A Crazy Man's Utopia

DragonQuest VIII review

2006-04-01T15:27:00.000-06:00

The history of Japanese RPGs in the United States begins over twenty years ago. Hundreds if not thousands have made the long trip across the Pacific to land in gamers consoles. Over the years the genre has branched out from its simple turned base combat roots to include such things fully tactical systems to actions based combat. The games have left their fantasy roots to span decades and even the reaches of space. Is there any place left in the modern gaming world for the old fashioned fantasy turn based RPG? You better bepin believe it.

It’s hard to know even where to begin a review of DragonQuest VIII. I am not sure how long this game has been in development, but the previous game in the series, DragonWarriorVII, came out on the ps1 2001. The developers used their time well. The production values are the highest possible and great effort was put into the details of this one.

The game looks beautiful on the ps2. It’s not so much the number of polygons or shaders or whatever that moves this game to the tops of the graphics pile. The art direction and design is brilliant. The guy who did Dragonball Z did the character designs for this game. It’s not just the characters that look good but the entire world looks and feels good. The colors are bright and the designs have a whimsical style about them. Initially, the dungeons and towns seemed a little small to me, but they are packed with such character and characters, that you soon realized it’s just right. I have to mention the monster design. They’re funny, colorful, and larger then life, with character all their own. Each class of monsters has reactions and animations. I would wander around to find monsters just to see what they would do. The voice acting blends well with the quirky characters that inhabit this world.

Combat pays homage to the old days of Japanese RPGs. It’s a straight forward turn based affair. Your characters agility determines what order in which the combatants act. You can attack, use special abilities, or cast a spell. Certain attacks affect groups or all of the enemies. In one slight twist you can “psych up” which gives your attack or spells more power. I didn’t find this technique helpful except against certain bosses. In a clear tip of the hat to Dragonball Z, if you psych up to 100 you go “super saiyan” except for glowing pink instead of yellow. At this level you can unleash extremely powerful attacks. I hit one boss for over 4000 damage once.

The story for the first half of the game is a breath of fresh air. It’s really simple. You and your party are chasing a jester around the world to kill him for revenge and to lift a curse. No amnesia, no chosen ones, just find the evil guy and kill him. Unfortunately, a little over half way through the game they decide to resort to the tired clichés and you half to stop the dark lord blah blah blah.

There’s a fun little side quest in which you defeat special monsters throughout the world. You are then able to have these monsters fight as a team against others in an arena to earn awards. Eventually you can call this team into battle for you, which can be very helpful in certain circumstances.

It’s hard to describe how well this game holds together and simple enjoyment it brings. The tradition Japanese RPG has reached its apex with this game. I can’t see this being topped without adding some gimmick. In terms of design, simplicity, and fun, I haven’t experienced a Japanese RPG in years that could match this game.

9/10 Game time 90 hours.

Just a test

2006-03-09T15:52:00.000-06:00

This is just a test of the blogger widget.

It's a joke

2006-03-05T14:32:00.000-06:00

Funny but scary

Metroid Zero Mission

2006-03-04T15:05:00.000-06:00

Here’s a reviewlet. Metroid Zero Mission is a GBA remake of the original NES metroid game. I can’t really compare this to the original because I don’t remember much except for the very beginning and having to write down those crazy long codes to remember where you’d stopped playing. This works well as a GBA game. The graphics don’t detract from the experience, which is really all I ask from a GBA game. The intuitive control scheme makes it easy to pick up and play. With short term goals the game is easy to pick up and play for a short period of time which is a must with a portable game. I did have a vague sense that this version was easier then the old one, but that could have just been me being older.

LOL

2006-02-10T10:24:00.000-06:00

"In order to express their displeasure with the idea that Muslims are violent, thousands of Muslims around the world engaged in rioting, arson, mob savagery, flag-burning, murder and mayhem, among other peaceful acts of nonviolence. "

"The belief that Islam forbids portrayals of Muhammad is recently acquired. Back when Muslims created things, rather than blowing them up, they made paintings, frescoes, miniatures and prints of Muhammad."

"But Muslims think they can issue decrees about what images can appear in newspaper cartoons. Who do they think they are, liberals? "

wow

2005-11-06T13:59:00.000-06:00

Important Story

Area 51

2005-10-18T22:00:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a fan of First Person Shooters since the beginning days of Castle Wolfenstien 3D. I’ve played many of them throughout the years, from the big budget, big hype games, to the cheap low budget ones. Area 51 is somewhere in between. A fair amount of effort went into the production. The producers used some Hollywood voice talent; David Duchovny, Powers Booth. They also developed a good graphics engine.

Area 51 is a FPS for FPS fans. It doesn’t stray far from the tried and true formula of the biggies like Halo and Doom. You travel through similar looking areas trying to find the next key or computer station that will open the next door, while gunning down hoards of enemies. You have access to all the standard weapons: shotgun, machine gun, and grenades. They do not give you a rocket launcher though.

The graphics do an excellent job. There’s good lighting effects and the characters models look realistic and move with a life like air. They did a good job on the sound as well. The guns sound solid and convincing and the chatter of teammates seems realistic. The voice acting is in general quite good. Your teammates sound natural. The one big falloff is with David Duchuvney’s performance. He mailed this one in. I actually felt embarrassed for him during the cut scenes.

The gameplay is divided into two distinct types. Early on you are traveling with a squad on a rescue mission. This leads to some very exciting and frenetic fire fights early in the game. Hoards of enemies will be assaulting out of the dark. Your buddies are shooting, bullets are flying everywhere with glass breaking and commands being issued that you can’t hear over the din of combat. These were some of the best combat sequences I ever experienced in a FPS. The second stage begins when you are separated from the rest of your men and end up on your own. You at this point become infected with a virus that allows you to mutate. During this mutated state you move much faster, have a great melee attack and can shoot out enemy seeking attacks. You can only be in this mode for a short time. This adds a somewhat interesting element to close in combat. But overall the last half of the game loses some of the excitement that the first half built up. The game become more of a straight hallway crawl.

It only took me about five hours of game play to finish this one. Usually I would consider that a bad thing, but in this case it was the correct decision by the game designers. If the game was any longer it would have simply become boring. It’s the precise length to survive its derivative, if at times exciting gameplay.

7.5/10

Castlevania: Lament of Lameness

2005-08-26T17:47:00.000-05:00

Any videogamer of the 80’s fondly remembers the castlevania games. Running after Dracula, breaking everything in sight for little hearts, and trying to decide which special weapon to use. I defaulted to the dagger a lot. Castlevania Lament of innocence is the first 3D entry in the series on the PS2. Does it live up to the pedigree?

This game takes some cues from the wonderful Devil May Cry but doesn’t go far enough. It feels as if production was cut short. In fact the game itself is only about six hours long, which actually ends up being a benefit. Any longer and I would have just quit playing it. All the design seems sub par. The levels consist of a few geometrically shaped rooms stuck together. They only bothered to put different textures on the wall s to make the rooms levels different. The enemies are uninspired and there are really only a few types of them. They tend to attack the same way and you only need a couple of moves to defeat them. The game tends to go this way: you walk into a square or circle room, enemies pop-up, you kill them, and a door unlocks, repeat. It quickly grows tiring. The game possesses a few good points. The music adds a good ambiance. The graphics are excellent, up to par with DMC.

Overall, it didn’t seem like they spent very much effort or time on this game and so I won’t spend much on this review. I rarely enjoyed this game and was glad it was so short. They are working on another one for both PS2 and XBOX due out late 2005, hopefully they will do better next time.

5.5/10

GTA: San Andrea review

2005-07-26T21:38:00.000-05:00

GTA: San Andreas

This is the third installment in Rockstars successful, revolutionary, and controversial series of games. Rockstar blew the doors off the gaming industry when it released Grand Theft Auto III. They coupled a free roaming game world with an intriguing storyline. The follow-up, GTA: Vice City, expanded on the formula with more vehicles and mission types. For the latest, Rockstar went back and built an entirely new game engine and expanded the game 3 times. How successful have they been?

The graphics are nothing to get excited over. They don’t represent much of an improvement over the older games. They did manage to remove all the load times when you are outside in the world. The colors look washed out most of the time and there is an amazing amount of pop-up during play. A nice speed blur affect has been added. Overall, the graphics left me wanting more, and with the next generation consoles coming out I assume they will have to redo the engine yet again.

Once again Rockstar pulled out all the stops for the story and voice acting. Several Hollywood actors lend their voice to the game. I particularly enjoyed James Woods character. The story starts out slow with you back in the hood as a gang banger. Luckily, the game picks up shortly there after and the GTA humor and crazy characters show up.

The gameplay starts out slow just like the story. The initial mission where disappointing and I almost stopped playing the game early on. The life of a gang banger just isn’t that interesting. Once out of the hood though things really pick up. The controls are pretty tight and the targeting system seems to work better than in previous games. Only a few times did I die because the game targeted a non threat instead of the person shooting me. All the vehicles handle well for their type and the number keeps thing interesting. I liked the addition of planes. They also added a countryside area. I admit I found these areas somewhat boring. It usually involved a lot of driving. I remember one particular mission where I lost the vehicle I was driving and some sort of bug in the mission didn’t allow any other cars to show up. I ended up having to run all the way back to the home base to reset things. I could actually do without the countryside in the next game.

Even with the few problems mentioned this is the best of the GTA games. Each has been better than the last. 9/10

Ok Ok! Yes, I have admitted to playing this horrible, evil game that Hillary hates so much. I enjoyed the game a great deal. It’s extremely well produced and developed with excellent mission. The violence isn’t really any worse than most action games and there is almost no sexual content in the game. The one problem I did have was the amount of swearing. The other games didn’t have this much, but it was consistent with the gang banger theme. The uproar has been caused by something that is very difficult to unlock on the game and that no normal person playing can get to. You have to hack the game to get to it.

Why I Hate Slashdot

2005-06-06T22:47:00.000-05:00

I’ve been a big Slashdot reader and poster for over five years now, but I have pretty much reached the end of my patience with the whole thing. The heart of Slashdot is the commenting system. That’s where the most interesting stuff happens. You can get many related links there and experience many interesting discussions. Or well I used to be able to.

The very moderator point system installed to save Slashdot is killing it. I have opened three different accounts over the last three years and everyone of them has terrible “karma” now. That means nobody sees my posts now. Why did this happen? I posted things people didn’t like. I would write intelligent well thought out posts and they would be moded down simply because they conflicted with what others believed. The moderator system has been reduced to simply a squabble in which competing ideologies simply attempt to shut the others up. Conservative mod down liberals, atheists mod down Christians. All without regard to the actual content of the posts.

A new system needs to be devised if Slashdot is to become interesting again. Perhaps every account should be given moderator ability all the time. When a certain number of mod points are given to a comment then action is taken. Such as 20 or 40 troll votes until it is actually marked as troll. Opposing mod points should be taken into consideration. And “karma” should only be changed after multiple comments with negative mod points.

WOW- World of Warcraft

2005-06-05T20:09:00.000-05:00

I admit at the very beginning of this review that I have never been a fan of the mmorpg format. Until World of Warcraft my experience has been limited. My general thought has been that it’s stupid to pay to play a game you already paid to play. I spent five minutes once playing Everquest and found it very boring. I finally found an interest again recently. I thought about trying Final Fantasy 11 but I heard such good things about WoW I decided to go that route.

The graphics are excellent. The character models are detailed and expressive. The many different environments are designed well and feel unique and provide the appropriate air. The undead area has a dark and foreboding feel. The draw distance seemed good and there was almost no lag or frame rate drop except a few slight problems in the major cities.

The most important part of an rpg is the story. Well mmorpgs don’t really have a story or characters of any depth to interact with. There is no compelling narrative that pushes things forward. No drive to continue except to gain yet another level that will allow you to gain another.

The game provides a good amount of races and character classes. You have several options to develop as you level. Not only can you choice specific skills based on class and race, but you can also gain skill in various professions. As with all mmorpgs I have seen the combat is boring boring boring. You click on an enemy and wait maybe he dies, if you are unlucky you die. No skill involved at all. Early on, you have to walk everywhere, which takes forever and adds to the overriding sense of boredom. You click somewhere, something happens. I don’t see why they can’t make a mmorpg that would require skill to play.

Even given how pointless I found most of the action in the game I still did enjoy it somewhat. 6.5/10

More Stupidity

2005-04-24T20:21:00.000-05:00

OK, so a bunch of TV executives who make their living determining what will be popular are sitting around their table. What do they decide would be a good use of their time and money. Locusts! Yes they actually greenlighted a movie called locusts. Almost as big a mistake as The Core.

Now back to stupid advertisers, what is with advertising perscription medicine on TV. I am not a doctor, therefore I cannot write a perscription for myself. I doubt if the majority of people watching are doctors. So some large percentage of the viewers watching this advertisement are incapable of acting on it. Utter waste of money.

One more. I saw a house for sale in town here. This is a fairly small town. They wanted $35000 for it. Let me repeat $35000!!!! In this town. That's crazy. How much money does someone have to make a year to be able to afford a $35000 house, let's get it straight, mansion. I see entire subdivisions in the burbs where all the houses are that much. There can't be that many people who can afford those monstrosities.

This is sooo funny

2005-04-20T19:45:00.000-05:00

http://waxy.org/random/images/weblog/mortor.gif

Advertisers, BAH!!

2005-04-09T11:02:00.000-05:00

I used to think advertisers were idiots because of all their stupid ineffective campaigns, but then it ocurred to me. They are brilliant. Most of them seem utterly incapable of creating a campaign that would make any thinking person want to buy the products. Their brilliance shows itself because they get people to pay them millions of dollars for the crap they put out. Kudos to the man or woman who get's a corporation to pay millions of dollars to stamp their name on a stadium. I mean how many people are actually going to buy a product because of a stadium name, four? That's like six million dollars per costumer. Conartists live and breath and are legal. They get the gullible yuppie to actually buy a fifty thousand dollar SUV to drive around the burbs by making them think a mountain might pop-up in downtown Napervill. Brilliant!

X-Men not-so-Legend

2005-03-27T19:46:00.000-06:00

This is ajust a short review since I played this game acouple of months ago and just never got around to doing one.

X-Men Legends was well hyped and recieved good reviews. Four X-Men characters Hack and Slash there way through waves of enemys. Each has there own specific powers, some of which need to be used to advance in the game. You can switch between who you control on the fly, and other players can join you to play. The multiplayer aspect adds some group fun to this game that it desperatly needs.

To cut to the chase, I just didn't find this game fun. The enemy character design leaves a lot to be desired. You will fight wave after wave of enemies who are exactly the same and have the same power. They aren't very quick on the uptake and will often wander into a place they can't reach you. What annoyed me the most were the bugs in the game. More then once an enemy would get stuck in a wall or some other place. They could atttack me but I couldn't hit them. Also there a specific places that require a specific mutants power. If you don't have that mutant in your group or they have died, too bad. you have to find a spot to bring them into your party often requiring loading in an old game and doing the level over.

6/10

WORST MOVIE EVER!!!!

2005-03-23T20:08:00.000-06:00

Trust me on this one NEVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER EVER IN ANY WAY AT ANY TIME watch a minute of this movie. Your head will explode by the massive amount of suck. Nepoleon Dynamite is now the #1 bad movie I have seen. I started to experience physical pain after the first ten minutes. I managed twenty before I turned it off. I didn't realize something could be so bad it actually would become evil. For the good of mankind I charge all good people everywhere to find every copy of this movie and destroy. It's so bad it's dangerous and could destroy the very fabric of civilization. I give it a zero, I award it no points, my God have mercy on its soul.

Excerpts from a conversation

2005-03-20T16:14:00.000-06:00

This guy had one of the classic liberal bumper stickers. "Why is there always money for war but not for education?" So I stopped on my walk adn interrupted his carwashing. "I got an answer to that question," I told him while pointing at the bumper sticker. "There's money for war and not for education because, the responsibility for making war falls primarily upon the federal government, whereas education is primarily the responsibilty of the parents and family." With the look I got you'd have thought I had just told him that I had killed his mother and was carrying her head around in my backpack.

Let's just say the rest of the conversation was less then helpful, and my belief that liberals just don't think much was reaffirmed.

Tale of Symphonia

2005-03-10T14:28:00.000-06:00

I usually get my name reviews by altering the title of the game. I considered Tales of Longphonia for this one but that was just too silly.

As you might guess this game is long. It took me 67 hours to complete. In this case the length wasn’t a bad thing. This game couples a very traditional Japanese rpg story and layout with a real time combat system.

The derivative story unfolds in the standard way, through cutscenes. Shockingly, you start off on a quest to protect the chosen one that must save the world. The voice actors carry there parts well enough. I wasn’t awed by the cut scenes, but they did their job effectively.

The game employs its cell shaded graphics look excellently. The character designs are clean and there are little to no jaggys. Bright colors are used throughout that hides the games serious nature.

Non-combat gameplay is handled exactly as in many other Japanese RPGs. You walk, ride, or fly around a world map engaging or avoiding various monster encounters and wandering into your destination. In the dungeons not only will you encounter monsters and the boss monsters, but also a series of puzzles. Solving these puzzles requires the use of a special magical ring. The ring’s uses are changed at stations throughout the dungeon and it’s proper use is imperative. Most of the puzzles are not particularly difficult, though a few of the later ones required some deeper thought.

The combat system shines as the highlight of the game. In one sense it can be picked up and played without particular practice, but the system also possesses a lot of depth. When an enemy is encountered you are taken to a combat screen. You enter combat with the four characters that you have chosen before hand. It is important to choose a good mix of the right characters to have offense, healing, and magic in your party. You choose which character you want to control before combat begins. During combat you move about in real time on a 3D landscape using physical attack combos, special attacks, and blocking enemy attacks. Spells take an amount of time to cast in proportion to their power, so it is necessary to protect your spell casters because if they are hit in the middle of casting the spell is cancel. This can be very useful against the enemy, attacking their spell casters before they can complete it.

I found the game quite engrossing and fun. I didn’t even mind spending so much time on it sense the battles where always such fun.
8.5/10

SOOOOOOO Tired!!!!!!!!!

2005-02-28T16:18:00.000-06:00

NEED SLEEP NOW!!! Cat pounce on head at 5:20 am. I wouldbe angry if he wasn't so cute doing it.

A Further thought about what I have been reading

2005-02-27T17:24:00.000-06:00

Another short but important point came to mind in my recent readings. A small but fundamental difference in the way Crossan and Spong handle things. Crossan attempts to turn Jesus into the man he wants. He trys to make the Jesus of history into a modern socialist revolutionary. Spong on the other hand, doesn't really care who Jesus actually was historically. For Spong we can change Jesus into who we want him to be today.

Why do I read these things?

2005-02-22T10:51:00.000-06:00

Over the last month, I have been reading two very liberal theological books: Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography by Dominic Crossan and Why Christianity Must Change or Die by John Spong. Reading liberal authors is nothing new for me. I’ve always had eclectic reading habits. I think much can be learned through reading such works, though at times it can be difficult. Between saying “What the…” and laughing out loud it’s sometimes hard to keep focus on the pages.

I returned Jesus: A Revolutionary Biography to the library before I finished. I have several specific points of contention with the book, so it seemed more advantageous to buy the book and do an in depth critique. I remember having some good stuff but it’s been a couple of weeks and so it’s all leaked out.

One point I do remember, this book isn’t scholarship. It is propaganda, sometimes good propaganda often bad propaganda. If you search long and hard for scholarship in the book, you might find some, somewhere. It will be hidden under an ipse dixit and some irrelevant scholarly sounding information. Crossan’s writing follows this familiar pattern: A claim is made, no support is offered for that claim, something is said to remind you Crossan is a scholar, rinse and repeat. I guess we are meant to just accept everything he says.

Spongs book is radically different and obviously the work of someone with a very different personality. It’s much more personal and doesn’t attempt the air of scholarhip that Crossan’s did. I am not going to go into much detail with Spong. In essence, he denies every single thing about Christianity, including the existence of God. Even after acknowledging he believes all of Christianity to be a lie, he continues in the hypocritical process of being a Bishop.

What a really want to point out about this book is that despite his use of plural pronouns, it is essentially an autobiography. The reader receives an insight into the workings of his mind. It is his personal journey of (un)faith. You learn why Spong doesn’t believe, but most people would be hard pressed to find his reasons compelling. His statements are often incoherent. I think they are this way because of the deeply personal nature of the book. I provide one short example. He claims that the fact that Alpha Centauri is 5.4 light years away disproves the existence of God. I think that’s what he is claiming.

Say Hello to the New Boss, Same as the Old Boss

2005-02-18T19:25:00.000-06:00

I first became aware of the post-modern Christian movement slightly over a year ago. A long-term friend of mine wrote a letter telling me about how he had been liberated by “post modern” Christianity. My initial reaction was ‘huh’. How could post-modernism be compatible with Christianity. After some study, I can tell you, it can’t be, but that’s not what this blog entry is about.

To cut to the chase, the theology of the post-modern movement is atrocious. Most interestingly to me, post-modern Christianity comes out of the seeker sensitive movement. Essentially, post-modern Christians acknowledge the theology that the seeker sensitive movement has functionally believed for the last twenty years. The seeker sensitive movement paid lip to the foundational doctrines but in actual practice ignored them. The post-modern movement comes along and says why are we saying that we aren’t changing the message just the means. We are changing the message and should not be ashamed.

Brian McLaren is one of the major proponents of post-modern Christianity. His books are the one being most referenced and spread around. When someone sent me a link to sermons from his church, my ears picked up. How you act and what you preach often shows more about true belief than doctrinal statements. So I listened to several of his sermons. I initially felt a great deal of surprise, but after thinking about it some more I don’t know why. I guess, I expected more in your face bad theology, but his sermons are essentially indistinguishable from what I heard for years in my Seeker Sensitive church; vapid contentless sermons consisting of personal anecdotes and stories describing an essentially pietistic life. Obviously, the bad theology undergirded these sermons. One part sticks out in my mind. He presented this idea of all people, essentially we are all just on a path and Christians are just further on up the path than others; no concept whatsoever of original sin, the necessary work of the Holy Spirit in regeneration. The difference between a believer and unbeliever was simply one of slightly different life choices not the glorious power of getting spiritual life from spiritually dead.

The post-modern Christian movement is what they deny so much, just the next step in the seeker sensitive concept.

Why I No Longer do online Roman Catholic apologetics

2005-02-13T21:08:00.000-06:00

Wandering around the net the other day I came across a blog post that reminded me of why I no longer engage in online apologetics with Roman Catholics.
I got into Roman Catholic apologetics out of necessity. Christian’s on the net for a long time may remember the big lay RC apologist invasion of 97/98. Over that time period every message board and e-mail list I was on received a visit from one if not more lay RC apologists. They came armed with copies of This Rock magazine and a quiver full of stock arguments that they found compelling. Many of the list members had never been faced with a Roman Catholicism that seemed to have answers.
The caused me to start looking into Roman Catholicism. I began by reading and studying RC sources, not primarily apologetics sources, but official documents. It wasn’t until after I had determined that the RC claim to be the one true church was false that I started looking into protestant apologetics against the RC.
As I moved into the arena, I was often faced with new arguments and new challenges that required response. This required continued research and growth in knowledge, which I found stimulating. The constant study furthered my knowledge of and walk with God. I met many new people and it was an exciting time.
After two years things began to change for me. This is where the blog entry comes in. Every argument that the RC apologists came up with had been answered, so I expected to be faced with new challenges that would require even further study. But that’s not what I encountered. The exact same arguments that I had been hearing for the last two years just kept being repeated. What was most disturbing to me, the often the same person I had already discussed the argument with repeated it. This blog entry I saw, contained several shallow arguments against Sola Scriptura that the individual had seen defeated multiple times.
Repeating the same thing over and over got tiring fairly quickly. If the answers are already out there readily available, why am I regurgitating them, I came to the realization that this latest round of RC apologetics had been defeated. They had brought there best and they had lost. The whole experience no longer stretched my mind or my spirit. I can still provide the answers when necessary.
The experience stretched me and I learned a great deal about a great many topics for which I will always be thankful. I moved on to another challenging area, atheist apologetics. I could tell you some stories about that.

Doug Wilson nails post modernism again

2005-02-10T09:24:00.000-06:00

"I am continuing to slog my way through McLaren and Raschke, left hand raised high so I won't get any on my watch. And I have come to the settled conclusion that postmodernism is dead. Why do I think this? What is the evidence? The proof is conclusive -- we can tell that postmodernism is dead because contemporary evangelicals have started to embrace it. The party ceases to be cool when the nerd shows up."

Jobu Learns to Talk

2005-02-07T19:47:00.000-06:00

In nature cats don't meow. The only do so under extreme danger, then they yowl. Cats learn to vocalize from listening to people. They learn that we have respond to meows and other vocal signals. So after a little bit they pick up on this and start meowing to get what they want. Well after a month Jobu has become vocal. It started slowly with a tiny mewo no and then when he was hungy. Now HE WON"T SHUTUP. Luckily he doesn't meow very loudly. He has a few sounds that mean stuff. When he is hungry, he looks at me with these really sad eyes and makes this pitifully small meow. Oh listen to me I am so hungry I can barely meow. I'll never make it. Please feed me before it's too late. :) When he is happy and playing he either goes Brtrrtrrtrt, a meow and purr at the same time, or he does a serious of tiny mew mew mew mew mew mew. Then the majority of the time he just looks at me and makes noises. Mew mew drt. mew drdt. BUt he doesn't need anything. Crazy Cat.

Doug Wilson speaks on Evangelicalism

2005-02-07T08:57:00.000-06:00

"One of the most frustrating aspects of reading modern evangelical writers, especially those who are attempting some sort of relevant edgy thing, is the inability of such writers to see themselves in a broad historical context. They have no x on a map of church history that says, "You are here." Nothing is more irrelevant than such relevance, nothing duller than evangelical edginess, and nothing more predictable than an evangelical writer trying to get us all to long for "something more." Nothing is more historically opaque than this apparent evangelical transparency. The "something more" comes in many different packages, but in the evangelical world it always comes. The modern evangelical schtick is to be dissatisfied with traditional forms, and the traditional form of modern evangelicalism is to figure out how to walk away from the last traditional form, even if the last traditional form was created by evangelicals walking away from the form before that. All postmodernism has done for historically-orphaned evangelicals is make us change the timing of the cycles. Winds of doctrine change direction more quickly than they used to. Our turnaround times are quicker now. The fads that speed through the evangelical world now are like that "on-demand" low inventory system that WalMart has. What used to take forty years to spend itself now takes around five. And nobody appears to know that in pursuing the "new thing" they are doing nothing more or less than perpetuating the "old thing." And this particular tradition of ours is genuinely destructive.

A new kind of Christian. What kind of tradition is necessary to make it possible for such a phrase to even begin to be attractive? And why is it that that modern evangelicals cannot see that walking away from tradition is their tradition? If this were a postmillenial longing for the maturing of the new man, a longing for maturity itself, then the story would be different. But it isn't, and evangelicalism continues to wander, clueless. Someone is going to write a history of modern evangelicalism someday. They should call it Gullible's Travels."

This critique is pretty on, though I some times think it's just too easy to take shots at modern evangelicalism. Despite is many many many many flaws God has used evangelicalism in the US to do much good. Like so many other parts Christian movement it's in need of a reformation.

I said this today and just had to record it for the future.

2005-02-04T15:02:00.000-06:00

I sit on the free couch my parents gave me and play video games while dreaming of plunging the world into the glorious fire of anarchy.

Ouchy

2005-01-26T21:36:00.000-06:00

Last friday I drove out early in the morning because I had a dentist appointment at 7:30 in the morning. It had snowed a little bit the night before, not even an inch. Around here they hardly ever plow the back streets, odd given that this town is in north central Illinois. Anyway I the road turned the car didn't. I hit the curb going slowly but it was enough to bend the front wheel. I drove on it several days and it caused a shimy. I decided the best thing would be to rotate the tire to the back and switch it.
So I started to do it in the apartments underground garage. First I loosened the lugnuts on both wheels. The nuts were really tight. I couldn't turn them with the tire iron so I started pounding in the tire iron with the jack. Well my hand slipped off and I rapped my knuckle on jack. It hurt. I put my knuckle in my mouth to see if I was bleeding (to taste the blood) there wasn't any blood. So I started jacking up the front of the car. The front of the car was in the shadows so it was hard to see what I was doing. I looked at my knukle a little bit later and it was bleeding a little. But, hey, I never work on car without cutting my hands. So I continue working away at the jack. It's really hard to use one of the cheap jacks to lift the front of a car, so I am struggling away at the jack. My hands start slipping on the tire iron. Something seems to be coating it. I pick it up and its covered in red liquid. Oh, wait that's blood. I look down at my hand and there is blodd all over it and its flowing from my knuckle. I grabed some kleenexes from my car and wipe the blood off. Now my apartment is way up there. So I just finish doing the work.
My knuckle is feeling a lot better but it's still hard to type with.

My Glorious Mac Mini

2005-01-23T21:50:00.000-06:00

I am typing this on my new mac mini. They shipped it our pretty quick. It's a wondeful little package and so far it has run flawlessly. I highly recommned it to someone looking for a small footprint computer or someone who just wants to look into macs. It has a slow processor for these days and a pretty primative graphics card, but frankly I haven't noticed any slowdown or such. In fact, it is the fastest mac I have ever own. My last one was a G4 867 mhz powerbook.

Kitty update

2005-01-23T16:32:00.000-06:00

Well he has a name, Jobu, He seems to like it well enough. The getting familiar process has gone very well. He was at ease in the apartment after only 3 days. Full of love, he purrs all the time and loves to be petted and sleep on me. At first, he played a lot but he seems to have calmed down over the last few days. I think he was just enjoying his new found freedom. When he really sleeps deep he climbs under the sofa in the bedroom. We are getting along wonderfully. Though I did dump a sprite on his head by accident yesterday. Wow, a cat can jump five feet straight up in the air when attacked by the evil sprite monster.

New Kitty

2005-01-16T18:14:00.000-06:00

I got a kitty kat this weekend. Boy does he love me. He is also crazy. I will put up a picture and write more later, now I have to play with the cat. He is black, name recommendaiont appreciated.

Yours, Mine, and the Truth

2005-01-09T15:37:00.000-06:00

A lot of stuff has been flying around about post-modernism and modernism in the blogsphere, so I have decided to fling myself into the fracas. The great error of modernism was removing God as the central actor in the concept of knowledge and certainty and replaced Him with man. Modernism says, if you apply your human reason using the proper tools you will always arrive at certain knowledge. Post-modernism, rightly I add, looks at this and says it's absurd. Man is not an objective observer but is full of cultural and self-serving bias, even the tools of research used are filled with these biases(A Christian world view calls this the sin nature). The mistake post-modernism makes is leaving Man as the central actor in the process of knowledge. Given the flaws inherent in man, knowledge and certainty become an impossibility. Obviously, at least to me, a Christian must reject both these concepts. We must put God and his ability to reveal himself as the centrality of knowledge and certainty.

I look at post-modernism and think, how can Christians embrace this and I can’t see Christianity surviving embracing post-modernism. Then I look at modernism and think, how can a Christian embrace this and I can’t see how Christianity survived embracing it but it did. God will reveal himself to His people.

Nice saying

2005-01-01T17:23:00.000-06:00

"I don't believe it is epistemic arrogance to listen when God speaks." - Douglas Wilson

What happened to wrong?

2004-12-31T21:22:00.000-06:00

Recently I was given more reason why I hate Western society. It came from an unexpected source, a nightly sportscast. An Athletic Director was commenting on some illegal recruiting practices that had taken place. What got my blood boiling? He said there had been irresponisibilies and failures. NO you stuffed shirt piece of.. hmm uh. ok. breath. The things done where wrong immoral. The people invovled are guilty. They need to be (gasp) punished for having done dishonest and immoral things. The wrath of God that is gonna rain down on this society will be something to behold, gonna make tsunamis look like childs play.

For anyone interested I am working on a bigger blog entry about the so-called post-modern Christianity. Or more precisely epistomoly and Christianity.

Internet:: the bane of communication

2004-12-18T17:00:00.000-06:00

The web may be the most detrimental advance in human communication. Yes, I know that's a blatant exaggeration. The current schema of rhetoric predominating on the internet lends itself to a breakdown in communication. Let me elaborate.
Anyone who spends time reading various discussions, specifically Christian ones, will notice a common air, in my opinion not a particularly Godly one. Writers seem to think that expressing oneself with great contempt for your opponent is perfectly acceptable for a Christian. Any argument that disagrees is termed a “rant”, or “tirade”. Opponents are obvious idiots who do not have opinions but “opine”. It would be necessary to read some of these writings in their entirety to truly get the overall effect. Trust me though; it wouldn’t take long to find such on the internet. The impression often received is not that the writer is interesting in discussion but only in attacking.
Even though I don’t like it, I understand such rhetoric coming from the non-Christians on Slashdot and the atheists I have seen, but to see it from one Christian to a next should be a disgrace. How is showering someone with vitriol and spite showing the love of Christ. When did it become acceptable to make your opponent think you hate them? They will know us by our love for one another. Any non-believer coming upon these discussions would have every negative preconception of Christians affirmed. For the love of God(literally) try to show the fruit of the Spirit.
If that shouldn’t cause a reduction in this sort of writing maybe the following will. This rhetoric is not effective. No-one is going to be won over by people they think hate them.

Some good stuff about Seeker Sensitive

2004-12-08T14:07:00.000-06:00

This is some great stuff about the whole seeker sinsitivity thing that in it's latest incarnation is the horrid po-mo emergent church.

Micheal Spencer:
"When I started hearing about "seeker sensitive methods," I already had my purple hearts from all those years of pizzas, special events, cool t-shirts, small groups, and extreme games. When people started rattling on about changing the church, I really wanted to say something witty like, "Been there, done that," because I had.

So dear reader, I have come to a conclusion, and it ain't pretty.

My generation--that baby boom bunch that we've heard so much about--has a compulsion to change the church to be what they want it to be. Why? Oh....don't you know?

Our generation has been told for the whole trip that we are special. We deserve more. We need more. We are wounded. We are alienated from authority. We are the victims of Vietnam, and divorce, and educational breakdown. Decades of advertising have convinced us that we need our own Oldsmobile, cause we can't drive daddy's. We're smarter. Thinner. Better. We've got the short attention span. Television and movies are our medium. We need stories. We're casual. We need to be met "where we are." We need to be in "real relationships." We aren't satisfied with "church the way it used to be."

Yeah right. What a crock. This is the most flattered, catered to, lied to and indulged generation in history. I loathe my generation, not because we don't have some good people. We do, but we also have generational selfishness honed into a kind of idolatry that is truly awesome to behold. We are big, fat, demographic bullies, who won't play with anyone else unless we get everything "our way."

My generation is, without a doubt, the generation most likely to repackage God, the Bible, Jesus, the church and the Gospel to suit themselves. My generation must be catered to and told they are special or they won't show up. My generation must shred what came before them as an act of self-affirmation. My generation must have their own slogans, names and bribes or they won't come. My generation must be told they are key to everything. My generation doesn't want to share the faith with other ages and cultures, because we are just so darned cool.

I am tired--bone tired--of being told my church isn't real, relevant or communicating until we do it like the baby boomer gurus say it must be done. (Insert here an obscene gesture of your choice issued towards the megachurch in general, but make it a good one.) I am tired of hearing that any deviation from the baby boomer preferences means no love, no evangelism, no outreach, no community. I am beyond tired of being told that the baby boomer version of worship and church is the (insert Foghorn Leghorn voice) "real, final, long-awaited wahd from God ahmighty on how things ought to be done 'round heyah.""

Ace Combat V

2004-11-23T19:40:00.000-06:00

Many gamers will remember the surprisingly successful Ace Combat IV from a few years ago. It was an unexpected revelation. Boasting good graphics, inventive missions, and an accessible arcade game play won over the hearts of many gamers. Now comes Ace Combat V. The long awaited sequel. Which leads me to ask why sequels to successful games are always long awaited? Anyway, or anyways, as a friend of mine says, Capcom has teased us with many screen shots of beautifully rendered jets soaring through the sky. Some of them actually could be mistaken for photographs by an untrained eye. So how fares Ace Combat V?
I’ll start off first with the graphics since they are what the advertisements seemed to be pushing. To be blunt, the graphics are irrelevant in this game. You are generally far from any target and if you do get close enough for a good look, they fly by in a second. The replay function adds a lot to the value of the graphics. You can watch the battle from several different directions and get some good looks at the well rendered planes.
The sound is remarkable mainly for the radio chatter that goes on during the missions. It is excellent. I would sometimes sit back and just listen to the mostly irrelevant dialogue. The voice acting is top notch. If you are an anime fan you will notice the ubiquitous voice of Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop.
Speaking of cut scenes, the rather interesting story is told through a series of them. The graphics shine during these scenes couple that with the voice acting and they are some of the best I have ever seen in a game. At one point I thought a guy was actually a photograph. The story does have some fairly easy to guess twists but it really adds to the experience to watch it unfold.
The game play and missions are almost identical to Ace Combat IV. Which I can’t really call a negative since the last one was so good, but I did feel a little cheated playing almost the exact same missions from the previous game. One main example, in the previous game there was a special weapon that required you to drop below a certain altitude, this time there is a special weapon that requires you to stay above a certain altitude. I had so much fun with the missions that in the end it just didn’t really bother me much. One note the campaign is fairly short and can be beaten in about seven hours of play. It does come with an arcade mode where you have to kill a certain number of targets in a given time.
8/10 recommended

Truth, Knowledge, and Words

2004-11-15T19:24:00.000-06:00

Just another random entry filled with some of my idle rambling about epistemology. In a way, words are the sigil of a thought, or perhaps the sacrament. The thought exists before, and is in fact deeper then the words we use to describe it. Thus my analogy of the words as a sacrament; they are the sign and seal, carry the weight and power of the thought, but are not the thought. It seems to me, truth can be most precisely communicated through words but not most ably such.

Quick update

2004-11-14T22:35:00.000-06:00

I haven't posted anything so I thought I would throw up some quick update. um.. uh.... well...

The bears won today :)

The won in overtime with a safety. The play before the safety they almost sacked the quarterback. I realized a safety would end the game right then. Overtime in the nfl is sudden death so the first team to score wins. I had never heard of, or even thought about an overtime game ending by a safety. Wouldn't that be cool? On the very next play the bears got the safety and the game was over.

Doctors visit update

2004-11-02T21:19:00.000-06:00

I went to the doctors again about the ongoing abdominal pain I have been having for the last 5 months. This time I saw a different doctor. I really like him. He seems to be interested in finding a solution as quickly as possible. He outlined several different things we will be looking for and had some tests done. I won't know the results until next week. He gave me some new medication to try in the meantime. And he plans on referring me to one of the best GI guys in the state. I will keep you all posted.

Review of Metroid Prime

2004-10-17T15:02:00.000-05:00

If you haven’t heard of Metroid Prime then you aren’t a gamer and won’t be reading this review anyway. Metroid Prime is the first gamecube entry for the long standing Nintendo platformer series. I would describe it as a First Person Action\Platformer. This game shows that a first person perspective can work with a platformer.
The story, well I really didn’t care about the story. It’s not why I played the game. The graphics are excellent, with good design and a high frame rate. The effects for the weapons and when you use different viewing modes are also excellent. You can use an inferred or X-ray visor at times to see enemies and find secrets. Well down audio finishes off the presentation and compliments the visuals well.
The gameplay is a good adaptation of the traditional metroid was. You wander around exploring new areas, looking for secrets, and acquiring new abilities. You then can backtrack and open up new areas with your new powers. All this makes for an interesting play experience, and though you might think so, the backtracking doesn’t get boring. Now for the one area where in my opinion the game falls flat. I found the control scheme clunky throughout the fourteen hours it took me to finish the game. I never got use to it. Using the left trigger to lock onto an enemy and having to use the right trigger to look around using the left analog stick. In normal movement the control stick just moves you and turns you keeping the view straight ahead. This really cuts back on the enjoyment of the 3-D environment. This game would have received a much higher rating if they had used a standard FPS movement scheme using both analog sticks. This awkward control scheme serves no purpose.
The game was enjoyable if too short and fairly easy. But once you complete it the first time a hard mode is unlocked. 8/10

Review of Arc the Lad: Twilight of the Spirits

2004-10-16T16:48:00.000-05:00

Twilight of the Spirits is the first ps2 entry in the Arc the Lad series of RPGs from the ps1. I haven’t played any of the other ones so I have no way to tell if this one is connected to them in any way.
Story and characters are some of the two most important aspects, to me, of any RPG. To me an RPG is should be compelling like a good book, but one that I am involved in. I found the story somewhat compelling. You actually play as two different characters on two different sides of a racially motivated conflict. Some of the plot twists are very evident early on, but it has enough to keep you going. The characters develop little throughout the game and pretty much act as always would be expected.
The battle system is another important aspect of any RPG. ToS has what comes off as a simply tactical RPG battles system. You move your units in a turned base fashion around a map that pops up when you enter combat. You do more damage if you attack from behind and the sides and can sometimes do simple combo attacks. There are some elemental damage combination for magic and effects you can add to your weapons. These end up being almost totally unnecessary. Also, there are some other bits that are added for increased battle strategy, such as calling in an air strike from your air ship. In fact most strategy is in unnecessary. This game’s combat is just uber easy. There are no random battles and leveling is basically not needed. I could crush almost all the opponents without any hassle.
The presentation left much to be desired. The graphics are nothing special and the character animations are just bad. They only have one or two animations that get repeated over and over during combat. Worst of all the cut scenes are done with the in game engine and the same bad character animations that usually don’t match their emotions. Sound also presets a problem. There isn’t much of it, frankly. One or two combat sounds for each character, and the little bit of voice over that is in the game is terrible. Mostly you just read along during the badly done cut scenes.
The only thing that kept me going to the end for this game was the story line and the fact that it was so easy that I never got frustrated. It took me forty-five hours by the in game clock to finish. I don’t really feel bad that I spend so much time on it but I could easily see that it isn’t for everyone. 6.8/10

Yeah I know I said I was using 5 stars but I changed my mind. This scale allows me more leverage.

Tried to whine but couldn't find the time.

2004-10-09T19:07:00.000-05:00

I went to one of my favorite spots tonight to whine.. er pray. I had something I wanted to complain about.. er bring to the throne. My favorite place is this park with a large pond and a trail about it. It was magnificent. I am not going to try and describe it. Just take the most beautiful thing you have ever seen, your newborn childs face, moonlight on your lovers face, and translate that to ripples on water, leaves changing colors, insects full of live, and flowers blooming. I couldn't pray for any of my needs. Awe silenced me and wonder made me mute. I could only amble aournd in simple joy of God's greatness.

This is Literature?

2004-09-26T14:00:00.000-05:00

Here is the description of an authors first acclaimed literary novel:

Suder takes it name from its protagonist, Craig Suder, a black third baseman for the Seattle Mariners. A failure on his tean, in bed with his wife, and in his relationship with his you son, he walks away from his problems when his manager encourages him to go on leave. (Up to this point things sound good. This is a promising set up for a compelling internal struggle.) The manager, who is also a demented taxidermist, lends Sudar a cabin in Portland, Oregon, and sends him there to get some rest. On his way to the cabin, Sudar develops an obsessive-compulsive preoccupation with "Ornithology." a CHarlie Parker jazz standard. He plays it on a record player that he takes with him wherver he goes, and decides that he will learn to fly under his own power. Suder's series of misadentures includes his being pursued by a Narragansett Indian Cocain dealer, an obese gay Chinese man, and his manager, who desperately wants to stuff an elephant Sudar has befriended.

uhhhh..... huh .......... I ..... ohhhhhhh.... brain hurt

My Game Ranking System

2004-09-07T19:29:00.000-05:00

I was going to post one of my video game reviews but I thought I should first tell you all about my ranking system. I use a five point ranking system

5/5 This game is a must have. If you have never played a game in your life you must go out morgage your house, do whatever you have to, to get and play this game. These are games that shine above any others and should be enjoyed by almost any gamer.

4/5 This is a very good game. There are a few issues that don't detract much from its enjoyment. It will be a must have for anyone who is a fan of the genre. This will be a fun and enjoyable experience for most people.

3/5 This is still a enjoyable game though it has more issues of concern then a 4/5. This title is still recommeded if you are a fan of the genre. Poor control schemes, short game length, and bad camera help put a game in this category

2/5 This is a game that I did not find enjoyable much at all. These games usually have serveral game play and story problems. I would recommend avoiding a 2/5 unless you are an extreme fan of the genre

1/5 This game is horrid. Run screaming from this game at all costs. If you buy this game I will hunt you down. I recommend going to local game stores and destroy all copies.

Well that's it.

My Failure, Christ's Grace

2004-09-05T16:58:00.000-05:00

For a long time in my christian life I have labored under a misconception. Know it's not anything I was officially taught or would even claim to believe in if asked. It's clear from my thoughts and actions that I have this error as a driving proposition. What is this error? The belief that the christian life is about me trying as hard as I can not to sin. God is in heaven with a big check list and he just keeps count of all my sins and withholds love from me for all of them. So every night I go through my mind and add up all my sins for that day and feel utterly dejected. What do I do then? I pray for more strength and try to go out tomorrow and do better... and fail. This reward punishment paradigm is deeply ingrained in me. I think if I was just doing things for God with my life He would cure my IBS.
What is the central aspect of the christian life. Resting in faith in Jesus. We aren't supposed to work desperately to win God's approval. Every failure should leads us to the loving and forgiving arms of Jesus. God longs to give us grace, mercy and love. He blesses because he loves not because we have met some diminished standard of holiness. I am still struggling with how exactly to rest in faith in Jesus and find myself often going back to the old way of thinking. But tomorrow I will work really hard at it. :)

Kobe the Millionaire Rapist

2004-09-02T19:05:00.000-05:00

So the prosecution has dropped the case against Kobe in exchange for an apology. Now in this apology Kobe says he thought it was concentual but he understands that she thought it wasn't. So those of us with half a brain in our head realize that Kobe just publically admitted to raping someone. See Kobe, this is the way it works. For sex to not be rape it has to be mutually concentual. If one part thanks it isn't concentual the other party raped them. End of story. Now what justice will come to Kobe for this confession. In this life appearently none. May God bring justice upon him.

Rhetoric: A blunt tool in the quest for truth?

2004-09-01T21:22:00.000-05:00

Rhetoric is universal. We are bombarded by it from every side and by all types of people. Politicians use it to garner our support. Advertise it to get our money. Should we allow the influence of rhetoric on us to be a factor in our determination of what is true.
There is a major problem with rhetoric. It seems it can be effectively used to defend a lie ast to defend the truth. The truth or non-truth of the foundational aspect seems to have little affect on the rhetoric employed. In fact often rhetoric is used to alter the perception of the core issue itself. A case in point being the rhetoric used by abortion advocates. The talk about choice and ignore the aspect of death invovled. If I allowed myself to be influenced by their rhetoric I could miss crucial aspects of the issue. So it would seem a person would need to ignore all rhetoric and rid themselves of all emotion while investigation the core of every belief.
There is one major problem with discounting rhetoric. That is the fact that universally people are affected by rhetoric. We are not logic machines. We have emotions and passions and they are just as much a part of us as our reasoning powers. Why should dispassionate reason be placed above the heart in the determination of truth?
So I really have no resolution to the issue. It's something that has been on my mind and in my heart :)

Students are back

2004-08-24T18:54:00.000-05:00

Well the students have come back and transformed the town once again. The always bring such an energy. I just wonder what they could do if they actually used that energy to do anything.. anything at all. I was listening to one guy describe his day and he was up for like 20 hours and did absolutely nothing. "I went over to Joes for awhile," and then over here and over there. All that motion accomplishing nothing.

One of the Hidden Horrors of Revision

2004-08-21T17:03:00.000-05:00

One of the hardest skills about revising and editing your own work is knowing when enough is enough. The longer a writer looks at a piece the more and more it seems to need to change. Say what you want to say as simply as possible and move on. The more the words stare back at me their inadequacy seems to grow. Well I looked to long at this story I am revising and have decided to completely redo it. I am switching it to first person and expanding several parts of it.

Accepting Criticism Correctly

2004-08-12T20:59:00.000-05:00

I was thinking of about the proper response to criticism whether it be from a friend or an enemy. Criticism from an enemy is meant to tear down while from a friend it is meant to build. But I think some of the response will be similar.
Actually consider the validility of the criticism. Our initial reaction is to become defensive and fight. Really do some soul searching. Find people who know you and can be honest. I found out some interesting stuff about myself this way. We often don't see ourselves as we really are. Be acknowledgina valid criticism we will become better people in the long run.

Live this day

2004-08-10T22:54:00.000-05:00

Short and probably not very profund. I have to live this moment to the fullest because it is the only moment I have access to. I have to live each day fully whether I have 10 more or 10000.

The anemia of liberalism

2004-08-07T11:54:00.000-05:00

I was out for my doctor prescribed consitutional this morning when I chanced upon and insightful seen. A liberal father trying to raise and discipline his 3 young sons. The 3 kids were like 6/4/3 or something along those lines. They were playing with some ball or something in the midst of this the older one pushes or shoves a tiny bit the middle son. As one of three sons I can tell you it was mild. We beat the crude out of each other all the time. Anyway, the dad wanders over and say "You need to go inside because you hit your brother," in the barely audible weak little voice. The son wanders away playing with the ball. "You need to go inside because you hit your brother," again. The kid is just wandering down the street ignoring this. The dad says it like 10 time without an affect. At one point the son looks over at his dad and say "You don't have a brain in your head your thinking with." Dad's response.. "You need to blah blah blah". That is some bad parenting.
It pointed to something about liberalism in general. It's anemic. It has no real strenght. It doesn't understand power and how it is to be used. It doesn't understand evil and how power needs to be used against it. "Mr. Terrorist you need to go inside because you killed people." Isn't going to cut it. Those boys need to be taught how to be men/warriors. They need to be taught they have power and its proper usage. That was a perfect chance for the dad to give them a life lesson in this but he failed.

Posted for a friend

2004-08-05T08:33:00.000-05:00

tired - email
"What, then, you will say, is there no authority in the definitions of councils? Yes, indeed; for I do not contend that all councils are to be condemned, and all their acts rescinded, or, as it is said, made one complete erasure. But you are bringing them all (it will be said) under subordination, and so leaving every one at liberty to receive or reject the decrees of councils as he pleases. By no means; but whenever the decree of a council is produced, the first thing I would wish to be done is, to examine at what time it was held, on what occasion, with what intention, and who were present at it; next I would bring the subject discussed to the standard of Scripture. And this I would do in such a way that the decision of the council should have its weight, and be regarded in the light of a prior judgment, yet not so as to prevent the application of the test which I have mentioned."

And so forth. Even if you directly flip to chapter nine, you face paragraphs upon paragraphs of qualifications, to the point where Calvin is forced to explain that, no, he's not saying that there's absolutely no merit whatsoever in councils. On the contrary, they are useful, but their decisions are still to be tested by Scripture.

rC's do not make his qualifications; their writings hardly evoke concern of tossing councils aside altogether, as Calvin had to explicitly guard against. Really, other than "we don't want to be Baptists we don't want to be Platonists we don't want to be Patrick Henry we don't want to be like Locke we don't want to be like Roman Catholic apologists (because they have a bad view of history) we don't want to be like James White we don't want to be like James White we don't want to be like James White we don't want to be like James White here's a paper on enlightenment rationalism which of course is understood to be James White's position who we don't want to be like, lest we forget, and let's rethink the Eucharist and statues and images and liturgy and the binding nature of councils, but we don't want to be like Roman Catholic apologists because they have a bad view of history", there's hardly anything to think about. A series of thinly-skinned negatives primarily aimed against a strawman of one man's position advocates no concrete alternative itself, particularly when the only positive writing encourages vague "rethinking" of traditionally arch-RC positions, but with no recommendation of what this supposed happy medium is (between anyone who doesn't share rC convictions, and Roman Catholic apologists) and how it's to be implemented. "damnant quod non intelligunt" if you must (at least you've been trained in Latin ... there's a delicious irony in those who haven't smattering it all over their blogs), but even if I did miss where it was clearly laid out, the bulk of the writing is devoted to what I described. Well, that and calling people asses and boneheads, making fun of them for having small churches and irrelevant ministries, and insular reading lists- which not everyone finds the need to post on their blog.

Being that I'm a presbyterian, yet fall under those whom you address, the question is even stranger. I can submit to the decisions of the assemblies insofar as they do not go on to deny the fundamental point of the faith. I believe Machen's breaking of fellowship to found his own denomination was not only Biblical but a necessity when he did. Yet the man did all he could to remain among the greater body until the point that they necessarily denied the Gospel, as he explained in Christianity and Liberalism.

It's very much like the submission of a wife to a husband. You serve the Lord first, but submit as long as you are not breaking God's commandments.

So we have church councils with decisions that we must still take to Scripture to test. This allows for both the assembly of Acts 15, and the commendation of the Bereans by the Apostle.

Also, "understanding" is as necessarily "private" as is thought itself. Surely others can further our thinking by pointing out errors or suggesting alternatives, research material, and the like, but in the end, unless there is a hive mind somewhere to jack into, we're still the ones thinking. Councils work the same way; there is no hidden knowledge exposed to church elders. The tyranny of those who lord themselves above the Word, and constant laments by honest ministers of their own inability (Spurgeon's thoughts on this alone are enough to convict) both attest to this. Look at both Peter and Paul; they are people, as bumbling as the rest of fallen man, called by God to minister the flock, dependent upon Him and His means to sustain them, and to help others avoid their own failings.

*sigh* You once used an example of the little old woman who can't grasp sola fide, and thus can't understand the Bible. That's fine; I'm not particularly sure what you meant by that because our position is that when you have someone who *does* understand sola fide and denies it, and still calls themselves a Christian, you have a contradiction. Otherwise the understanding the publican had, that is, if God will not save of Himself, apart from and in spite of all that we do, we have no hope, is sufficient.

But since then, if one so much as begins to quote Scripture, you go off on a rant that I couldn't humorously exaggerate if I wanted to, about Platonism and modernism and so forth. ECJ summed it up beautifully, but in essence you say that unless you have read vast works on philosophy you cannot be sure that you understand God's Word. I reject this, for many reasons. The only ones in Scripture who ever so much as implied that God's Word has reading prerequisites were those holding believers captive to the traditions of men.

The necessary end of this position is that the little old woman has no hope unless someone ordained by the "church", whatever that is, who has done the reading in philosophy needed, can come over and first explain what the Bible "really" says so that she may begin to understand it. May God raise up men who will pay with their blood long before she would face such perversity.
Wed Aug 04, 2004 @ 10:18:14

A sunday entry

2004-08-01T21:56:00.000-05:00

The only two things that pass by my bedroom window between 1:30 and 6:30 am sunday morning are a van and a possom. How do I know this.. I was up that entire time. Not so much by choice. I slept for about an hour then I awoke with stomach cramps. I had them off and on until around 5 am. They kept me up and in the bathroom. I will spare you to many more gory details. At around 4 am I did feel good enough to go for a walk around my apartment complex. I had an interest in seeing how many other people would be up. I counted the apartments that still had lights on. Ten other apartments were lit up. I wonder what was up with those poor souls.

I actually had an interesting thing I wanted to post about epistomology and post-modernism. But that will wait till another time.

Long time no Blog

2004-07-27T22:20:00.000-05:00

Well time for a little more in depth update. I have moved into the new apartment and the DSL is up and running. I have been really happy with DSL so far. It’s as fast as my cable modem was and only half the cost.
The move in and unpacking went something I guess. I am only half unpacked. At some point I just stopped unpacking once I got it squared away enough to live in. Every day I look at all the stuff remaining and I think I should get to it and finish the unpacking but as yet I haven’t managed up the gumption.
Still the main thing that is on my mind is the health. I am still having problems down there with some pain on the left and right lower abdomen. I went to the doctors for a second time. The doctor took some blood for test last Tuesday. I haven’t heard back from them so I assume there wasn’t anything bad from the tests since I haven’t heard back from them yet. I still have worries that there may be something somewhat serious wrong with me. Next time I go back I am going to try and get a referral to a specialist.

Still waiting on networking

2004-07-16T13:37:00.000-05:00

I won't have the dsl line hooked up at my new apartment until the 26th of July so that's what is holding up any updates.

Just moved

2004-07-06T14:58:00.000-05:00

I have just moved into a new apartment that is why there haven't been any updates lately. I still don't have the networking hooked up so you will have to wait for that to get any real info.

Report on the Trip to the Doctor

2004-06-29T19:05:00.000-05:00

So the Doctor saw me promptly. That's the first time that has ever happened usually I end up waiting a long time. She asked me a bunch of questions about the pain, when it comes, what's it like etc. Lot's of question. She then had me lie on the table and poked and proded me for a couple of minutes. She left and then came back a few minutes later. She says I am either on the end of recovery from a GI infection or I have a form of Irritable Bowel Syndrome. She gavee me some hyoscyamine. I'll see if that does anything. I would be quite happy if it is something simple like an infection. Though I do think it's a bit odd that they didn't do any testing, not even an x-ray.

Off to the Doctor

2004-06-28T19:59:00.000-05:00

For several years I have sometimes felt a pain in my left side after a large meal. It would usually fade pretty quickly and thus I didn't pay it much mind. Well a couple of weeks ago I woke up and was reallly bloated and gassy and I had the pain. It has since stayed around. It disappears quite often but keeps coming back. It has been very dull most of the time and seemed almost gone about the middle of last week. Then on thursday I woke up with a similar if slightly different pain on my right side. The pain on my left side was still there in its diminished capacity. Thursday and Friday I felt pretty bad in the afternoons, all gassy and bloated again, but it would go away around the time I got home. Finally tired of the whole thing I called friday and made a doctors appointment for tomorrow/ tuesday. I have been getting better over the weekend. So if anybody actually reads this, pray for the visit tomorrow that they will figure out what is wrong with me and that it will be easy to remedy.

My Brain is full

2004-06-24T19:39:00.000-05:00

Last night I went through all the different book ideas I had. I listed each book in a series as separate book. I have, now hold onto your seat, 45 book ideas. Yes 45. It would take me 90 years to write all of them if I wrote 1 every 2 years. Almost my whole life if I do one a year. I guess I better get cracking. But I did just buy this cool new video game.

Writing writing everywhere but not a drop to...

2004-06-23T19:17:00.000-05:00

I was thinking today about all the different avenues I have now to suck away my writing time. I have this blog. I then have my personal journal I try to atleast jot something down in everyonce in a while. No-one will ever see that writing. If anybody did they would probably lock me away. I have my philosophical journal where I write a lot of my meandering thoughts on just about everything. Much of that will probably find its way onto here. I also have my writing journal, which for now mostly consists of game reviews now because I write most of my stories on the computer. I plan on posting my reviews but they are my backup plan right now for when I don't have anything interesting to say.

BTW did you know that your body temp rises after you eat. I checked mine and I was almost up a whole degree about 40 minutes after dinner.

Another note I am almost finished the the Song of Susannah by Stephen King.

Grace: It's a kind of magic

2004-06-22T19:46:00.000-05:00

I feel the feebleness of words to uphold the weight of glory. Nothing I will say will express/impress upon the reader the sense of wonder. How can you envision the golden slant of the sun upon the perfect scene? The sky an exact blue with contrasting wisps of white clouds. The golden green of life hung all about. Birds sang out choruses to glory, and in the air hung the deep sense of the greatest magic, grace. My first thought was that I could die here knowing that the God who created this is all around me. It then occurred to me that I had died and this was heaven. But no. I would have no body in heaven. Aha! When I wasn’t looking Jesus returned and this was the new heaven and the new earth filled to overflowing with life and love. No. This was but, what a weak word ‘but’. This was God calling out to us saying, “Look am I not gracious, am I not loving, in my wisdom I have created all this.” God gave me peace. I felt renewed. There are people to love, places to go, and stories to write. Time to stop dwelling on the darkness.

What will be on this blog

2004-06-21T22:31:00.000-05:00

The plan is to put four main things on this blog.
1. Variouis ramblings about God
2. Updates on my writing projects
3. Video Game reviews
4. And the occasional personal comment

Dude I got one of them blogs

2004-06-21T20:35:00.000-05:00

I decided it would be easier to go with blogspot so here I am.