You get a gold star!

*I'll warn you now, this is an article about a facet of gaming culture*

Well, you read the title, didn't you?  Look at the title, now back to me.

You got a gold star!  Congratulations, don't you feel special?

No?  Then you're stupid, and worse than that you're a spoil sport, just trying to ruin everyone's fun.

At least, that's what the gaming industry wants to say to you.  As most of you who are still with me are likely to recall, around the start of the console generation that's currently ending (or in real world terms, mid-2007) Microsoft introduced a crazy new idea to console gaming.  It was called the achievement.  Literally, it was called that.  Everyone who knows what I'm talking about knows that I'm not joking.

The way this works is that when you complete a certain in-game criteria, you hear a little blip, you're treated to a nice little phrase and a cute picture, and then everyone who cares to look (which is no one, let's be frank) can see on your online profile that you've been crowned with the achievement.  This was such a marketing success that Sony jumped in about two year later, demanded that "trophies" be put into all new games and backlogged them into older PS3 games.

Of course the achievements, by one name or another, come in different varieties.  Most games give you at least two or three achievements for essentially nothing but booting up the game.  I can think of a few games I've played where 10 seconds in I literally received an achievement for moving forward.  However, just as the little reassuring blip at the bottom of your screen becomes a nice reminder of your progress, the stakes rise.

The first time your probably straight, white, male protagonist collects one of the thousand gems of wonderment scattered in random, meaningless parts of a meaningless digital world, you get a nice little blip and a trophy to let you know how much of a good boy you've been.  There's probably another at 10, another at 100, and maybe one or two at 500 and 700.  But what the game wants to fire home is that you haven't REALLY played the game unless you get all 1000 of them.  After all, if you do that you get treated to a nice little blip on the bottom of your screen.  Yes, you've wasted several hours of your life but at least you got that gold star.

The same thing is done with difficulty levels, but in a more frustrating way.  Here, the game is literally designed to tell you either respectively how much of a wuss you are for playing the game on easy, barely handing out any achievements for a leisurely, fun, escapist romp through Space Marine Call of Honor 3: This time it's personal, in contrast handing them out like candy in a South American slum if you can somehow manage the blinding, banal, you died because you forgot to cross your toes on the second Tuesday of every fifth month while simultaneously weaving a basket 8 fathoms under boiling salt water torture of the "Veteran" or "Hardcore" difficulty.

Seriously though.

Granted, there are those for whom, apparently, even these vast difficulty levels are like grating cheese, but I have yet to meet one of these wizards, and back here on planet Earth I don't appreciate what the gaming industry has been doing for the last 6 years now.

My biggest problem with all of it is that it is specifically designed to destroy your life.  Just to be clear, I'm not exaggerating there.  King Henry VIII famously said once that time is a man's greatest loss because he can never get it back, and for all of his drunken whoring and church-making he was right on that point.

The whole system of meaning behind achievements is specifically designed so that you waste (not spend as you do when you're just playing the game) your time so that a paltry blip on the bottom of your screen and a quick little pun can make you feel better about yourself.

So buck the system!  Go out, buy a game and play it on easy.  Don't feel ashamed of yourself, just enjoy it.  The whole point of gaming as a medium tends to be that one has fun while playing the game, whatever way one might want to.  All that achievements do as a thing is tell you how to have your fun, whether or not you've had enough quite yet, and remind you that if you were really having fun the way you were supposed to, you'd be doing what the achievement tells you to do.

Congratulations, you made it to the end of the post.  You get a PLATINUM star! 

With all the force of a great typhoon

So the other day I went to a mass at St. Francis Catholic Church in Madison, Mississippi.  Having not been to mass in a while, I was elated as the priest ascended the central podium of a wide, circular meeting-tent style church and announced that the introductory hymn would be number such and such, Holy, Holy, Holy.  Having grown up a Protestant, this was one of many more popular classic hymns with which I am thoroughly familiar, so I was thrilled as I found the hymn in the book and stood to sing.  Then, around the first time we finished the chorus I noticed that something was wrong.  Looking up and carefully observing the crowd I quickly found the problem.

Almost all of the men in the church were silent.

"What," I thought to myself, "this is only one of the best hymns ever!  Why would anyone not sing to this?  How could these ingrates be so ungrateful as to not sing one of the most kick-ass songs of worship written in the last 200 years?"  The answer came to me by the next song we sang, an all too familiar problem with church music.

It's just too damn high.

At St. Francis, the worship leader was a small, stout older lady with a beautiful, calming soprano voice.  Her vocals, accompanied by a wonderful flute and the obligatory piano, provided the basis for the worship setting, and I'm sure that she meant well.  However, most men (if I remember my science correctly) are either basses or baritones naturally, which means their comfortable range (in my experience and the experience of my fellows) ranges from approximately a low G to a high B, give or take a not or two.  Of course there are a large number of men who are tenors, but even these, when they are not trained, can have a hard time rising above a solid D or E.  Meanwhile, worship music (of catholic and protestant varieties) tends to be written for tenor and soprano high voices, meaning that the high points of melodies will hang out comfortable around D and E, often rising as far as high F and high G for melodic effect.

Only serving to exacerbate the problem, whether you're singing hymns or Chris Tomlin choruses, the melodies of the songs are meant to be belted out and sung in a full voice.  For persons like myself who are basses or baritones (again, the majority of men) this is more than difficult, it's uncomfortable.  I've spent several years of my life in choirs and voice lessons, and even for me it is hard to sing a nice D or E at a volume and tone appropriate to a worship setting.  I can only imagine how bad it must be for my fellows who aren't as well versed in the vocal arts.

The eventual result of this focus on high melody is that, as is the case in most churches I have attended, most men simply don't sing in church.  At times when the congregation is supposed to be lifting their collective voice in collaborative praise, at least half of the congregation is more or less unintentionally excluded because the music simply does not fit their vocal range.

What's always frustrating to me, as a performer, is that this problem is by no means necessary.  First of all, there's the ever-present option of simply dropping the key of worship songs so that they fit in a more comfortable range.  This is not always doable for everyone, either for technical reasons pertaining to the musicians in a worship team or because some songs are written in such a way that dropping the key would make the ladies generally unable to participate.

However, churches throughout the 19th and early 20th century made a regular habit of actually having their congregations sing in 4 part harmony.  Having performed in many choirs, I recognize that this is difficult to achieve, but I think that this solution is under-utilized in the modern church.  4-part singing can provide a wonderful allusion to the different functions of different pieces of the body of Christ, and it is furthermore simply more comfortable.

Still, I acknowledge that in some congregations, forcing or offering 4 part congregational singing is either impractical or simply not doable.

Nonetheless, it is certainly at least one of several important issues facing the church that men, who make up normally half the population of a community and who, in many churches, are the sole proprietors of the ordained ministry, are generally not singing.  We must all find a way to alleviate this problem.  Perhaps this means that we don't sing Chris Tomlin choruses, or that our gloria will be a much more simple (dare I say maybe even boring) melody, but in the end it is more acceptable to do different music or less exciting music than it is to essentially exclude half of a congregation from participation in musical worship.

A Short Story: why not?

I know I've been absent lately, and that I have yet to really get my series on Same-Sex-Marriage off the ground.  But I wrote this.  Feel free to read it.  Or don't.  But you're already here, so go ahead and read it.

“I’ll do it”, the creature cried from the high place.  “I’ll jump, I’ll do it.”

The place was indeed very high.  The fall would be fatal.  A group of people gathered below the creature.  A woman stepped forward.  She was too old to go dancing, but too young to know the terror of a grown child.  “I’m sure you have a family somewhere, she said, and I’m sure they wouldn’t want you to do this,” she began.

“Just think how horrified they’ll be if they learn you’ve done it.  Think of your mother, think of how she’ll be horrified.  What about your Dad and how it will shake his confidence in himself?  What about all the cousins and aunts and uncles that will miss you at Christmas and Thanksgiving.  Think about how sad everyone will be when Uncle Bill says, ‘if only it hadn’t happened’  and when cousin Angela says ‘it really was such a terrible loss’.

The creature was silent.  A man stepped forward.  He was the kind you would see in a coffee shop, not a regular, just a visitor, or the kind who lines his walls with classics he does not read.  “But wait,” he began, his well-trimmed goatee lifted high above his clever corduroy jacket and his color-coordinated fitted pants of indiscriminate stylish material.

“Surely you know that your life has meaning in and of itself.  All life is valuable, especially sentient life.  You carry within yourself a divine spark.  If you believe in God, be assured that he loves you.  If you don’t, be assured that your life carries value, regardless of all external circumstances.  Be of good cheer, oh friend I have yet to meet, for whether it be Darwin or Falwell who is correct you are the product of a long, ingenious process and you have value for simply being yourself, a unique and improbable expression of a unique and improbable species.  Descend, therefore, and follow not this terminal course of action.”

The creature was once more silent.  A young woman stepped forward.  Her bright, mismatched colors said more about her personality and life experience than any words ever could.  “But most of all,” she began, “remember that life is just worth living.”

“I mean, come on, think about it for a second.  Life is just so wonderful if you look in the right places.  Go out for a cup of coffee, listen to a songbird, go to a concert or whatever you want to do.  There’s so much of the world out there that you probably haven’t even started to explore.  Come down and go find life the way it’s meant to be lived.”

Still the creature was silent.  The three who had stepped forward were perplexed.  The air hung still, and the thought of death hung heavy and cold over the scene like a wet woolen coat.

An old man didn’t bother to step forward.  His rosewood cane, onto which he had failed to mount a rubber stopper, took the place of a gavel as it racked about and broke the tasteful silence.  As the persons near to him inched away, he let out a long, deep cough that trailed off into sputtering and then more silence.  Deliberately silent, he pulled a handkerchief from his back pocket.  This whole rest was followed by a sforzando of coughing and hacking which subsided into a decrescendo deep breath which stood at a nice mezzo piano.  “Do it,” he sputtered out, flatly.

“This bitch over here thinks you have yet to consider your family or how they’re going to feel.  We both know that you have.  You’re standing up there, relishing the fact that news crews and policemen and paramedics are on their way.  You’re going to love all of that attention, however this works out.  You don’t think you did it for the attention, but whether or not it was a motivation, that’s why you’re standing up there.  If you really wanted to go quietly into that dark night, there are a few thousand ways an idiot like you could kill themselves quietly in an apartment or a back alley.

No, you’re here, at this high place, so that all of them can see, aren’t you?  You want them to hurt and languish and say ‘oh if only I had done this’ or ‘why didn’t I pay more attention when such and such a thing happened.’  That’ll show ‘em, right?  That’ll make ‘em wish they’d treated you better.

And this jackass over here thinks you have somehow managed to not absorb the McPhilosophy that’s seeped into the deepest corners of every educational system and every movie and every dramatic TV special everywhere, or that if you have absorbed it, you need only be reminded of the orthodox opinion to return once again to the great conformity.  He believes that bullshit, but you and me, we know how to call a duck a duck.

You know you’re fucking worthless, or at least you want to think you are.  If you don’t think you are, or if you’re not sure, I’ll tell you now that you are.  There’s no such thing as a sure-fire inalienable human center that gives us a special privilege over the beasts of the earth, and however fantastic our circumstances are we both know that perhaps you and I and everyone else are products of an incredibly, complex, well-organized pile of steaming shit.

And then this one here wants you to take a deep whiff and call it roses.  She’s close to correct, closer than she thinks.  There is a big, beautiful world out there, there are places to be and people to see and things to do, but in ascending the mountain of self-devaluation you have made it clear to all of us that you don’t want to do any of that.

You are worthless, so get the hell down, one way or another.

You are wasting my time, their time and your time.  You have decided that life is not worth living and that your oh-so-sensitive soul can no longer bear its slings and arrows.  Fine.  Do it.

You are worth exactly nothing until you decide that you are worth something.  At this point you seem to have decided on the former.  So either commit to that decision and embrace your meaningless end or get down here and decide that you are worth something.  Go out and make yourself worth something.  Do some important shit in some unimportant place to make it, and yourself, important.  Or don’t.  Until you do one, you’ll just be standing there, wasting my time and wallowing in your non-existant worth.”

The creature was silent.  And then, in an instant, the creature decided.

Mawwiage: The Surface of the Same-Sex Debate

"The word of the Lord came to me: 'Son of man, speak to your people and say to them: ‘When I bring the sword against a land, and the people of the land choose one of their men and make him their watchman, and he sees the sword coming against the land and blows the trumpet to warn the people, then if anyone hears the trumpet but does not heed the warning and the sword comes and takes their life, their blood will be on their own head.  Since they heard the sound of the trumpet but did not heed the warning, their blood will be on their own head. If they had heeded the warning, they would have saved themselves.  But if the watchman sees the sword coming and does not blow the trumpet to warn the people and the sword comes and takes someone’s life, that person’s life will be taken because of their sin, but I will hold the watchman accountable for their blood.'"
-Ezekiel 33:1-6

Given the recent public light that has been shed on same-sex marriage, I have decided to tackle the issue for own writing pleasure.  I would like to set forth as a disclaimer now that I do not mean to offend anyone with anything that I say on either side of this issue, but in a similar vein I will not apologize for offending anyone.  I intend no harm, and I assure all of you that I will avoid being disrespectful, but I cannot predict the myriad of ways that anyone may be offended by what I say and I do not intend to compromise any of my positions in the slightest.

Now that that's over with,

The central question here, as I understand it, is whether or not same-sex marriage should be legal in the United States of America.  I do not know the legal systems of any other locales well enough to judge them, but I will do my best to base my arguments on generalized systems of morality and legality.

Speaking of which,

Most people, especially Christians, have an annoying habit of separating morality and legality on tough issues like Same-Sex Marriage, Marijuana, Abortion, Torture, and Underwater Basket-Weaving.  Somewhat obviously, I oppose the separation.

There are those who say, "You can't legislate morality."

Those people are wrong.

You can't legislate people into a corner where they have to behave morally (I mean, you can, but it doesn't work out and it usually violates civil liberties), but legislation is nothing more than general morality applied to specific situations with punishments attached to infractions.

Example:
1)  It's wrong to kill people
2)  Sometimes, people kill other people (often with guns)
3)  If you kill someone, you will face legal recourse.

Bam.  You just legislated morality.

This being the case, the most useful place to start in asking the question, "Should guys be allowed to marry guys and girls be allowed to marry girls?" is in morality.

As a firm Utilitarian, I am compelled to start with Utilitarian morals.  Does preventing Same-Sex Marriage cause any suffering?  Yes, it clearly does.  Clearly, people who are homosexual and want to marry experience some level of suffering at not being allowed to legally marry, otherwise they wouldn't seek the right to marry.

More importantly, does allowing Same-Sex Marriage cause any suffering, or at least are there any obviously predictable negative effects?  Well, gay couples as parents are statistically no better or worse than straight parents at raising their children, according to most normative standards of child-rearing, so there's no obvious detriment to the children.

As far as others are concerned, certainly there will be a number of people made very upset by the marriage of dudes to other dudes and girls to other girls, but I frankly have to say that the pleasure gained by people allowed to freely marry one another is probably amazingly greater than the frustration and suffering of those who don't want people of the same sex to marry one another.

I can't think of any obvious societal cost to allowing people of the same sex to marry one another.

Some say that it will degrade marriage as an institution, but I, for one, think that's a bit of a moot point in a society with divorce rates somewhere around 50%.  

Some say that the infertility present in same sex couples sours marriage by making it primarily the concern of two adults, not the concern of a family unit.  Again though, I think a 50% divorce rate is solid evidence that we as a society have abandoned the concept of marriage as concerning a family unit, so while the point is true, it is not obvious that same-sex couples would in any way worsen a trend that already exists.  Furthermore, many same-sex couples adopt, which further weakens this point.

So why not?  Why not have the Pope perform a ceremony between Adam and Steve, and for the hell of it have him do the ceremony live on Ellen?

We'll let that one stand until the next post.  Until then though, it's been wonderful.

-J.R.M.C.

School's out.

So the other day I was muching on some sausage (NOT LIKE YOU'RE THINKING DIRTY INTERNET!)  Anyway I was chewing a delightful fried polish sausage with garlic-wasabi fried rice, carrots and celery when I decided to hold the biannual Rob-pulls-his-head-up-out-of-the-sand-rubs-his-eyes-and-decides-to-look-around-and-see-what's-going-on-in-his-life session.  Then I decided it sounded like more fun to watch the newly added Cartoon Network lineup on Netflix and I postponed the session until the next day, I wasn't doing anything important like re-watching Batman Beyond the next day.

So there I was the next other day, calmly walking along in the woods, minding my own business and bothering no one at all when a coordinated set of inbred expectations snuck up and jumped me just past the bubbling creek.  While one of them was busy whacking me about the head and face with my imminent graduation from college, another was punching me in the stomach with time-based development objectives, another still was kicking me in the kneecaps with career uncertainty, a fourth stood there yelling, "WHAT ARE YOU GOING TO DO WITH YOUR LIFE?!"   All the while a final one seemed content to hop around on a neon polo stick while consuming a delicious burrito.

I was more or less instantly beset with anxiety about more or less everything.  Beyond the normal "Who am I", and "What is my purpose", there were creeping in "Where am I going to live", "How will I pay for food", "What if I can't get a job", and "How the hell am I supposed to get a job with my degree that does not involve either changing religions or giving up the womenfolk?"

Clearly it was a desperate situation.

I like me some womenfolk.

Being terrified and frozen in place (metaphorically of course, a walk where you're frozen in place quickly becomes awkward, what with all the just standing there) I decided to go back to my room and hop onto the PS3, where I committed acts of brutal competitive violence on complete strangers for a few hours, after which I had a nice dinner, a soothing warm bath and good night's sleep.

The next day I woke up with that awful feeling of regret and terror that comes with ignoring expectation-based fears, when I suddenly realized that what I had done (the whole ignoring it and doing anything other than worrying bit) was really the best thing I could have done at all.

The scriptures say "Today's trouble is enough for today," and "who, by worrying, can add one minute to his life?"  I don't mean that playing video games and eating fried sausage and yellow rice topped in french cut green beans with a cream-cheese/wasabi gravy is always the right decision, but I do mean that when one is tempted to worry, my experience leads me to believe that worrying is the last thing one should be doing.

Again, I don't mean that everyone should become a couch potato and throw caution to the wind.  Caution is a good thing, and it helps us avoid stupid decisions.  But sitting there, languishing in terror of what's to come is something the scriptures (and all common sense) advise against.  I have no idea what I'll be doing or where I'll be in May or in September, but I'll be somewhere and things will take care of themselves.  I know where I want to be, I have a solid idea of some places where I don't want to be, and I think I'm smart enough to avoid the latter and pursue the former.

Relax.  Don't make stupid decisions, but keep on living.  Things will probably work out okay, and if they don't, how much does it really matter?

It's been wonderful,

-J.R.M.C.

The Problem with Star Trek...

I have a problem with Star Trek.

Okay, I have three problems with Star Trek.

The first problem I have is that Star Trek: The Next Generation is not still running and that Patrick Stewart is not still delivering weekly five minute dissertations on the fundamental value of life itself or the inalienable rights of every sentient individual.

The second problem is also that TNG is not still running.

It's a big problem for me.

My third problem, and I guess you would call this the "serious" one, is with the narrative of human progress that the collective Star Trek mythos presents.

I'm not the most careful observer, but the general idea that the original series put forward was that the UN dissolved around the 70s or 80s, there were some eugenics wars around the 80s or 90s, and then, as chronicled in First Contact humans discover warp-level technology, and then they more or less become better at not being awful to one another as more technologies are implemented as as technology allows them access to better, more peaceful cultures.

It's a cool story, and thank God it's not (so far) the situation into which things have devolved.  Nonetheless, the conclusion the narrative seems to present is that it's more or less REALLY science and technology that will variously inspire or enable us to stop hating each other and killing one another.

Note that it's not the slow, painful matter of working through deep-seated ethnic, cultural, religious and historical issues between persons and groups of people.  It's not the careful, calculated and coordinated efforts of hard-working, like-minded people making hard compromises that forges a long, lasting and just peace, it's the magic hand of science and technology reaching down and bringing humanity out of the swamps of diplomacy and, quite literally, into the future.

Granted, that's not the narrative of technology presented by the whole series, and several episodes centered on the "prime directive" emphasize that technology does not equal progress.  Nonetheless, what could be called the creation narrative of Star Trek does at least have pieces of that philosophy.

My bigger point here is that technology is not going to save us.  Certainly, it helps: it can and it will.

The only thing that can save mankind from itself is the careful cooperation of brave men and women across faith lines, borders, embargoes and other artificial boundaries.  We can make the world a better place, we have that ability, but the only way to do that is to cooperate with one another, slowly and carefully, one person to one person at a time.

Half-boats and Whole Commitments

I apologize for my extended absence.  I intend on dealing with its cause herein, and I henceforth intend to write at least one and probably no more than three posts a week.  Anyway...

I've always thought that one of life's more interesting paradoxes is that, for most people (and by most people I mean "me") intentional productivity and free time have an almost perfectly indirect correlation.  Three years ago, as a freshman taking 18 credits, I did all of my homework in all of my classes, maintained stable relationships with both of my parents and a significant other, read 5 books, got in pretty decent shape, successfully gave up meat for lent and, in my classes, learned most of the important basic principles that I still use today.

This semester, I have 12 credits, 4 of which are music classes.  Another two are essentially a trip to Manhattan that I'll be taking next week, and then I have two "normal" classes.  Most of my time is free and available for my personal use.  If you combine all of the hours I spend in class on Tuesday, Thursday and Friday, you only come out with a measly four hours out of 72.  What have I accomplished with all of this glorious free time?

Nothing.  More or less, nothing.  I finished watching Star Trek: The Next Generation, watched all of House of Cards, started DS9 and Voyager, and really that's it.  I have hit a rut in my productivity, and I think this kind of thing is fairly common for most people.  I think it has something to do with needing to manage your time well when you're busy and not really needing to when you're free, but I won't bother with speculation, I've simply noticed the correlation.

Since this state in which I lack any semblance of productive activity is unacceptable, I recently sought out the advice of one of the many wise friends with whom the Blessed Father has seen fit to bless me.  I told him my predicament, my lack of motivation and my lack of anything really meaningful, and what he said to me was so wise and so practical that I'll do my best to say exactly what he told me.  He said:

"What you need is a boat.  Or rather, you need HALF a boat and a garage.  Then, what you do is go down into that garage every Saturday afternoon or every evening or with every moment of free time you have and you work on your half boat.  You go to home depot and buy things, come back and measure them, return them to home depot and buy different things that fit better so that bit by bit what you have is less like half a boat and more like a whole boat.  If you do this long enough, you end up with an actual whole boat, then you step back and say to yourself, 'I don't even live near a body of water, what am I going to do with a boat?'  It's at that point that you realize that all along the point wasn't REALLY to have a boat or even to build a boat, the point was to struggle and work and to care about something for long enough that the struggle made you a better person."

My friend can correct me if I've remembered his advice incorrectly.

Nonetheless, I took it to heart and I think I have a solid idea for a half-boat, but that's not important.  What's important is that I know plenty of people out there are either A) feeling unproductive or B) will at some point in the future feel unproductive.  My big mistake in the past has been that I've allowed myself to waste those precious moments, so my personal advice to you (and even more so to myself) is to find that half-boat and work on it until your fingers are raw and your brow is sweaty with tireless effort.

Work on it until it means something and embrace that meaning with everything you have, because real meaning is hard to come by in this world.

On a final note, for those who are curious, my half-boat is a play about a group of people who run a Bed and Breakfast together.  Don't ask me any questions about it because that's as much as I'm going to let slip.  Anyway, go in the peace of the Lord and do your best to stay happy and healthy!

It's been wonderful,

-J.R.M.C.