Inspired by Jeff's post on Bob Marley and how his kids will come up with alternate lyrics, I bring you alternate lyrics for Orff's setting of "O Fortuna." If you're offended by pictures of codpieces, women in sparkly bras, and general weirdness, don't click. But as a recovering orchestral musician, I loved it. It's almost as good as the video I posted of the Pachelbel canon done by Korean gayageum, beatbox, and breakdancers.

Just heard that the Frood's grandmother died a few minutes ago. Glad her suffering's over. While I've never been a huge devotee of the Divine Mercy devotion, I can't help but wonder at the coincidence that she died on the eve of Divine Mercy Sunday.

Is ecumenical dialogue possible? That's kind of the implication of RLP's post. (Yes, I'm still steamed about it.)

On the one hand, there are things we share. But on the other hand, if we can't even agree about what creed we recite, how can we discuss anything? For instance, some non-denominational Protestants feel that they're going back to a more authentic mode of Christianity. When we hear that, we think they're joining RCIA. We think that the Church was established through Peter and that the Pope is heir to this. They don't. They think salvation is something you can choose based upon a condition of accepting Jesus. We think it's entirely up to God, and the whole notion of accepting Christ is moot, since why would you call yourself a Christian, if you didn't believe in Christ? They think personal relationships with God/Jesus/the Holy Spirit is important and an important facet of worship. We think that such things are important, but that worship is entirely corporate--when it's time for Mass, private revelation doesn't factor into it and shouldn't, since the highest form of communion is the Eucharist.

And so on. I mean, look at the issue that's inter-denominational communion. Personally I don't have a problem with a Protestant who, reverently, receives the Eucharist, so long as they accept what we believe it to be. I don't know that he/she didn't need that grace. I do, however, have a problem with those who receive in our Church because they think they have a right to, and essentially turn the Eucharist into a political football. Why should they have a right to sacraments, to which we don't have a right? As we say in the liturgy, "Lord I am not worthy to receive You..."

I think if there's to be any true ecumenical dialogue, then it must account for differences as well as similarities. Self-loathing is not ecumenicism. I love my Church. If I didn't, do you think I'd stick around throughout all the post-Vatican II crap? It's pretty insulting to both parties to say that we're all the same because there are things within each of our denominations that make our traditions (note the lower-case "t") unique and rich. For instance, I'd get grief from my stepfather's family for not going to their worship services, because they insisted that it was all the same. Well, no, it isn't. I'm not going to Mass because I'm too good for theirs (Yes, this accusation was leveled at me), I'm going because this liturgy represents the fullness of Truth as I'm able to see it.

"I'm not anti-Catholic. I have Catholic friends."

Doesn't that sound a lot like, "I'm not racist! I have black friends!" Or how about when someone says something offensive to Catholics, but then insists they didn't mean it? Sounds like when somebody drops the n-word, doesn't it? Now I'll admit that nobody is getting lynched or harmed for being Catholic (at least in this century), but I don't think that Protestants (especially low-church Protestants) in this country realize how deeply set their anti-Catholic bias really is. This post is for those in that thread and the "apology" to that one, in which those who took offense to RLP's post are called "spiritually immature."

Once upon a time, thirteen colonies were established in the United States. In a lot of these colonies, it was illegal to be Catholic. In 1647, Jesuits were barred from entering Massachusetts under pain of death. It wasn't until the late 18th century that a priest could come into Massachusetts without worrying about being martyred.

Fast forward to the 19th century. There are waves of immigrants fleeing Europe from famine (my Irish relatives, for instance), revolution (my German and Bohemian relatives), and the chance for a better life (my Italian relatives). A lot of these immigrants are Catholic (my Irish and Italian family.) And guess what? Anti-Catholicism rears its head. From something as benign as "Catholics need not apply" to all-out terror from the KKK.

You know what? You still get anti-Catholicism today. Now, I'm not talking about crap the likes of which Bill Donohue flies off the handle at. I've had to listen to my colleagues at my university opine about how stupid Catholics are, how we're all sexual deviants, and how our clergy are all abusers. The people who would tell a Catholic joke these days are those who would balk at a similar joke about a particular ethnic group. I've had to put up with jabs about my faith from my non-Catholic family, from my fiancé's family, and from just about everywhere else.

So you find a post like RLP's, in which he portrays the current Pope as some stupid vegetable, complete with faux Latin, it's coming from a very long line of shit you've had to face almost every day of your life. Lord knows I don't agree with every word the Pope says (contrary to popular belief, we're allowed to do this, and not everything the Pope says has equal weight.) But I can't deny that 1.) he's the Vicar of Christ and the successor to Peter, 2.) the guy is frigging brilliant (has been a professor, speaks six languages or so fluently, has written numerous theological works, and has the chops to be a concert pianist.) and 3.) has actually been outspoken on the exact issue that RLP is accusing him of.

Newsflash: the Pope baptizes people publicly at Easter every damn year. And, if you think this was a conversion at gunpoint, at least read what the person in question had to say about it. The person also had a personal relationship with the Pope. I can't think of anything more beautiful than to receive the sacraments of initiation from someone who's been instrumental in your faith development.

You know what? I'm tired of having to school people on anti-Catholic bias. Go ahead, say what you want. You'll only make yourself look worse.

You know you're a geek when...

...you're watching "The Ten Commandments" and think that Yul Brynner is a Goa'uld System Lord.

Have a blessed Easter!

Okay. All you music people who read this? And other not-so-musical people? Go check out Nine Inch Nail's Ghosts I-IV. It's released under the Creative Commons license, so torrents of it are fully legal, or you can pay $5 for it via their website. Hell, Reznor, himself, put up a torrent of it.

Are you downloading it? No? I'll wait until you're done.

It's absolutely stunning. (All instrumental, similar to the kinds of stuff I do with computer music.) Seriously it's going to be the best five bucks you've ever spent. It's music like this, which makes me wake up in the morning, swear at NPR, then thank my Maker that I'm a composer. The second track, I think, I'd recommend to any student who wants to learn about pacing and musical time.

Now is such a cool time to be alive, if you're a composer. Sure, there aren't the grants and public support for the arts that there was 20 years ago, but we have sole control over the distribution of our works. Got a computer? Got a Kinko's? You can typeset and publish your own music. Got bandwith? Put up a torrent of your works. No more waiting around for publishing and recording contracts that aren't coming. Even CD production is cheap. Anyone can make a master, and finding some place to press a run isn't hard. Sure, it means hitting the pavement and getting it out there, but it also means not being enslaved to Sony, ECM, BMI, or the RIAA.

Bunch of scattered thoughts this morning.

1.) On the Obama/race issue, I've been mostly silent. I'm trying to stay out of the political mess because I know come November I'm going to be pissed off at the whole process. (Especially if the Republicans are trying to force Catholics to vote for them again like they did in 2000.) The other issue is that as a white female, I have a certain kind of privilege, and it feels hypocritical to talk about race, when I've never had an issue with it. Gender bias, sure. But I can't help but acknowledge that my skin tone has helped me. Now's the time when I shut up and listen.

2.) (And I'm sure everyone knows to whom I'm referring...) Why do people think that just because they can post a comment that their opinion must be welcomed, when said opinion is hateful, offensive, and only designed to stir crap? I know trolls have always been with us, but lately it seems some are off their meds. (and here's where I thank Jeff for his IP banning code.)

3.) Anyone know anything about making millefiori beads? Especially out of polymer clay? I found a recipe for rose petal beads that uses translucent sculpey and dried rose petals, which I thought looked better than the traditional barf-on-a-string, and then I learned that one can do some really nifty things with polymer clays. I'm always looking for interesting things to do for my rosary making habit. Part of my philosophy is that one doesn't need to spend hundreds of dollars on a rosary.

4.) Silly poll up about chocolate rabbit habits.

This post has been brought to you courtesy of jasmine tea and theraflu. Keeping Martian Death Flu at bay since 1984.

1.) Didn't make it to Mass today. I'm doing better, but for some reason today around 4, I couldn't stay awake, was all feverish, and my body got this message: "Broadcast message from root (pts/0) (Sun March 16 16:11:43 2008): The human is going down for system halt NOW!"

At first I was guilty about it, and how I've slacked off on the Divine Office since getting sick. But, you know, taking care of myself is a discipline, and right now I need sleep, tea, theraflu, and Doctor Who.

2.) Paper's done. I just realized that the last so many games I've written about I've played in linux, either natively or with wine. I'm thinking about checking out cedega once I get some disposable income. Would be nice if I could deep six my windows partition. Unfortunately some of the notation software I use only runs in windows.

3.) Went to a hockey game the other day. Was fun, and I think I'd definitely go again. Bit Jerry Springer the way fights break out, though. (Was a Seattle-Portland game, so apparently there's quite a bit of rivalry.) Probably shouldn't have gone with the flu, but it was good to get out of the house. The players are all around 15-22 in this league, so they made me feel like a dirty old woman. Maybe if I can appreciate hockey, I can get into soccer?

If you knit and hang out online, you're probably aware of David Demchuk, since he writes a column for knitty.com. It's from one of his columns that I got the sage advice I give to my single (male) friends, when they ask me about dating women: learn to knit.

Today's post from him, though, is dead serious and everyone should read it. It's about the Oklahoma representative's video that's been making the rounds. There's a rebuttal to it posted that's moving and partially restores one's faith in humanity.

Caveat that I'm cranky from writing this paper and being sick, but when people say crap like, "I support women 100%, but I don't want to see them as lectors/altar servers/cantors," I want to scream. No, it means that they only want to see women in certain socially prescribed areas that correspond to their own (dare I say sexist?) view.

You know, I try to do my job as a server as reverently and prayerfully as possible (given the average amount of chaos that surrounds most liturgies). When people say (never to my face) about how I'm killing some vocation, I also want to scream. I think if I were to have children, I'd be strongly encouraging them to be servers, too. And if they had a vocation? I'd be the first to support them.

Grad students: we make procrastination into an artform.

Along with consumer culture holding back video games, I think the inability to see them as anything other than frivolous is hurting the genre. Case in point? This game. More on it from DS Fanboy here and here. The DS Fanboy links have some screenshots. (Nothing graphic, although moving.)

Now if it were anything else--a film or a book--nobody would balk. But because it's a game--which is supposedly a child's reaction to the horrors of the Holocaust--people freak out. And the game is still in development. All Nintendo really did is say "Huh, we don't know anything about this." Nintendo's pretty close-mouthed about things in production, and there are more game publishers out there beyond Nintendo. (I have a feeling if the game does get released over here, some little house like Altus would pick it up, because they take risks on all kinds of games that nobody else will touch.)

I wonder if Luc Bernard needs beta testers...although if I get into its beta, then it *will* suck, because I seem to be completely unable to beta test a game that doesn't righteously suck. One of these days I'm going to say "screw it" to the NDAs I've signed and blog about all the suck I've tested.

Carrot meet stick...stick, meet carrot.

OK. Since my usual tricks of motivation aren't working (put EWTN on until I start writing. It annoys me and goads me into working. If that doesn't work I go to the 700 Club webstream.) I re-upped my City of Warehouses (that's City of Heroes/Villains) account. I liked the game, just didn't have the time to play.

So it's patching. And I'm giving the Frood instructions to change my password to something unbreakable (he's a computer security guy) until this paper is handed in. Really 5000 words isn't hard, and the assignment was "Write something. Have fun with it."

Confessional mode of paper blathering seems to work for me. Pass if uninterested. This paper i'm currently writing is a response to a panel I was on last spring. They put me on a panel of nothing but war games (I was discussing a hacker sim), but the people discussing them really ignored the larger issues of those games, namely the inherent racism and propaganda of your average war game. I guarantee if you're playing Kuma War, you probably won't be dealing with the same kinds of emotional issues our men and women over there are. The presentation of these games is a highly sanitized version of the war. In Kuma War, for instance, it's nothing more than a game of Counterstrike in the desert. That's also ignoring any ugly racial stereotyping that's going on. (Command and Conquer is notorious in that regard.)

I'm discussing the game Defcon. The game was roughly inspired by the thermonuclear war game in "Wargames" with Matthew Broderick. Basically, it's a real-time strategy game of nuclear war, and the objective is to lose the least. (The domain name doesn't lie. Everyone dies in the game.)

Might want to download and play the demo first. It's worth it. Keep kleenex nearby, though, especially if you remember the Cold War. I don't remember if you can play in real time in the demo, but if you can, make sure you are. The effect is quite different than the sped up times. This is one game that needs time to work. One game can either take minutes or hours, depending.

I'm positing that this game does convey the emotional cost of war, and its means are similar to the films "The War Game" and "Threads." If I have the space in my paper and can work it in, I need to discuss the game "Fallout," since it's a direct precursor to Defcon, and the soundtrack is very similar, although the two games have vastly different emotional impacts. (Fallout is more of a dark comedy. Fallout is to Defcon like "Dr. Strangelove" is to "The War Game.")

Here's where I momentarily start talking out my ass because I'm not a film studies person.

Now when you're dealing with nuclear war films, the dramatic impact comes because the viewer can identify with something in the film. For instance in the film "Testament," just about everyone can identify with the family in it. We care about what's going on, and there's a layer of reality to it that is shattered by the nuclear attack. (Think "The Day After.") These kinds of films are social problem narratives, as one of my authors calls them, and they're heavily based upon American made-for-TV movies.

Then you have another kind of film, namely "Threads" and "The War Game." "Threads" has some elements of the social problem narratives (we meet a young couple, they have the same kinds of problems other young couples do, we meet their families, etc.) But it also is presented as a kind of documentary. "The War Game," as well. The dramatic impact of these films is a result of the dehumanization of the material, unlike the social problem narrative. However, there is still some element of humanity in it. We care about the firefighters in "The War Game," because it gives us something to latch onto that isn't pure information, for instance.

So back to video games...When you start a game in Defcon (N. B. My take on video game studies is heavily influenced by social semiotics. As such, I believe that every layer of discourse is important and conveys semantic meaning for the whole.) you're confronted with a large world map. It's like any other kind of real-time strategy game. You place your units, you make or break alliances, and then the bombs start flying.

However, the music is what conveys the bleakness. The map itself is dehumanizing, but underneath the music and intrinsic sound (the noises you'd expect to hear, bombs exploding, beeps, and alerts, etc) the music is like Samuel Barber meets Giya Kancheli. While the attack plays towards its inevitable end, the music is a direct contrast to the violence. It's peaceful, minimal, and almost completely static. Mixed with the music are ambient noises (radio sounds, people talking, people crying, a garbled recitation of the Lord's Prayer). I realize I need to come up with a better discussion for my paper, but words really don't do it justice, nor do they adequately convey the emotional impact of the game. It's ironic without falling into the irony of Dr. Strangelove. (Think the irony of Britten's War Requiem.) As you progress from Defcon 5 to Defcon 1, the music becomes quieter and sparser. (Sorta. Defcon 3, is the quietest, then things pick up during Defcon 2, but then you're back to stillness for Defcon 1. You don't really get the effect if you're playing the game in demo mode. This really becomes evident when you're playing in real time.) The music is dark and brutal, but it's never manipulative.

The soundtrack keeps the player from completely disassociating, and when it's time to launch the nukes, you hesitate and wonder just what the hell you think you're doing. Maybe it's just me, but I bawled the first time I played the game. I think it's also telling that one of the first fan-based mods of the game replaced the music with more shoot-em-up music.

End paper blather.

There's no way you could ever get this kind of game on a non-independently published game, nor would you find a soundtrack like it. Here's my DXM-laced beef about games lately. Adorno was right. When you start moving towards a consumerist model of production and consumption, creativity goes down the shitter. Why else would we have sequel after sequel and WoW clone after WoW clone? Because they sell. Because publishers will pick them up and game companies will get a payoff after the hundreds of thousands of dollars they had to put in to the game as venture capital.

I think video games are important artifacts of our culture and society. I think video games will influence how people relate to art. It's not an accident that interactive art and sound installation takes off after the advent of video games, in my not-so-humble opinion, since you have an entire generation conditioned to accept the kind of interactivity and sounds you'd find in those kinds of artwork. But I think video games could be so much more than they are. We won't ever find out, so long as people are interested in just making money, though. I have to wonder if people 20-30 years after films started gaining popularity thought that there could ever be art in film. Is there art in video games? I dunno. I don't think we have enough context, and the genre is too new yet.

Been out of the blogging loop. Here's a quick recap of some things:

1.) Steve's grandma's not doing so well (cancer, congestive heart failure). Prayers would be appreciated, and it's only a matter of time. That family's been hit with a lot lately. They seem to be hanging in there.

2.) A boy and his DS. I'm not one for cute kid pics, but there are some damn cute kid pictures in that set. See the 3rd picture down? That's an R4 cartridge he's got in there. Kid's playing some homebrew!

3.) Martian death flu. Think I coughed up something that could've been on Torchwood. Since then I'm feeling better.

4.) Paper hell. I still owe a paper for an incomplete, so I'm trying to crank that out. It's on nuclear war films, nuclear video games, and the emotional depiction of war. I'm sort of responding to a conference panel I was on, where I was the lone non-war-game-paper on a panel of nothing but papers about war games. I'll let you appreciate the irony of that, when I think Dorothy Day was a hoopy frood.