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.

So in lieu of actual content, I bring you statistics. I was poking about in the ol' sitemeter, and found some interesting things about the readers of this blog.

First we have a world map of BigU readers. You'll note that South America is disproportionately represented, along with Africa, Australia, eastern Asia, and Antarctica. Nobody from Russia, either, although the hits I have gotten from there in the past have been spammers.

Next we have operating systems. Nice to know I'm not the only person running linux out there. I'm willing to bet the unknown person is running BSD and afraid to pipe up. ;)

Finally we have browsers. Interestingly enough Firefox has a bigger browser share on my blog than IE. Couple people kickin' it oldschool and using netscape. Gotta admire that.

Since people have asked, I'm officially endorsing George Clinton, because you can never have too much funk.

Pardon me a moment while I channel my inner Tyler Durden...

"You're not your parish. You're not how much money you put in the collection basket. You're not the language you pray in. You're not the contents of your rosary pouch. You're not your frigging mantilla. You're the all-singing, all-dancing crap of the world."

OK. I feel better. You know I have to wonder if some of the scandal and shock some have towards the world isn't more about them than the world, itself. Case in point: how some like to go on and on about how horrible the world is and how death is behind every stone, namely those who like to go on about the "culture of death."

I think they're being disingenuous. For one, if God created the world, it's good. They hedge towards Jansenism and Albigensianism more than I'm comfortable. For them, it's almost as if nobody is worthy of grace or redemption. And, most importantly, when they hear of some horrible thing, they shy away from it, as if their knowing about it will corrupt them. Frankly, it makes me wonder where they are, as thinking and praying Catholics and Christians, if they don't know about how horrible some things can be in the real world.

With them, I'm reminded of the quote from Tony Campolo: "I have three things I'd like to say today. First, while you were sleeping last night, 30,000 kids died of starvation or diseases related to malnutrition. Second, most of you don't give a shit. What's worse is that you're more upset with the fact that I said shit than the fact that 30,000 kids died last night."

I think that we're losing our Catholic identity not because of "On Eagle's Wings" or what language we use but because people simply don't care. On the one hand, I understand their fatigue. I certainly experience it every time I walk down the Ave and get asked for spare change every half-block or so. But on the other hand, if life is sacred, then all life is sacred, not just the life that's non-threatening, cute, or doesn't force you into some uncomfortable consideration of your own life. Nothing disgusts me more than hearing so-called "pro-life" people twist reasoning into approving of torture, the death penalty, or unjust wars.

OK. I feel better now.

This is from a friend on LJ, and I thought it was too good not to share. Orff on banjos.

Update to the last post: Cobalt DS lite obtained (I was the first person in line), and I've even knitted a cozy for it.

For the knitters, the Turkish cast on is the coolest thing ever, especially when coupled with the magic loop technique. I have no idea what makes the cast on Turkish, but it's awesome and eliminates the need to do a provisional caston.

An update about a recent poll...

You may wonder why I'm up this early on a Sunday morning, when I'm not serving. Good question! That would be because the cobalt Nintendo DS lite is released this morning, and I'm trying to be one of the first people in line when my local Gamestop opens. (The cobalt/black one is unique to North America, I believe. Only fair, since Japan and Asia get nifty colors. Europe's kind of screwed in that regard, though. If Nintendo's reading this, can't they hook them up? I think they only have black and white.)

So, yeah. While I love the ice blue DS lite, I can't really justify spending the extra money to import one. With the difference between the Christmas/birthday money I received and the price of the ice blue DS, I got myself an R4 Revolution card. This nifty little device with a micro SD card allows you to run all sorts of homebrew applications for the Nintendo DS. So far (on the same micro SD card), I have DSOrganize (how did I live without this?), drugwars, and A Touch of War. The DSOrganize is pretty nifty, and the browser is super-fast. (Mostly text-based, but also loads some images.)

They have a nethack port for the DS, but I haven't gotten it working yet, and I was going to try to compile it from source, but I need to recompile gcc for ARM support. (And I'm feeling too lazy to do that. I think there's something in the Catechism about not bootstrapping your compiler on a Sunday during Lent.)

My Oblate Story, Part 3

So I arrived in Seattle. When I left LA it was 85. When I arrived in Seattle, it was 65. I think that's a good enough metaphor for my first few years here. Take a psychotic landlord (who liked to scream and verbally abuse tenants), the normal self-doubt and hypercriticality that comes with graduate study, financial instability, and a good dose of homesickness, and you've got yourself a mess. Or the proverbial dark night.

While I learned what community was at CalArts, I think I was supposed to learn what it is to be alone here. While there are people I care about out here, I don't have the communion I did at CalArts, either. It's nobody's fault or failing, it's just life.

So another thing happened when I moved out here. I started going to a Dominican parish. Now I hadn't had much exposure to the mendicant orders, aside from a Franciscan priest I once knew. (Hell of a guy.) I'm extremely attracted to the Benedictine notion of stability, but it's not something I've had a lot of. (New academics generally don't get that luxury until tenure.) I guess the biggest thing I learned from the Dominicans is how to "Keep in touch / and be at home / everywhere." (As Timothy Leary wrote.) I also absorbed the notion of study as being a kind of prayer from them.

The other thing that dawned on me is that maybe I'm being called, as it were, to more solitude. I can easily survive when I have community. But there comes a time when the community is a crutch, and its absence is another kind of formation. I think this dawned on me when I started my dissertation, and I started getting very little feedback about what I was doing. (My chair is pretty "hands off," which I appreciate.) There are days when I pine for the community I had at CalArts, but I know it's also a metaphysical dead-end.

So I discovered the Camaldolese Benedictines. There's a community of them in California, and I'm trying to get down there. (I've been told by a friend who lives in the Bay area that they're on a BART stop.) And they do have oblates. I haven't contacted them yet--there's no hurry, I have the rest of my life to figure it out--but that's where I am at the moment. Their blend of cenobitic and communal life seems to be what I've been looking for.

New silly poll up. Living by committee. I'm slightly biased towards ice blue. I'm not a fan of pink, but the metallic rose color isn't bad, either. It's not as vile as pink usually is. Got some money for christmas/birthday, and I'm considering spending it on a Nintendo DS lite. I have a regular DS, but its battery is going, the wifi is iffy, and it's not bright enough to use during the day. (Which is primarily where I use a Nintendo DS: on a bus. Since I don't drive, I take a lot of buses.) So it would make sense to upgrade to a DS lite, which has a brighter screen. (And is smaller.) I've done the research, and the Japanese unit isn't an issue, since they aren't region locked. Also all I need is a US power adapter.

I posed my question to my nieces, and I'll see what they say, although I think Niece #1 will go for pink. Niece #2 may go either way. Nieces #3 and #4 aren't verbal yet.

And speaking of buses, here's a song ("Joe Metro") from the local hip-hop duo, Blue Scholars about riding a bus. I recognize a lot of the places in the video (Pioneer Square, U District, International District.) The apartment he's walking out of? That's across the alley and across the street from Chez Garpu. He's not really riding the 48 in the video, either. The 48 doesn't run in that neighborhood and doesn't use wires. He's also walking along "The Ave," which is near me and the University Bridge, which spans the shipping canal and leads into north Seattle.

Why are movies about music, specifically music in schools, so horrible?

Case in point: the movie "Music of the Heart." (Or "Mr. Holland's Opus.") First, someone that abusive should never be around children. (Assuming Meryl Streep's portrayal is anything like the real person.) There is never a good reason to yell at children. Let me say that again: when teaching there is no reason to yell at children. I've had music teachers that like to scream at classes, and those people should never, ever be around kids. (That's another post for another time.)

Secondly, they all portray western (read: pre-19th century) instrumental music as the pinnacle of culture. Computer music, tape music, and the like have been around since the 1940's. Never mind, of course, that there are other cultures out there, with their own musics. Or, never mind, that there are lots of things to do within the discipline of music that doesn't involve playing anything (music theory, musicology/music history, composition.)

Third, they all portray western (read: white, pre-19th century, male, instrumental music) as some sort of universal. I've taken enough anthropology and ethnomusicology classes to know that it ain't necessarily so. Our version of music wouldn't be recognized as such among some cultures (say among indigenous South Americans). Other cultures don't have a term for "music" that isn't separate from speech, for instance. And that's not even getting into the plurality of music that exists just within our society today.

I think one reason why I'm attracted to the computer music end of things is it's almost Zen-like insistence upon the physicality of sound. At some level, sounds are mathematical impulses, quantifiable and tangible. It doesn't seek to be anything other than itself. The new age bins and hymnals we love to hate are littered with music that tries to be something it's not. I think if music is expressing the transcendental (if it expresses anything at all), it's because it's grounded in itself. You can take it apart, analyze it, see what makes it tick, and it's still wonderful. Try doing that with "On Eagle's Wings." (Apologies to anyone who likes that song. It's a convenient target.)

I have the complete 4-volume set of the Liturgy of the Hours published by the Catholic Book Company (ICEL, approved for the US and Canada.) The books are almost new (albeit a bit dusty), and I haven't used them in over a year. (I really prefer the Benedictine form of the Divine Office.) Since I got the set of breviaries of the older rite (c. 1953), I really haven't used the ICEL ones.

So if anyone's interested in them, let me know. I paid $36 apiece for them, and amazon sells the set for $140. I have no idea about used books, but I'd entertain anything fair.

But first: The strangest and coolest thing I've seen this week (courtesy of a friend):



Yep. Korean instruments, turntable, beatbox, and breakdancers on Pachelbel's canon.

In other news...I've discovered that I really don't like the ICEL version of the Divine Office. I really do like the Benedictine one, but the hours I can do (Lauds and Vespers) make it really repetitious. So I'm considering adapting the problematic hours (Matins, the little hours) into some sort of four week cycle, while the others stay the same. We'll see. Might be a huge project and cost prohibitive, considering what they charge for printing on demand.

You know you're Catholic when...

...you type ewtn.com instead of espn.com, when trying to check football scores. And I don't even like EWTN.

Oh well. Cheesy win, Pats, but even a cheesy win is a win. Shame that the Giants beat the Packers, because I was hoping to see the Packers creamed by the Patriots. Yeah, I'm still bitter about Seattle's loss last weekend.

My Oblate Story, Part 2

Thanks for the comments on the first part of this...such things aren't easy to talk about, since part of the way people like my family keep power is to make people like me question their perceptions of the situation. You start to wonder if it's just you, and you're stretching things out of proportion, but that's part of their game. Promise the rest of the story isn't so bad.

When we first set eyes on The San Joaquin
Was like a friend we always knew
The gates swing open so far and wide even God could drive through
We worked the crops from dawn to dust shared along the way
I never will forget it until my dying days

We were Bakersfield bound and the California dream
Down the road lay the promised lands our fields had all turned green
We were Bakersfield bound like so many gone before
Just to cross our River Jordan and reach the other shore (Chris Hillman, "Bakersfield Bound")

So when I stepped off the plane at LAX to start at CalArts, it did feel like I'd reached the Promised Land. There couldn't have been a better fit for me than CalArts, and I realize a lot of it is looking back at it through rose-colored glasses. It's not that there weren't troubles--there were. A lot of months I'd be living off of $60 a month for groceries. I ate a lot of beans and rice. CalArts is a performing arts school, and as such it's a completely different environment from an academic one. It's rigorous, but in a completely different way, and nothing in my schooling had prepared me for it. While things are loose and laid back, it's also fiercely competitive.

But things came easily. Pieces I wrote seemed to flow. I had a group of people around me, who were just like me. (Most of them I'm still friends with, and we still keep in touch.) A lot of writers on Benedictine life describe how one's life should be an extension of the Eucharist, and that, like everything else came easily. My life seemed to be bathed in the same glow I'd see reflected off of the mountains at sunset. The relationship I had with teachers was deeper than a meeting of minds. I've written about Lucky a bit here. I was the most regular with respect to the Divine Office than I've ever been, not to mention other observances that go along with being Catholic.

It didn't really matter that I couldn't find a regular Oblate group who'd take me, since my days in California were numbered (I was planning from the get-go) to go off to grad school. Plus none of the groups met near me, and the monastery nearby insisted on group contact. (It's their program, they're free to establish whatever parameters they see fit. They're a good group of guys.) I had my community, and they encouraged my contemplative nature, even if they didn't belong to my particular faith.

It was at CalArts that I discovered Timothy Leary, Richard Alpert (ahem), Aldous Huxley, et al, who seemed to speak about being a contemplative within the lay world better than some traditional spiritual writers did. I learned about Balinese music, and the sky seemed to be the limit. (I didn't get into computer music until UW. There I was strictly instrumental.)

When it was time for me to move on to UW, I didn't want to go. But there was also the danger: many CalArts graduates found they were unable to go anywhere else, and chose to live close by, never really growing. It's a pull I still feel, and I still have a habit of trying to describe where I am in terms of how unlike CalArts it is.

Next time: Seattle.

My Oblate Story, Part 1

oA Benedictine Oblate is a lay person, who lives according to the Rule of St. Benedict in so far as their station in life will allow in some sort of formal association with a particular monastery. My first exposure to the Rule of St. Benedict was during a class at Augie about community as part of the honors sequence. It was a decent class, and the study of the Rule culminated in a two-day trip to New Melleray Abbey, in Iowa. I was struck by something there, but I wasn't sure what.

And the Lord, seeking his laborer in the multitude to whom He thus cries out, says again, "Who is the one who will have life, and desires to see good days" (Ps. 33[34]:13)? And if, hearing Him, you answer, "I am the one," God says to you, "If you will have true and everlasting life, keep your tongue from evil and your lips that they speak no guile. Turn away from evil and do good; seek after peace and pursue it" (Ps. 33[34]:14-15). And when you have done these things, My eyes shall be upon you and My ears open to your prayers; and before you call upon Me, I will say to you, 'Behold, here I am'" (Ps. 33[34]:16; Is. 65:24; 58:9).

What can be sweeter to us, dear ones, than this voice of the Lord inviting us? Behold, in His loving kindness the Lord shows us the way of life. (Rule of St. Benedict, Prologue.)

It wasn't until I'd made the acquaintance of the new Catholic chaplain at Augie, a Benedictine nun, that I learned of Oblates and that there was a group who met nearby. I attended their monthly meetings regularly, and it felt like a dream that there were people like me, who were living the kind of life I thought was closed off. Finally the summer before I was to go to California, I was to be enrolled as a novice, a year before one makes a final commitment as an Oblate.

I've never publicly told this part of the story before, and I owe the sisters an explanation. It's hard writing this, and a part of me thinks that I'm making it up. Perhaps it's time that I admit that this demon has no power over me, metaphorically speaking, or perhaps it still has some hold. I was to spend some time with the community I was to become an Oblate with during an intensive silent retreat. It sounded like heaven, with plenty of time for meditation and silence. When I told my family about it, they didn't take it well, to put it mildly. They were convinced I was joining a cult and absolutely forbade me to go.

There were hours of interrogation about my motives, and that summer I was virtually imprisoned. I had no way of getting there--I didn't have a car, and there wasn't any transportation between cities in that part of the state. There were other threats about psychiatrists, since they thought my personality had changed (maybe it had and they weren't listening.) When interrogation didn't break me, then there was open scorn and teasing about my becoming an Oblate. What I was called doesn't bear repeating, namely because it's also an insult to the many religious I know.

I'm sure if you ask my family, they'd have an entirely different version of this story. That's how their types keep power. I didn't have much time to myself for prayer that summer. I memorized many of the psalms, so that if my books I used to cobble together a version of the Divine Office were taken away from me that I could still pray some of it. I had a copy of the Rule of St. Benedict hidden--the small $3 version--on me at all times. I'd do lectio divina late at night, when my family was asleep, and I learned about walking meditation on my own. The summer previously I'd obtained a medal of St. Benedict, which that summer I wore under my clothes constantly. I knew I had to keep my head down, convince my family of my normalcy, so that I could make it to California, where I eventually moved. I haven't been back much, and that summer marked the first real break with my family. (I have limited to no contact with them now.)

(I promise, this story gets happier. Sorry to end on such a downer, but I need to get up in a few hours for work.)

Funding poultry empires

So I got some money from the family...at first I wasn't going to cash their checks, but I figured if I'm going to be the evil granddaughter, then I might as well have some fun with it.

I know Aloysha over on Cascadia Catholics posted about Kiva.org, too, but it's a nifty place. The most you can donate is $25. For that, you invest in someone's business in the form of microloans. Of course, you don't get interest on the $25 when/if you get it back. But when you get paid back, you can reinvest it.

I used to make rosaries. I haven't in awhile because I just didn't have the time, and because a lot of the rosary making groups on the web are either the not-so-nice kind of traditionalist, or they're just into making profits. I still pay my dues to Our Lady's Rosary Makers, but I just haven't had the heart to get back into it. (You can see some of the ones I've made here. I think it's public.)

I started making rosaries back when I had walking pneumonia one summer, and was feeling better, but not well enough to do much. Boredom set in, and I sent off for a beginner's kit. Then I started looking around for communities online, and I found the Rosary Army.

OK, the clue that they use the term "army" in their name should've clued me in. But they're really the Something Awful of the rosary-making world on their forums, without the comedy of Something Awful. If you don't like EWTN, don't dote on the Theology of the Body, and don't snark on other denominations and religions, you aren't a good Catholic.

So if you have someone (me), who joined their forums for the social aspect (I don't like cord rosaries, and I think wire ones that don't use premade chain are every bit as strong), who readily identifies as a feminist (I believe women have choices about their lives), is getting an advanced graduate degree (when most of the forum derides academe as liberal claptrap), thinks the notion of "culture wars" is fundamentalist bullcrap, and can't stand EWTN, there will be sparks. So, yeah, I'm done with them. Sad thing is, they seem to be the dominant type of catholics out there on the web.

And I'm working on a Benedictine Oblate post. Lot of stuff to sort through on it, and I'm trying to get it into something remotely interesting to read. (Unlike tonight's mental dump.)

At work, so not much time, but I had another thought about the Opus Dei book I've been reading. I think what bothers me the most is their concept of contemplation. Sure, one's life can be a kind of living prayer, but it isn't contemplation, per se. As one of the priests at my parish so aptly put it, contemplation is "resting in the embrace of the Divine." Seems like the average Opus Dei member is kept too busy to shut up and listen--they fill their lives with so much noise, whether it's in the form of a devotional or attracting other people. Sometimes the words need to stop, and one can be filled with noise in silence. Maybe that's the reason for their snark against other religious orders.

LOTRO, linux, and more Opus Dei

A jet-lagged linux geek is a dangerous thing. I've been running "Lord of the Rings Online" in linux for awhile (water effects aren't as good as in windows, and you have to patch via windows). I hadn't figured out how to get it in windowed mode until this morning. Funny what happens, when you uncheck "full screen" in the display options of the program...Screenshot was taken outside of the Lagging Pony in Bree.

Granted, when I read more of Allen's book on Opus Dei, I was stuck on a tarmac at Boston, my flight delayed by over an hour, when I had only an hour to get to my connecting flight (Which was in a different concourse, since I was flying a codeshared airline from ORD). I'm about two-thirds of the way through the book. Also in the interest of full disclosure, I'm really really jetlagged.

On the one hand, I get the notion of one's life being an extended prayer. I like the notion of sanctification of work, and I do believe people are called to be contemplatives in lay life. However (and this is a big however), I can't help but be creeped out and a bit pissed off with how Opus Dei perverts those notions.

Why the secrecy? They can claim it's just privacy all they want, but why do their members hide their affiliation? Sure, it's nobody's business, but if it's something beautiful in your life, don't you want to be a witness for it? Secondly (and sort of along the lines of the first), their recruiting techniques leave a lot to be desired. It seems like the one consistent thing in the book is that they prey on people with a literal understanding of their faith or those more likely to already be on the fringe or marginalized. That's a cult's recruiting tactics, especially when combined with isolation.

And you really don't want to get me going about the whole "well women are better at domestic things, because it's their traditional role" circularity, either. Granted, the plural of anecdote isn't data, but I don't have a domestic bone in my body, as visitors to Chez Fork can attest. Is it because I've been "masculinized" as they say, or is it because we all have different gifts? For instance, the Frood is much more domestic than I am. Conversely, you really don't want him doing the cooking (although he's getting much better.) There are other things I'm content to let him take care of, but there's nothing biologically based in the ability to cook, for instance. I know a couple fathers, who're stay-at-home dads, and they're awesome parents. Should their children be deprived, because it's not their traditional role?

The issue of mortification is the least troublesome to me, honestly. I understand the value of ascetics, and sometimes you just can't help suffering. Offering it for some other purpose is a laudable thing, I think. But deliberately seeking out suffering? I'm with Thomas Merton that one's asceticism should be for the purpose of enjoying the world and life we're given. Opus Dei reminds me of the line from "Dogma:" "You don't celebrate your faith, you mourn it."