And the survey says...

My dad knows entirely too much about everything. I texted him today to tell him a joke, and what I ended up getting was a history lesson on the Greek origins of the word 'hermaphrodite' - which actually turned out to be quite interesting. Still, I think that if he got amnesia, he'd still know more than the average person.

Anyway.

I've been spending a significant amount of time in meditation for the past few months. Meditation on God, on life, on myself, on the 'big picture' and how we're all woven together. I've been teaching guitar on Saturday mornings from 10am to 6pm, sitting in a metal folding chair the whole time. It's taken its toll on my back, so last night I found myself soaking in a hot bath.

Man, talk about peace. Picture this: you're lying on your back with your eyes closed in a tub of warm water - it's just shallow enough for your eyes, nose and mouth to be above water, but deep enough for your ears to be submerged. All you hear is your heart beat and the occasional drip from the faucet. You inhale as deeply as you can, and listen to the air flow through your chest as you exhale. You continue to breathe deeply until it becomes as steady a rythm as your heart.

The drip is gone, and you no longer feel where the water ends and the air begins. If you listen closely, you'll be able to hear the blood running through your veins, and actually feel your heart beating in your chest. You become extremely aware of the slightest movements and sounds.

Now, you wait. You don't think, you don't ponder, you don't imagine. You wait. And you listen.

Try it and let me know what happens. It's the most peaceful thing I've done in a loooong time. The cool thing is, when I sat up, I could still hear and feel my heart. I was still alert to every drop of water that fell from my body. Now, a day later, I'm still more aware of my physical surroundings - I can hear the whizzing of the fan in my PC, the buzzing of my computer monitor, the ticking of the second hand on the wall clock, the heater blowing, even the wind shuffling the trees outside. I can feel the slightest changes in temperature, and even as I type this I feel all the muscles and tendons in my forearms and hands working.

These are all things I've always heard and felt, but I've just never paid attention to, so my brain dismissed it as silence. What else am I experiencing that I'm not paying attention to? What am I missing that I could be learning from if I would just de-clutter my mind and listen?

And now, for the inconsequential.

Recommended listening:
.....- On The Radio by Regina Spektor. It's got a unique feel.
.....- That's Why They Call It Rome by Holly Palmer. It's just a great song.

Recommended viewing:
.....- If I by Demitri Martin. He's got quite a tale to tell. You can YouTube it, it's in like 6 parts.
.....- Dr. Horrible's Sing Along Blog. Just watch it. All of it. It's just a funny throw-away mini.

-R.

All your base are belong to us.

You know what? My line theory is stupid. It doesn't even make sense. I just thought of a few clever ways to use the word 'line.' The world is so much bigger than that theory. What the crap? I need a new theory.

I'm putting together a list of all the major life lessons I'm learning, both from my personal experience and from the experiences of others. I'm finding that several of these principles begin to overlap after you reach a certain point in your journey. They hit you in waves and seem isolated at the time, but there are some definite overarching themes to be acknowledged here.

LIFE:
Life is a series of moments. Make an effort to remember the ones that count.

There are two meanings for the word "good:" Good/Evil, and Good/Bad.
- In the case of Good vs. Bad, it is simply a measurement of where something lies on the curve of worst to best. In this context, "good" can be replaced with "better" and "bad" with "worse."
- In the case of Good vs. Evil, each is the description of a specific moral or ethical inclination. There is no spectrum; it is black and white.

Justice is not the same as fairness: Fairness deals with "evenness" and equality, whereas justice deals with right and wrong.

PEOPLE:
You can't change a person, you can only change the way you relate to that person, and what you expect from them.

A person's actions are always driven by his/her desires; there are two types of desire: positive (I want this to happen) and negative (I want that to not happen).

By nature, a person's pride is one of the most important things to them. Because of this, we also hold dear a set of particular aspects of our identity, such as our name, reputation and appearance.

Consider the people who give you these four things: Identity, Protection, Accountability and Unconditional Love. These people are your true family, regardless of blood lines.

GROWTH / LEARNING:
True growth hurts: physically, emotionally, spiritually, mentally, sociologically, and every other '-ally' word you can think of.

Almost all true learning requires un-learning first.

To learn, one must first be teachable; true teachability is found among the humble and the broken.


This is what I have so far. If any of you have something else to add, I'd love to hear it, study it, and add it.

-R.

My Mix Can Still Beat Up Your Mix.

gravity - intercept

safer times - new atlantic

slipping under - william tell

restless - needtobreathe

car crash - matt nathanson

...and I'll top it off with a quote I read today that I found quite interesting:

"When the only tool in your toolbox is a hammer, every problem starts to look like a nail."

Abraham Maslow

-R.

The Future...

IN THE NEAR FUTURE...

...I plan to put together a collection of paintings to either sell to friends and family and co-workers and co-churchers(?), or to open a gallery show and try to sell to the general public.  Then I will open a separate checking account in which all my painting proceeds will be deposited, and from which all my painting supplies will be purchased.  In theory, the goal would be for the average monthly balance of this account to gradually rise.

...I plan to finish reading one the many books I'm in the middle of - probably either Husbandry by Stephen Fried, or The Irresistible Revolution by Shane Calibourne.

IN THE NOT QUITE AS NEAR FUTURE...

...I plan on buying an Amazon Kindle and using it every night before bed.

...I plan on buying my wife a puppy and a kitten, as close in age and size as possible, so that they will be friends from the get-go.

...I plan on having a $1000 emergency fund for...well, emergencies.

...I plan on either upgrading or replacing my desktop computer, and purchasing a 36-40 inch HDTV.

...I plan on completing the degree I'm working on and starting art school.

IN THE KIND-OF DISTANT FUTURE...

...I plan on purchasing a second vehicle - preferably a car with 35-40 mpg, to use for everything but taking me to work and back, which is like 2 miles from our apartment.

...I plan on building a $40,000 fund for putting a downpayment on a house.

...I plan on becoming a locally known painter.

...I plan on finishing all the books I'm reading through right now, and start reading some kind of biographical book about someone who did something great (Chuck Schwab, Ben Franklin, etc.).

...I plan on completing a degree in graphic design and maybe either painting or traditional animation/illustration.

IN THE DISTANT FUTURE...

...I plan on makin' babies.

...I plan on working (either for a company or freelance) as a graphic designer and working up a portfolio to take to disney to be a traditional (hand-drawn) animator.

...I plan on becoming a fairly well-known name in the painting world, equipped with my own personal studio.

...I plan on paying off one or both of our cars.

...I plan on buying a house.

SOMEWHERE IN THE FUTURE...

...God plans for me and my family to become full-time missionaries in Kenya, Africa, leaving all our possessions behind and committing 100% of our lives and energy to the work of the Lord God Almighty.

When there's nothing that we can't afford to sacrifice,

There's no way they can put out our fire.

.

.

.

"Belle" of the ball?

just finished a new painting.  Like my hands are still covered in paint.  Check it out.

When I paint, I mentally compartmentalize the entire picture, so that I only ever worry about the stroke I'm making at the moment.  The problem with this lack of "big picture" approach is that I really have no preconception as to what the end product will actually look like.  This painting is the perfect example: the way the colors turned out, I took a step back to look at the completed project, and realized that she is Belle from Beauty and the Beast.

Regardless, I'm pretty happy with it, except for the fact that my signature looks like it was done by an 8-year-old.  I've gotta work on that...

the end.

-R.

Uuuupdate?

Okay, okay okay I know I updated like a day ago but great things have happened. Great things indeed. First off, some randomness.

I look at a lot of files at work - it's what I do. And on these files are the names of various clients. Most of the time it's something like "John Perkins" or something else equally normal. But every once in a while I'll come across names that entertain me more than a big scary monster willow spontaneously humping ferrets on tree-huggers appreciation day. Names like Mercole Stufflebean, Warren Pece, Guy P Greene, and Billy Button to name a few. I love my job.

Speaking of my job, I have more updates. Working with my hands and building things is therapudic for me, and I've been in need of some therapudicness the past couple days. Soooo even though my bonsai tree just evolved into an AWESOME Optimus clone, it underwent yet another metamorphosis, but this time it's more like a growth spurt. Check it out.

Sha-pow! He's like 18 inches tall and completely made out of mail clips. And a cut out piece of post-it note that I colored on. Check out his face. Again.

Oh, and my staple stack wouldn't stand up straight so after fighting it for like 5 minutes I threw it away and started over. But I'm playing it smart this time. I've got a mold that I'm pouring the staples into, and when it's full I'll slide up to reveal my perfect staple stack. And by 'mold' I mean toilet paper tube. It's kind of like a game...which is why I also gave it a back board. Observate.

I know, you wish your workspace was as awesome as mine. It can be, tiny grasshopper, with a little post-its, markers, and imagination...and mail clips and staples and toiler paper tubes and highlighters and a sharpie and some tape and some paper clips and a notepad and a loooooot of free time.

Okay so I got so caught up in talking about my crazy work stuff that I forgot what this post was going to be about. I guess I'll post again later. Like sooner later, not later later.

-R.

Another Update. Hey, that's what blogs are for, right?

My staple stack has grown a bit...

And my mail clip bonsai tree has evolved into a...transformer.

Say hello to my own personal mini Optimus Prime.  Kind of.  Check out his face.

Hah.  I know, it's pretty frikkin' awesome.

Well, work is good but school is kicking my butt.  I guess it's a good thing though, because I've been needing to get my butt kicked recently.  Imagine you're put in an empty room and told "There is a problem in this room.  Solve it."  Well that was me last night.  The room was my life, and the problem was there.  The only thing is, you can't fix it if you don't know what it is.  I can solve problems, but figuring out what the problem is?  That's like giving me a blank canvas and saying "Paint a picture of it" without telling me what it is.

But, after several hours of self-reflection and talking to the mirror, I figured out what the problem is.  All it will take to fix it is time, sacrifice, a constant battle between my flesh and the Holy Spirit inside me, and more time.  But at least I know what the problem is.  And it's good to know my wife is on my team fighting with me and for me.

This is all for now.  I just wanted to chronicle this transitional stage because it may very well play an enormous part in shaping the next few chapters of my life.

-R.

oh, what peace we often forefit

oh what needless pain we bear

all because we do not carry

everything to God in prayer

New Game! Play it.

AHHHH update update update. okay. mmmmmm. ok, I've got it.

My wife and I went to California on our honeymoon, which means Disneyland, the beach, and stupid high gas prices. Whilst at the beach, I invented a sport called wave-punching, where you...well, run up to a wave and punch it. It didn't quite pick up.

Well, I have a new...thing. I'm not calling it a sport, as it requires zero athleticism. To keep with the trend of giving my games ridiculously obvious names, this new one's called staple-stacking.

Yeah. I wasn't kidding. The rules are: 1) they must be used staples - no pumpin' out the staples just to put them in the stack. It's kind of like the unspoken rubber band ball rule where you can't just buy a bag and ball 'em up. 2) no magnets. Nothing can be keeping the staples together but more staples. And gravity. It kind of has a barrel-o-monkeys effect. 3) an awesomely decorated post-it as a base is not a must, but it does add super awesome bonus points. And it could be the difference between your stack looking like a piece of art, and it looking like an upright metallic turd. Here's a better shot with the base:

I have too much free time at work. Well, actually I have two 15-minute breaks every day where I spend 5 minutes breaking and 10 minutes leaving my mark on my desk. How so? Oh, little things, like drawing comic book characters on sticky notes and putting them on my monitor...

...or making bonsai trees out of mail clips...

...or my personal favorite, doodling pictures of dogs barking in japanese at various objects.

Or maybe he's guarding my files that are labeled bilingually...?

Yes. I got snap happy. At work. But I guess it's just because there are so many interesting things to look at on my desk. What's that you say? Super Mario Galaxy is calling out to me and begging me to play it? Well in that case, I must oblige. Farewell my friends, until next time: may your hands never fall prey to idleness, and may your labor produce good fruit.

-R

In the Now: Semi-Interesting and Slightly Amusing

I haven't written in forever, so I feel like I should. The problem is, nothing's coming to my mind to write about.

I picked my brain just now, but the only thing that came up was how annoying I think it is that the E-surance chick is so frikking hot. She's a cartoon. It's just not right. But I guess it's not too abnormal to find a cartoon attractive, since every male over 20 years of age knows he's lusted after Jessica Rabbit at least once.

Speaking of Jessica Rabbit, I found a blog where this dude takes animated notables and uses Adobe Photoshop to manipulate and combine elements from celebrity and model photographs to recreate the toons in such a way as to portray "what they would look like if they were real."

Yeah. It's pretty freaky.

There is a graphic novel series called Flight. There are 5 isses and I want them all. Basically they are compilations of animated short stories that speak through their art more than anything. It's an amazing series to be sought out by casual readers and collectors alike. You should check it out. And then buy the books.

Ok, we're kind of on a roll now...the gears are turning, the fingers are typing...we might actually get somewhere with this post after all.

WARNING:
The rest of this blog post contains material of substance and you might have to put some of your brain cells to work, should you choose to continue. You have been warned.

I got a promotion. Instead of processing the work that the researchers send me, I'm now among the researchers that send work for the processors to do. I'm no longer on the bottom rung of the research/processing food chain. I don't think I've been this happy with my job since I coached gymnastics under Greg Schram. Those were the days.

We've moved from a throw-all-our-bills-in-a-stack-on-the-desk system to a file-them-away-in-a-3-ring-binder system. I've been making some changes in the way we budget, and am in the middle of writing a program that will import bank statements from .html, .xml, or .rtf files into an interactive spreadsheet which will log all of our previous deposits and expendatures, calculate our balances and project future spending based on our previous spending patterns, alerting us of changes we will need to make in order to achieve the most efficient debt/income ratio and build maximum savings. On the side, it will have a calculator in which you input your hours from a printed time sheet and, based on your hourly wage and income tax, it will give you the exact amount you can expect to receive in your next paycheck - to the cent. Suffice to say, we are turning over a new leaf in the financial planning slice of the priority pie chart of our lives.

I've realized that I am not a teacher. I just don't have the gift. What I teach on guitar, you can't really just pick up a book and learn in a week. In fact I haven't yet found a guitar book anywhere that uses my approach about how to learn guitar. But, it's really something that, if I walk you through it for a month or two and you practice the whole time, you'll be amazing and I will have nothing left to teach you and you won't need me anymore. So instead of teaching private lessons, I think I'm going to finally finish a project I start and write my own "how to learn how to play guitar" curriculum. Then, I can pitch it as a course to music stores and high schools and do a two-month structured weekly summer class every year and feel like I'm actually getting somewhere in teaching guitar, rather than wasting other peoples' time and money showing them how to do things they can look up on the internet for free.

If you're still reading this and you're not me, then you're either entirely too interested in my life or just ridiculously bored. Either way, I would advise you turn on your TV and watch the rest of "Who Wants to be a Millionaire" because it's probably playing right now on one of the 9 channels you receive on the hand-me-down "bunny-ears" TV antenna you got from your dad when he upgraded to HD. Yeah. I'm reading your blog too.

"My Walk Home"

On my walk home...

...I fell into a lake.
...I ran a marathon.
...I got eaten by a giant tree.
...I lived in a huge house with an extravagant garden.
...I sat on an old rusty chair in my garden and drank homemade lemonade.
...I splashed in a fountain.
...I got hit by a car.
...I fed a homeless man the rest of my lunch that I didn't eat today.
...I carved a rose out of a tree stump.
...I heard silence.
...I had a conversation with a weeping willow.
...I adopted a puppy as a surprise for my wife.
...I stopped by an old beat up baptist church and had a two-hour theological conversation with a portly minister wearing an expensive tie and cheap cologne.
...I sang.
...I rescued a shopping cart from a flooded creek.
...I learned how to fly.
...I rode on the back of a giant armadillidiidae.
...I died.
...I lived.
...I ate gushers.

Oh the thinks you can think.

How true it is, Mr. Seuss, how true indeed.

.

.

.

.

...wait. I actually did eat gushers.

My Mix Can Beat Up Your Mix

.....Do You Remember....-....The Summer Obsession
Soundtrack to Your Life....-....Ashley Parker Angel...... .
Written at a Rest Stop....-....Ronnie Day.................
Beat Mamma....-....Cast...............
In The Summertime....-....Thirsty Merc............
........Thunder....-....Boys Like Girls
......Fall Behind....-....Moses Mayfield

Slipping Under....-....William Tell.... .
...............Why Cry....-....The Panic Channel

You know what to do...It will make your day more better.

For those of you who find yourselves laughing out loud at the thoughts in your head.

I've met people named John-Paul, but why not Lennon-McCartney?

Or what about Frehley Simmons? Or Walsh Henley?

OH oh I've got it: Tyler Perry. Wait...that one's taken.


[ r i m s h o t ]

Copycat, or Common Ancestor?

I've noticed a trend....Observate.

.............Disney............Dreamworks SKG

.

A Bug's Life (1998)............Antz (1998)..............

Finding Nemo (2003)............Shark Tale (2004).........

..The Wild (2006)............Madagascar (2005)

.

In addition, Dreamworks Animation SKG has a movie in the works called Monsters Vs. Aliens which is centered around, you guessed it, a california girl who comes in contact with several monsters including a large, ape-like Missing Link and a short, one-eyed B.O.B. Sound like any animated Disney movies you've seen?

People I've talked to about this say that one company is copying the other, much like Leigh Scott copies every movie that makes money and ruins it and would probably be upside-down on net returns if he didn't have such a low budget to begin with. Stupidface. Wait, what was I talking about again?

.

But seriously, people are so quick to point the finger and I was too at first, but while partaking in a casual debate among friends about Darwinian evolution versus intelligent design, it struck me that these movies might not be the result of idea theft, but rather a common creator.

I've done some research and here's what I've found:

• The musical director for Dreamworks Animation SKG (Karey Kirkpatrick) got his start professionally writing musical scores as an intern at Disney Animation Studios in 1987.
  .
• Bonnie Arnold, producer of Dreamworks' Over the Hedge, was originally recruited by Disney back in '91 to do live action. The job that moved him up from associate producer to producer producer was none other than Disney and Pixar's Toy Story in 1995.
  .
• Cecil Kramer, visual effects producer for Dreamworks' Flushed Away, did the exact same job at Disney Imagineering and Buena Vista Films prior to moving to Dreamworks.
  .
• The story artist for Dreamworks' The Prince of Egypt, animation college drop-out David Bowers, worked on Disney's Who Framed Roger Rabbit (which happens to be a collaborative project between Disney Studios and Amblin Entertainment) back in 1988, then moved to Speilberg's Amblimation. After hopping back and forth between a few more projects, he landed at Dreamworks to storyboard Dreamworks' first animated feature film, The Prince of Egypt.

Other findings:

• A little less than a month ago, Dreamworks Animation turned the title "Head of Development" over to one Alex Schwartz. I'm currently investigating the backstory on Mr. Schwartz, but it might take some time since I left my FBI starter kit at home.
  .
• The SKG found on the bottom of Dreamworks' logo stands for Speilberg, Katzenberg and Geffen, the founding fathers of the company.
  
  - Steven Speilberg worked with Disney Studios on the infamous Who Framed Roger Rabbit.
  
  - Jeffrey Katzenberg worked for Disney up until 1994, when he left due to a spat with Michael Eisner, CEO of Disney.
  .
• The broadcast rights to many of Dreamworks' films belong to ABC. Interestingly enough, ABC has been owned by Disney since 1995.

This is all well and good, but it doesn't truly prove anything. It does, however, show the undeniable link between Disney and Dreamworks. The findings above are but a fraction of a myriad of similar discoveries linking Dreamworks employees to previous Disney projects. It is true that Dreamworks only exists because of Disney, but as per the original question, it's hard to say.

There is definitely some communication between the two, but the question is, at what level?

My hypothesis: During the next 10 years, Disney will slowly begin to creep into Dreamworks' territory - starting by sitting down over a cup of tea and settling the dispute over the shared rights to the Roger Rabbit franchise - and will eventually eat the company alive for upwards of ten million dollars. Let's sit back and see what happens.

Interesting...veeeeery interesting.

The Infamous Time-Killing Countdown

10 Most Interesting Things I've Learned from Working at the Blockbuster Distribution Center:

TEN
There are two genres of black people movies: gun-slingin' gangsta movies, and Tyler Perry comedies.

NINE
Each decade that passes is an automatic excuse to re-release an old movie in a special "10th Anniversary Edition" cover for twice what it's worth.

EIGHT
Someone out there actually thinks Paris Hilton is hot, because she keeps showing up on the covers of movies that shouldn't even exist. And she's always wearing a miniskirt even though she looks like a blonde skeleton with a camel face. People, really?

SEVEN
The chicks in the poster for Aqua Teen Hunger Force: Move Film for Theaters actually are hot. Too bad they're probably nowhere in the actual movie. And they're just paintings.

SIX
Lord of the Rings and Halo both take themselves way too seriously. What the heck am I supposed to do with an 8-inch replica of Gollum sitting on a rock with a fish or a "life-sized" Master Cheif helmet?

FIVE
Anything put out by production company The Asylum is a 90-something minute stupidfest full of knock-off plot lines and crappy acting, with titles and cover art intentionally designed to make you confuse it for a popular best-selling box office hit. Examples include Transmorphers (Transformers), Monster (Cloverfield), and my personal favorite, AVH: Alien vs. Hunter (duh).

FOUR
It really is possible to trace any actor to Kevin Bacon through six degrees or less.

TREE
50-Cent's real name is Curtis Jackson. Apparently it's also impossible for him to say the word "the."

TWO
The cover of the Beatles' album Abbey Road depicts Paul - not John - walking barefoot. Interestingly enough, Paul is also the only one with his right foot forward, and he's the only one smoking. And the only one named Paul.

ONE
...And the #1 most interesting DC finding: Contrary to popular belief, Steamboat Willie is not an earlier form of Mickey Mouse, but rather a character he played in one of his first cartoons. It was the first Mickey Mouse cartoon with sound, and consequently the cartoon that single-handedly sky-rocketed the little guy's filmmaking career to super-stardom.

flippin' sweet.

The Scoop

IN SICKNESS...

I'm sick. I woke up dizzy this morning and I haven't been able to shake it all day. I tried sleeping it off but all that gave me was a weird dream where the American Idol contestants competed by playing arena football instead of singing, and they were given lodging in emptied out clothing stores in a mall--equipped, of course, with Real World-esque hidden cameras and confessional booths in the dressing rooms. It was strange, yes, but I would gladly watch a whole season of American Mall-Abiding Arena Football Idol if it meant the room would stop spinning. Work will be interesting tomorrow...

IN HEALTH...

My cat is getting better. He has kidney failure, but the vet says he'll live as long as he would have otherwise, provided we stick him with a syringe full of electrolytes twice a day. So it's like he has diabetes...only he's not peeing everywhere. I'm starting to understand why people say they have nine lives - we were sure he was a goner.

FOR BETTER...

The Game. The game the game the game. Ideas are flowing like dia--well...they're flowing. I've got tons of ideas written down on napkins, left-over wedding programs, and other scraps deemed otherwise useless...I just have no time to fully develop them or get them coded. So the game is all in my head at this point, and hopefully when I get a job with better hours, I can devote a portion of every week to keeping the game ball rolling. And yes, I think I'm going to start a different blog specifically for the RPG Adventure Game Project.

FOR WORSE...

Well I have to be at work in five hours so I'm gonna call it a night. Just wanted to update - haven't done that in a while.

The RPG Adventure Project

This is the story of a Dot. He wasn't always a dot though, he was born as a square. A little red square on a little mission. Namely, a mission to collect a bunch of smaller white squares. He would weave his way through walls (brown squares) and water (blue squares). He would push yellow boxes (yellow squares) and avoid pits (gray squares).

A very square world, created by a very square 11-year-old programmer.

Then, two years and seven levels later, the square transformed into a Dot. A little red dot on a slightly less little mission. The walls gained depth, the little white collectibles gained shading (and a rounded figure), and the Dot gained eyes.

He was an imitation Pac-Man living in a off-brand Chip's Challenge world.

A slightly more lively world, upgraded by a slightly more lively 13-year-old programmer.

Seven years passed, and the Dot was beginning to think its creator had abandoned it. But then, something inspired that creator to jump back in the saddle and finish what he had started. In a flash, algorithms flew onto the scene, merging the wall squares into one long continuous brown strip of beautifulness.

The Dot was named "Big Red" and became animated and had captions to narrate its every move!

And to frost this mountainous Cake of Comeback, Big Red received an inventory with which to fill with various level-solving items, and...a small orange fireproof friend: Lil' O

Lil' O had the ability to swim in molten lava without being burned - in fact, he could resurface as a ball of fire and melt certain frozen obstacles!

Together, this discoid duo would dominate the world of dots!

But the plot thickens even...thicker-er. Though he beheld the finished product of his nine-year endeavor at game-making, the creator was rather unimpressed. He had inspired himself to test his abilities as a programmer and push the limits of his game-making skills to the edge. He wanted to put these loveable globules in an adventure of their own, outside of their labyrinthical confines.

He went online and unearthed the secrets of sprite-masking and array-building and back-buffering and Bit-Blitting. He spent hours in Photoshop creating grass and trees and rocks and dirt roads and treasure chests and cliffs and caves and best of all, this was just the beginning.

He hit the drawing board, and he hit it hard, designing villages and towns and cities and forests and and entire world for these round rollers to explore.

And that brings us to today. You are now officially caught up

in the history of the program tentatively named "RPG Adventure Game Project."

I will post my progress in this blog as it happens. If this thing actually manages to stay alive for more than a few months, I just might make a separate blog solely dedicated to the logging of this challenging yet exciting adventure.

18 DAYS!

Dreams, Death and Donuts

Last night I dreamt that I was a man in my mid-thirty's, rugged and set in his ways, with a thick-skin and a rogue attitude from one too many rough patches in his past. I was living in an abandoned barn, quietly avoiding attention from the world. In the dream, I woke up to three siblings, ages 12 to 19 who had run away from home. I began to mentor them and do my best to set them on the right path, knowing full well what the wrong path was and having the experience to tell them where it led.

They learned how I lived - working for my food and fighting for my territory. The months passed and I enjoyed their company, but I knew there would come a time when they would have to go out and face the tragedy that drove them from their home. That day came sooner than I had expected, and I found myself standing outside the barn giving them farewell gifts: my 25-year-old wooden-handled hunting knife to the oldest son, my father's compass watch to the middle son, and a homemade hemp necklace with wooden beads to the youngest daughter. I told them the barn was theirs, threw a bag of survival tools and dried meat over my shoulder, and began to head into the sunset.

Men in suits entered the scene out of nowhere, set the barn on fire and began to beat and interrogate the children, asking where I was. Something was keeping me from being able to rescue them, although by that point I had come to love them as my own children. I knew that the suits were there because of the mistakes in my past, but I was helpless to save my disciple children from the consequences of my own transgressions. I remember crying for the first time in decades and running as far and as fast as I could. My last thought to myself before waking up was that my knives would dull and my meat would go stale, but nothing could ever erase the memory of those childrens' faces as they looked to me for the salvation I could not give.

I was out of breath when I woke up, and my fianceé said I was breathing hard and kicking my legs. I doubt this dream means anything but it has been haunting me all day. Writing these things down always helps lift the burden these types of dreams place on me. Still, I can't help but wonder what's going on in my subconscious to produce a dream like this.

----- IN OTHER NEWS -----

Awana. One of our Cubbies leaders is going on maternity leave, and as such has officially passed on the torch to yours truly. It will be my fianceé and I in the Cubbie room for the remainder of the current Awana season, and my prayer is that I will be able to take most of the load off her shoulders without overbearing myself. "Come to me, all you who are weary and burdened, and I will give you rest." - Matthew 11:28

My parents are in California to visit my mom's dad, as he has been diagnosed with a form of cancer and is not expected to survive. It can't be hard saying goodbye, my prayers are with them. They left today and are scheduled to return Wednesday. In the meantime, it is our job to hold down the fort at home, feed the dog, and visit our cat at the vet who is also dying. Maybe I shouldn't have fed him those Krispy Kremes...

19 DAYS!

The Line Theory

"Who are you?"

Looking into the mirror and asking the question, "who are you?" can prove enlightening if asked in sincerity, and I often find it a bit startling when I discover something about myself I didn't know I didn't know.

For instance, today I discovered that I find myself living under the philosophy that life and memories are defined by experience, and experience is but a sequence of moments. I strive to make the most of these moments, so that at the end of my life, I will be known not as one who changed the world, but rather one who loved those who were hardest to love. I don't do things so that people will remember me, but rather so that they will remember what I stood for.

They say it's the little things in life that matter, but too many people focus on the wrong little things. And the Line Theory is simply this:

We grow from learning to draw straight lines to waiting in lunch lines;

From obsession over tan lines to laying down the pick-up lines;

From meeting the deadlines to reading the headlines.

Pretty soon your lifeline's coming to an end and the only lines you have to show for it are the ones on your forehead that you've earned from years of chasing the wrong dreams--

drawing lines in the sand to be washed away by the tide, a speck on the timeline.

My only dream is that when the ones I love look back on my life, it will be filled with laughter, the smell of everyone's favorite drinks in their hands, and the sound of "I remember when."

Who am I? With every passing day, I find a new way to answer that very question. Thus is the paradoxical whirlpool in which we find ourselves often circling but never sinking: to presume that I am today the same person I was yesterday, or that I will be tomorrow who I am today, is to presume that I'm not growing--not learning. At the end of each day when I face that fateful pane of polished glass, I can honestly say that the man looking back at me is one step closer to wisdom, discernment and understanding than he was twenty-four hours ago.

And that's a good feeling.

Life makes so much more sense when you understand it.

That's What She Said.

Sorry folks, I really can't help it.

"That's what she said" jokes are like sneezing: I can't control when they come out - all I can do is hope I'm facing the right people when they do.