can join for a nominal annual renewal fee and get something cool in the mail every month. I said every month, people. Like jam, or wine, or BBQ sauce, or panties, or fruit, or Disney DVDs, or candles, or desserts, or deserts, or steaks. Every single blessed month. I also suppose you might find it on the top ten things that keep you addicted to Kingdom of Loathing, but do you really need a second list?

Why should it be included on a top ten list? If you have to ask, you didn't see the first list it appears on up above. Let me explain it again. You pay some money to an organization. That organization, at a given time every month sends you a present in the mail. Packages in the mail are inherently the best thing on earth Plus, these are themed presents.

Now, don't get me wrong, I'm as anti-consumerist as the next guy, but just imagine, 3-5 business days after the first of the month, every month of the year, a new, delightful teddy bear, or whatever, appears in a box on your porch. I'm tempted to put this at number one just on sheer awesomeness. But, alas, my sense of fairness got in the way and I left it here at three.

Oh, I guess there also this. See that fancy gif of a hand up there? That's a picture of the second item of the month released in Kingdom of Loathing. It's the outline of a hand turkey, as you can clearly see, and in late November of 2004, if you had donated $10 to the makers of the game to get a Mr. Accessory to trade for one, or had earned enough in the game to buy a Mr. Accessory from someone who donated for one, you too could own this hand turkey outline. Now, the average price of these in the in-game mall has been recently hovering around $700 million. And since the average Mr. Accessory sells for 4 million in that mall, the outline is worth about $1750 dollars if you could find a buyer. Which you might be able to, believe it or not. Name another investment that's had a 17500% return in two years? Didn't think so. Thanks, role-playing. You finally paid off.


2. Pizza
What is it? One huge fat bundle of calories all wrapped up in 2π radians. Plus, cheese! And sauce. And meat. And bread. Mmm, bread. Bread and I have been having affair for the past about all my life.

On what top ten lists might you find it? Top ten best tasting foods. Top ten most convenient foods. Top ten most fattening foods. Top ten kinds of hut. Top ten most delicious circular foods. Top ten Italian culinary exports. Top ten instances of the letter z making a t sound followed by an s sound in the same word.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? I think it's important, when creating a top ten list, to clue your reader into things that they may have overlooked in their quest for excellent experiences. Pizza is just the sort of thing you definitely do not want anyone to overlook. Ever. Look at it. Looking over it may cause you to miss and put the greasy cheese and sauce on your cheek, rather than in your mouth, where it belongs. Ok, technically, it belongs in your stomach eventually, but the mouth part of the journey is the best part.


1. AU
What is it? Gold. Atomic number 79, baby. What lead turns into if you're one of those alchemy punks.

On what top ten lists might you find it?
Top ten medals you can receive at the Olympics. Top ten Electroplating Anonymous member obsessions. Top ten things to mythically have something turn into when you touch it. Top ten things that cost five electrum. Top ten most popular schlagers. Top ten gelding materials. Top ten FDA approved non-nutritional food additives. Top ten things your fiance expects in a wedding ring. Top ten third-world sweat shop farming crops (WoW only). Top ten Kelly's Heroes props. Top ten investment opportunities according to frequently-tin radio commercials. Top ten old coot who owns a mule exclamations. Top ten wallpaper leaf accents. Top ten decorative front teeth envelopers. Top ten Sauron metallurgy components. Top ten most malleable metals. Top ten pretentious organization pseudonyms for yellow. Top ten things that come in nugget form. Top ten elements with symbols based on Latin origins. Top ten doubloon ingredients. Top ten best things to find in a buried chest. Top ten metals you can make thread out of. Top ten eschatological street paving materials. Top ten mammon avatars. Top ten James Bond villain murder methods. Top ten objects of greed. Top ten fantasy couch building materials.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? See that massive list of lists up there? I'm just scratching the surface with top ten lists that gold can appear on. Think of a top ten list. I bet gold is on it already. And if it isn't, I bet it could replace something on there. It's like gold was made for being included on a list. Think about it; where do you most often see gold? That's right, on the Mendelev's periodical table of the elements. Which is a table. Which is a kind of list. PROVED.



And there it is. The top ten things that I think belong on a top ten list. Boys and girls, if you're good, next time, maybe Uncle Timothy's top ten list won't be a metalist. But I canna promise nothin'.

Top ten list of things I think should be on a top ten list. PART I/II

Part Next in my ongoing effort to be a wildly successful bloggeur by including top ten lists and bulleted points. So here it is, after hours and hours of painstaking research, here is my list of the top ten things that belong on a top ten list.

Top ten list of things I think should be on a top ten list. PART I

10. The number ten
What is it? The tenth number when counting. The basis for our entire world-wide number system (Unless, of course, you're a from a dozenal society like middle-belt Nigeria or are one of the Quendi (it's true, look it up)). The second discrete biprime (thanks Wikipedia!). The percentage you should give to the poor to count as a 'tithe'. The number of pennies in a dime. The number of dines in a dollar. The number of dollars that you should give me as an 'It's Thursday' present this week.

What top ten lists might you find it on? Um, all of them. Unless the author drops his top ten list to only include eight because he's, like, lazy, or out of time or whatever.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? 'Top ten' is alliterative, and 'Top Two' is so short as to be useless for meaningful comparison. Alliteration destroys all other purposes and rational reasons, right?


9. Apple computer
What is it? A large American corporation.

What top ten lists might you find it on? Top ten companies with annoying fan boys. Top ten worst consumerism fosterers. Top ten most annoying modern operating systems. Top ten least trusting of their customers by limiting out of the box functionality by not including a two-button mouse standard companies. Top ten advancers of the cause of DRM. Top ten buyers of executive quality black t-shirts. Top ten most recognizable logos. Top ten companies with fruit or vegetable appellations.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? Well, the company is awfully famous and a lot of really smart people like their computers. I mean, Steve Jobs and Rush Limbaugh and Albert Einstein according to their commercials all like them. Can't be ALL bad, right. And look at how many different top tens it makes. Apple is the apple of computer companies; shiny, super-sweet, and good to crunch. On an unrelated note, I'd like to point out that the MacBook Air is super-thin and fancy and costs $900 more than my new laptop that has significantly better specs. Call me crazy, and anti-consumerist if you will, but I'm not paying almost a thousand extra dollars so my portable computer weighs less and looks prettier than a much better computer . The same way that I'm not going to get an MP3 player with less functionality, a bloated and slow on-computer software interface that installs other crap on my computer that I didn't ask for, and then not be able to transfer any files I purchase from one computer to another (Or, heck, use it in Winamp, or Windows Media player or ANYTHING OTHER THAN ITUNES. AAC=ACK) just because it's got a mod design and delightful interface when there are a lot of cheaper options that let you transfer mp3s and use Rhapsody to download full free albums and don't, oh I don't know, SUCK. And on that note, what's with not having a replacement for the battery? Current batteries run down. We all know this. The latest super fancy world-record breaking Panasonic AA battery just came out and it's all the rage in battery circles, and it has an unused shelf-life of 5 years. UN-freaking-USED. 5 years. Top of the line. And you expect me to shell out how much to get a MacBook Air or iPod that I can't replace the battery on without voiding the warranty? Why can't I just swap out? Modularity, people. All the Sci Fi movies show it's the wave of the future. Ride that design wave, man.


8. Chernobyl and Pripyat and the nuclear plant disaster there
What are they? Twin cities of disaster. Not unlike St. Paul and Minneapolis (Take that, Steve.)

What top ten lists might you find it on? Top ten worst man-made disasters of all time. Top ten most unintentional Ukranian international acts of aggression. Top ten most influential events on late 20th century Belarussian potato farming. Top ten most impressive examples of the practical failure of international Communism. Top ten most impressive examples of Soviet cloudseeding technology to save a major city from radioactive fallout. Top ten list of events inspiring depressing and somber works of art. Top ten most dangerous urban exploring locations.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? OK, first off, check out this picture of radiation levels in the area:



Do you see that? Look where Minsk is, and then look where the radiation fell. The story goes that the day of the disaster, they rolled huge cannons out south of town and started firing them at Chernobyl. And whatever it was, cloudseeding, likely, stopped the radiation from hitting Minsk. By a long shot. Big ol' oval of no hair-falling-out, insides-mushy death. hat's technology, suckers. Yay modernism, you did something right! Cookie for you. Now go play with Romanticism and medievalism and us adults alone for a while, we're talking. Shh, shh. Not so loud. PUT THAT AFRICAN COLONY DOWN, RIGHT NOW. OOONE . . . TWOOOO . . . Good. Thank you. I appreciate you liste. . . I SAID PUT IT DOWN.

Second, it's a big deal to not forget that no matter how confident you are, you can royally screw up and pollute half of Europe.

Third, it was just another kick in the ribs to Belarus, a nation near and dear to my heart. See how much of that radiation in that map worked its way into Belarus. Seriously, can that place get any more beat up on? Napoleonic wars? Beat up on the way in, beat up on the way out. Hitler? Beat up on the way in, Beat up on the way out. Stalin? Eh, let's kill all the men. Soviet times? Chernobyl. Modern times? Weeellll, noe that the Soviet Union fell, we've had a great new democracy and new leadership and . . . whatthecrap, where did this ONION come from? (inside joke)

Fourth, look up Pripyat urban exploration pictures and any art concerning orphans and Chernobyl. Try not to cry.


7. DMND
What is it? A carbonated beverage dull of caffeine and awesome in precisely proportional amounts for some reason.

What top ten lists might you find it on? Top ten things that Timothy consumes (in liters). Top ten Timothy Johnson's sources of caffeine. Top ten Timothy's daily purchases. Top ten things that Timothy will quit by lent. Top ten zero-calorie caffeinated beverages. Top ten things that Timothy consumes that do not directly increase his BMI.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? Its ubiquity in my life is reason enough alone. But, really, what can't it do? I'm more awake in the morning (and the middle of the night, hmm). I have a daily ritual. You can pour it out as a libation to the gods of alacrity. I'm not staining my teeth with coffee. You could put a chicken bone in it and it would eventually dissolve. If poured in an underlit beaker containing raisins, the raisins will rise in a mysterious fashion to the top (it's the carbonation) where they can be plucked from the surface and consumed, thus saving the consumer those extra 6 inches of reach.


6. A shadow version of oneself that comes out of a mirror
What is it? You know, when you're on a quest, and everything, and near the end, you approach a mirror at the top of a tall tower, or across a misty lake, or in the middle of a snowstorm, or at the bottom of the maze-like temple, and a person that looks just like you, only made of pure shadow, steps out and you have to fight it using some obscure tactic like healing yourself, or hitting it with a hammer, or realizing that it's just a kid reading a book of your life, so don't freak out or anything, even though your horse just died in a swamp because he wasn't a hopeful pony and you barely escaped the sphinx statues with the eyes that shoot freakin' lasers. Also, the turtle's about to die, and so is the rock biter who had such strong hands, but that didn't keep him from being such a pansy and letting go. It's only 'nothing,' man, caintcha hold on? Such a baby. Oh, uh, SPOILER.

What top ten lists might you find it on? Top ten all-purpose movie and book spoilers. Top ten lame game design choices. Top ten most annoying things a DM can throw at you.

Why should it be included on a top ten list? Ok, the first one I mentioned above is reason enough. It spoils every movie, ever. What happens at the end of Fight Club? The Narrator fights a shadow version of himself that comes out of a mirror. Matrix: Revolutions? Neo fights a shadow version of himself that comes out of a mirror. The Usual Suspects? Verbal Kent fights a shadow version of himself that comes out of a mirror Bambi? Bambi fights a shadow version of his mother that comes out of a mirror Citizen Kane: Rosebud fights a shadow version of a sled that comes out of a mirror. Soylent Green? Detective Robert "Charlton Heston" Thorn fights a shadow version of it's people that comes out of a mirror.

Ok, folks, that' s the first half. I could finish it all now, but I'd be getting it out late. Turn in tomorrow for our exciting conclusion. Same bat time, same bat that fights a shadow version of a bat that comes out of a mirror.