A New Hope...

I said that I would post a link to my new endeavor, and I am a man of my word. Here is my new site: Scintilliarium. It is a serial fiction site that will feature all of my serial fiction writing. If you are interested, stop by. This is the last post. Farewell, goodnight, and God bless.

The Hope of Narrative

Thoughts move at different paces, some like the speed of rivers, others like the shifting of tectonic plates. I've wondered what blogging was really all about for me, and I've always wanted it to be more than just a witty observation or a well-photographed dismemberment. I wanted it to be a rarified discussion of the great ideas, but alas that's not what it became. Those moments of intelligent, respectful, deep discussion have been few and far between. Instead, what's out there has just been mostly attacks by keyboard delinquents, idiotic spamming, or short and sweet observations by others.

And I know that it is me. I have wanted blogging to fill the void in my life that friends should fill. I'm honest enough to admit that I spend most of my life before a screen instead of out the in the real world, and so that severely biases me. I want things from blogging that it just can't give me. Even those who know me off-line are far away and so can't really fill that abyss in my life, nor can I be a true friend to them. So I turned to blogging to help bandage the hurt, to be my mead and tonic when I had naught to drink.

I also started blogging because I'm a decent writer and I love the written word. I've always been the guy with great ideas and some follow-through but no real outlet. I thought blogging could be a simple release valve, and at times it was, but it never allowed out the song of life that rattles around within me. This is because blogging has no narrative. Each post is a fire-and-forget one-shot with no characters that connect the posts. Stories endure regardless of the audience; stories are timeless; stories are unseasonal, unaffected by age or passage of years. Narrative touches the depths with a motion that mere reactions simply do not.

My experience with anime` has awakened in me the desire to write serial fiction, as I've hinted at before. Serial fiction is by nature driven by plot, as stagecoach horses are driven. It hooks the audience and allows the writer to get something done in bite-sized pieces. It's character and plot-driven, which takes further pressure off my perfectionist instincts. What I've read so far I know I can better, by just being faithful to the characters and touching on deeper themes consistently.

Stories endure, for they are about people who are real and their interactions with the deeper truths of life, even the experience of the Divine. Even theological blogging can't create this beauty of story that the most precious things are recorded and which the truth is preserved; think of it like this -- the the Pentatuech and the Gospels are largely narratives, and God's interaction with man is written in the stories of our own lives.

I must thus tell stories. I'll post my new site here, and then shortly thereafter, shut this down.

Thank you for reading and accompanying me along the twisty little path of a small life.

Some People Can't Let it Go

As you may know or not, I am an anime` fan. One of the series that I had a passing interest in was Claymore. The first season resolved some plot threads but left a lot hanging, and so I was curious if there was, or if there was going to be a second season.

Looks like some folks beat me to the punch.

Over on the Fansub TV site, some rather ardent Claymore fans filled up seventy-five forum pages attempting to parlay their desire for a second season into the fact that a second season existed and was coming any day now.

Check out the madness here.

It reminds me of the liberals who parlay their desire to see Bush impeached into the fantasy that plans for Bush to be impeached are afoot and they will culminate in a wonderful expulsion Any Day Now.

At the forum site, the admin finally had to close the thread due to disturbing personal emails on the subject. Sound familiar? Why do liberals always succumb to magical thinking and then become violent when someone disproves their little utopia?

Sometimes It All Comes Down to the Right Letter

The next time that you read help, manual, instructions, directions, or anything of that sort that makes sense, you can thank God that someone took care to not only spellcheck it, but read and edited it for content. The spell-checker is a wonderful tool, but if a word exists, it gets the green light -- even if it's the wrong word. And in this harried business culture that most of us work in, a spell-check is the only defense used against lexical insanity. Imagine my shock and awe when mid-way through a gargantuan mortgage spreadsheet, I came across the phrase "the public interest" -- but with one letter missing. Guess which one! Yes, spell-check had been run, but no-one read the content. What's even scarier is that this document has been going out to the customer for many years. Not only can the right word make the difference, sometimes, it all comes down to the right letter.

Sue the Texas CPS out of Existence

Latest news on the FLDS case in Texas -- the Texas CPS has admitted that the call which prompted the invasion of private property and the separation of children from parents was -- are you ready? -- a hoax.

WHAT DID I TELL YOU?

The FLDS members and every Texan who cares about civil liberties ought to band together and sue the CPS straight out of existence. To invade private property at the behest of one caller, to take children from mothers, to forbid visitation, and every other evil that these life-mangling bureaucrats did, ought to cost them not only their jobs, but it should cause their whole department to be eradicated.

Now I know that not all of us are polygamists, but one thing that is true, regardless of how sinful your lifestyle is, is this -- you are innocent before the law until proven guilty. Today, a polygamist enclave; tomorrow, a church; the day after, your home school or your home business.