Let Us Hunt Some Orc

When Frodo flees for Mordor, Boromir dies, Merry and Pippin are captured and those who remain behind have lost the purpose of the Fellowship (to defend the carrier of the One Ring), there remains practically no hope.

Their number of 9, matching, body-for-body, their opposites, the Ring-Wraiths, has disintegrated with shocking acceleration:

Gandalf to the Balrog
Boromir to the arrows
Merry and Pippen to the orcs
Frodo and Sam to the mission

Leaving 3: Aragorn, Gimli and Legolas, an exile, a mourner, and an alien. A large group was decimated, its purpose thwarted, its new mission unclear.

They had options: return to Rivendell and regroup, seeking revised orders from authority, disband, or focus on the next possible objective: to rescue the captives from an army.

In the real world, group decay results in full dissolution 9 times out 10.

What about that 10th time? What are the dynamics that separate a renewed sense of purpose, an enriched belief in success against even greater odds?

A seed grows that causes a man to stand up after a hurricane of violence and a crisis of identity and say, "Let us hunt some orc."

Therefore, since we are surrounded by such a great cloud of witnesses, let us throw off everything and the sin that so easily entangles, and let us run with perseverance the race that is marked out for us.

BloodWaterGodMagic vs. Charlie Brown

Thanks in no small part to Charlie Brown's Christmas Special, we (Christians, non-Christians, and Anti-Christians alike) have been duly guilted into struggling against the insidious and confounding spirit of "commercialism" at Christmas.

Television advertisements extoll the "magic of Christmas" and suggest that that deep and meaningful magic is contained in a Lexus. If you want the magic, you ought to buy one.

I think the ads may be right.

You've got to remember that I come from a magical land of barbed wire and hog manure citadels. The rocks where I make my bed are ensorcelled, and my cave buzzes with the childlike whispers of the faerie-dazzled.

So I don't have the knee-jerk rejection of claims of magic that most humans do. Even if they come from a car dealership.

The fact is this: Christmas is magical. You know this to be true.

The question is, what is the source of the magic?

Some will say that it is a cultural magic: society has determined the Christmas season to be one of familial homecomings and bonding, a time to party with friends and receive presents.

Others will note that there is an inherent magic in the acts of Christmas: that, at some level, Father Christmas is a real spirit, and that gifts are his icons, imbued with some fragment of that unidentifiable joy.

Another possible source is a social-personal one: that there is, as part of the so-called "collective unconscious" a natural "need" for Christmas magic, a sort of primordial, protean phenomenon structured to salve a person's spirit whilst drawing him into the Unknown Greater.

These all have their merits, but none of these notions have the ability to completely describe the source of Christmas magic. After all, gifts can disappoint, depression afflicts, acutely, the lonely at the holidays, and Christmas or its pagan alternatives are celebrated widely, but not universally.

Besides, anyone who knows magic knows that its true source is more, well...sacrificial than that. Whether eye of newt or iocane powder, real magic has components that are rare and hard fought, almost exclusively bought at the risk, and often loss, of blood or life.

Some time ago, near a gnawed-on feed trough, a god burst forth through the blood and water of his mother, in the helpless person of an infant named Yeshua. Certainly, there were miraculous spirits in the world, and strange tidings and joy, but those were ripples from the source of the magic of that hour: a wriggling, swaddled and bloody baby born amidst dung and wheat mash. Those ripples continued out, and later drew rich and educated men to bring extravagant gifts to the toddler to celebrate his reign.

They may as well have left him a Lexus.

That's why I don't have a huge problem with the so-called "commercialization" of Christmas. All of it, the presents and food and excess and laughter, can be taken to points of abuse or exhaustion, but they don't have to be, and, often, more than often, they are not. And these things only exist as radiating ripples of the Magic of Christmas, which has its source in Our Savior, born a man, all those years ago.

The so-called "True Meaning" of Christmas is not "Stop Being Materialistic." It is "Start Living Abundantly in the One Who Loves Abundantly."

And sometimes, just sometimes, an abundant life may be found in the driver's seat of dazzling new Lexus.

Fear of Hymns

Sometimes the Revised Troll Version (RTV) of God's Word results in awkward hymns. But enthusiasm counts for something.

Still Alive?

New Short Fiction: Subterranea, by Mike Duran

I've been mixing up the medicine in the hidden laboratory of corn, but I have come across a charming little horror story by Mike Duran here.

Subterranea plumbs the depths of...well...the depths. And it is free...at least in terms of a cost to your wallet. I can't guarantee it won't cost you your soul.

"It's Pat!* Answers" edition.

You humans, and your demands for answers. Don't get me wrong, there are answers to important questions, but your very nature resists them. In fact, questions are often like a tree: the visible part (i.e. the words we use) are like leaves that show signs of illness. The majority of human questions are variants of "Heal my leaves!" The problem is that the actual disease is in the roots.

Jesus answers a deep question often with an answer that simultaneously skirts the question's branches and buries into the root. If we are to have answers, then Jesus provides an excellent model for their delivery. Pat answers may be technically correct, but it is always important to ask, do they address the symptom, or the cause? It costs us more to answer questions with a true ear than with a quick tongue.

Q: Who is my neighbor?

A: Have mercy. Be a neighbor.

Q: Let one of us sit at your right and the other at your left.

A: It is not mine to grant.

Q: Why couldn't we drive out that demon?

A: That kind requires prayer.

John the Baptist tells us to "Prepare the way of the Lord," not to "Provide answers for the way of the Lord." Though St. Paul admonishes us to have ready answers, part of having answers is also making space, preparing a way, leaving room for the Ru'ach to move without our meddling. Pat answers are like laundry baskets: great tools, lousy vehicles.

*Incidentally, the very funny creator of the Pat character, Julia Sweeney, from Saturday Night Live starred in her own one-woman show "And God Said Ha!" and is a deeply religious atheist. And thus, the circle draws to its incompletion.

Dr. Horrible, Billy Buddy and Melville

Dr. Horrible's secret identity (typically thought of as superheroes and supervillains' "real" or "normal" selves) is Billy, whom Penny affectionately refers to as "Billy Buddy."

The name is far too similar to Herman Melville's famous title character of the unfinished and long-lost novella, Billy Budd. Budd is the nearly angelic "pure good" character who is executed by the good, just, yet ultimately legalistic and cowardly Captain Vere for the crime of murder. The so-called victim of the murder is the nearly demonic Claggart. Budd accepts his fate, even to the point of calling on God to bless his executioner.

Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog seems to reverse the roles a little, but stays true to the themes, of Billy Budd. Billy Buddy is likeable, sweet and endearing, but he's the one with a seemingly friendly and justified demon inside (with jerks like Captain Hammer running around, isn't he allowed a little vitriol?). Captain Hammer slides almost directly into the Captain Vere role - the law-abiding, by the book, good guy who nonetheless can't transcend the letter of the law to the spirit of it: in other words, he's good and just, but also legalistic and uncaring for those whom he defends. So, in Joss Whedon's version of Melville, Billy Buddy is the one becoming an agent for the Thoroughbred of Sin, while Penny is the pure good in the Billy Budd role who is nonetheless an innocent catalyst for disaster.

Dr. Horrible and the Thoroughbred of Sin

Not that anyone reads these (fortunately, for the sanity and well-being of the civilized world) but just in case:

SPOILERS ahem SPOILERS WITH A CAPITAL "s" SPOILERS to follow.






Dr. Horrible's Sing-Along Blog is, well, relatively self-explanatory. It is a video blog that you can sing along with about a would-be supervillian named Dr. Horrible.

I've seen it, you've seen it, we've all seen it. But what's it all about?

In the first two acts, in true post-modern fashion, the show establishes sympathy for the lead character, Dr. Horrible (played by Neil Patrick Harris). This works because it plays off the well-worn anti-hero motiff. The anti-hero argument is basically this: traditional heroes are actually symbolic of the shiny veneer on the oppressive Social System, and the real hero is the flawed, unsuper fellow who can see through that facade, and fight against it.

In other words, Superman is a facsistic wish-fulfillment, a literal and figurative extension of the eugenics of the spiritual Third Reich. Batman is a sick sociopath, haunted by his impotence and forever dependent on criminality in order to give himself identity. Captain America is nothing more than a government tool. The Hulk is displaced rage with daddy issues.*

What about the poor, misunderstood supervillain? Doesn't he have motive? Doesn't he have good cause for what he does? Shouldn't his dreams matter?

Such is the case with Dr. Horrible. In act I, we quickly understand that Dr. Horrible is a puffed up, mostly harmless, social basket case. By the end of act II, we root for his cartoonish revenge fantasy, because we believe him to be wronged. By the end of act III, his dreams have simultaneously gone awry and come true, and we abruptly realize the depths of isolation that his success has brought him.

Dr. Horrible is, literally, all fun and games until someone loses a life. And it all started so innocently. Dr. Horrible, the incompetent, yet likable, blowhard confesses his love and ambition, and the viewers are inspired to take up his cause. Here's a guy who wants to be validated by membership in an exclusive club (the ridiculous-sounding Evil League of Evil) and get the girl of his dreams, Penny (Felicia Day). The absolutely goofy plot that develops dares the audience to take it lightly, and to vicariously hope for Dr. Horrible's too-perfect traditional hero foil (and jerk-of-all-trades), Captain Hammer (Nathan Fillion), to take one on his well-chiseled chin.

And, in Act III, he does. Dr. Horrible, in taking extreme measures by developing a lethal weapon (something that he found, in his saner moments to be unstylish), gets everything: Hammer is humiliated, people fear/respect Dr. Horrible and, by unintentionally killing Penny, he earns even the respect of Bad Horse, the Thoroghbred of Sin and head of the Evil League of Evil. At that point, when Dr. Horrible could come face-to-face with the consequence of his once-silly rage and once-overreaching ambition, he instead, reluctantly accepts the fruit of his sin, entering the League, reaping the fickle public's acclaim, and starting his quest in earnest to rule the planet. The audience, on the other hand, is left with broken hearts for a now incapacitated, weeping Captain Hammer and a dead Penny.

The last, brief image is that of Dr. Horrible, stripped of all artifice, staring blankly into the camera, feeling nothing.

This wasn't what many expected from something with the phrase "Sing-Along" in the title. But it is, in fact, the perfect title. The show says a great deal about what people have come to expect from their entertainment. It is alluring to live vicariously through the comic actions of bad characters. It is a standard trope that the traditional hero is, by definition, now considered to be, at best, a heavily compromised self-deception, and at worst, a greater problem than whatever evil faces us.

Dr. Horrible takes a lighthearted approach to temptation and sin, gives motive to wrath, revenge and power fantasies, and then pulls the curtain back to reveal what we all know inside: there are many ways to sugarcoat evil - downplay it, lampoon it, sympathize with it, explain it away, or laugh it up - but it is real, it is creeping, and it ultimately leaves us empty as a tomb.

And that is the story's genius. It succeeds as a laugh-out-loud comedy that leads us to the sobering conclusion that sin is nothing to joke about.

The shocking, tragic lesson of Dr. Horrible is that there is a deeply likable face of Wrong.

*It's not just comic books: the antihero-worship is an alternative for those who accept the musical accusation that "John Wayne was a Nazi" or the notion that subsistence is preferred to the risk of heroism.

Keeping Harmless Flirting Harmless

I'll admit something here that I wouldn't anywhere else. I have a bad crush.

The woman is rich. She's beautiful. And she doesn't know I exist.

I want to keep it that way. I certainly think that if I asked her out, the fantasy would be ruined. Besides, there's a big part of me that knows I'm not worthy.

She's one of those supermodel types that no one ever seems to have the courage to approach.

Her name is Wisdom, and she's so lonely I've heard the woman calling out from the roof of her nearby house to see if anyone might notice her.

Please don't tell her I'm interested. After all, the reality could never live up to the dream, right?

F is for Fire that Burns Down the Whole Town*

I climbed a high tower, looked over the land, and saw water where there should be no water, fire where there should be no fire, and a moon turned to blood.

Somehow, St. John on Patmos doesn't seem so delirious to me.

I'm going to admit something: I get a kick out of the apocalypse. Pure entertainment. That's not to say that I don't take the writings of John seriously. I do.

But man oh man does the book of Revelation inspire some cool stuff: big godzilla monsters coming out of oceans to join forces with, then fight and torture a beast-riding queen of religion and whoring, hailstorms of superbug disease cupcakes, trumpets rolling out the best of Count Basie in a syncopated rythym to beat the devil.

I'm translating loosely, but still. Hellhorses, 200 million man armies at war, blood to the bridles, falling stars, thirsty dragons.

Yum. But you've got to remember that I'm the sort of troll who gets a kick out of cleaning out hog lots and dining on chilli dog spaghetti burittos.

I'm thick in the skull, so I can only afford to spend most of my time just bowing my neck and pushing forward in the Word, and trying hard not to fight against the scarylove Ru'ach of Jesus. I've got to leave the real End of Days to brighter minds than mine.

But I do have fun looking in on the apocalyptic expressions of others:

Apocalypse Soon
Berean Call
The always hilarious* Rapture Ready (I hope those manuals never come in handy for me.)
The God Still Loves Us forums... where being crazy and wrong never felt so good and friendly.

Oh, there are a jillion of them out there. There is plenty of pop-apocalypse, both Christian and non, that borders on (or even bathes in) the asinine. For example, I'm pretty certain that, despite the contemporary protests to the contrary, neither Ronald Wilson Reagan (good ol' 666) nor Barack Hussein Obama fit the profile of the Antichrist as described in the bible.

But the links above are reasoned and worked at. Even if they don't get everything right (because, after all, who does?) they do a good job of citing actual sources and doing their level best to comprehend something as wild and incomprehensible as the End of Days.

*Thanks, Plankton. I feel tingly inside too.

**to those, like me, who find Johnny Cash/Shel Silverstein meditations on death to be a hoot.

Omega Point Follow-Up

The all-too-common "omega point" science fiction tale either intentionally or by design is an attempt to discredit Christian faith by acknowledging it as an out-of-date evolutionary step in the progress of man (never mind that the core tenets of God-faith are no different today than they were "In the Beginning," nor that Jesus was perfect in every way, and no man has been his equal in morals or ethics before or since his crucifixion*). Very often -- and here, I think it is its draw -- the attraction of omega point stories is that they come off as a sort of "Christianity Lite" with impossibly dark undertones when put to the test.

I recently read a book that updates the Omega Point a little. I won't mention it by title because warning people off of other artist's work isn't something I generally do. The plot hinged on a cult leader/scientist (who didn't believe the religious gobbledygook that he spewed) dying and becoming the accidental martyr of the new religion. By a miracle of science, a computer set up by the cult leader begins to impart godlike wisdom, eventually revealing itself to be god, and inviting humanity to accelerate its religious evolution by recognizing, and giving themselves over to an "everywhere, everything" concept of the Christ.

For some reason, even the most skeptical rationalist gets the creeps when someone brings up the Antichrist. What is more remarkable to me is how oblivious we are to the deadly beauty and unconscious magnetic pull of the Pseudochrist, of which Antichrist is only one type.

*In other words, faith in Messiah, is, historically, the original faith. Ask Abel. Though dead, he still speaks.

I don't care if you convert.

This is one of those rare times when I mean you as you and not me, not that you are reading this anyway, so I'm really only addressing the you that lives in my head, which isn't fair.

Anyway, I don't care if you "convert." Of course, I'm a pretty bad person at heart, and it isn't as if I'm always looking after your best interest.

But conversion would be good for you. Even I know that.

I'll even give you a few steps on how to do it:

1) Stop.
2) Turn yourself around.
3) Walk the other way.
4) Consider how close you are to perfection...or how far. When will you achieve it? You know the answer to this.
5) Consider God's Kingdom. I don't need to define it for you - even the darkest heart knows what it is.
6) Consider Christ's sacrifice. You know that too. Even the rocks do, and you are smarter (usually) than them.
7) Seek Him.

God is humble. I'm not.

I hope this bothers you. Deeply.

Write Justified

Writers spend a lot of time justifying their own existence, mostly to themselves.* A lot of work goes into defending art, and the art of writing, in particular, demonstrating the practical benefits of writing, and the importance that reading holds for the culture.

Many high-faluting** words later, and the writer is in no better standing.

As it should be.

Because writing isn't important. It isn't a signficant contribution to society, regardless of the 15-second soundbite paid to its importance once a year during the Academy Award ceremony.

And that's how I like it. Whether we are firing off an opinionated missive, or finalizing a draft of the Great Armenian Novel,*** I think the most important goal an author can have is to be the least in the Kingdom.

May your writing bear fruit that nourishes. But be happy to finish in last place. That's where the best work happens.

*Mostly because no one else is listening to them.

**Yes, how random of me to rescue the "-in'" suffix from colloquial purgatory while living in place the bastardization of the "highflight" root from which "highfalutin'" stems. I'm a messy rescuer.

***Because, really there hasn't been a huge number of great works out of Armenia since Tmpgaperti Aroume, and everybody and his dog has written the Great American one.

Korea: Unified and Free

I've been praying for a unified Korea. When I do this, I sort of assume that God knows that, included in that request is an obvious assumption that I also therefore pray for a free North Korea.

But as I consider this, liberty and unification are not truly ends. We're not talking about joining the Dakotas, after all. There is a greater disparity today between North Korea and South Korea than existed between East and West Germany in 1989. The dictatorship in place is relatively independent as opposed to the Soviet puppetry in place at the end of East Germany.

So, when I pray for the miracle of freedom, food, infrastructure and eventual unification with the South, I recognize a need to extend that prayer for the decades following severe "post-totalitarian stress disorder" as well as for the people of free Korea, who will obviously welcome reuniting with their countrymen, but will also have a new burden to bear.

I hope this doesn't sound political. Because it isn't.

Pearl Bailey and Dinah Shore Sing About Serial Murder

Bailey and Shore tear into Mack the Knife:

One thing I can say about the evil we've brought into the world is that it gave Dinah and Pearl great subject matter to lampoon. God bless those great ladies.

The Strug Gambit and Glory

Because it is the weekend, and, when humans do something astounding, you never forget it:



One foot, man.

One foot.

Kerri Strug sacrificed her foot to secure gold for her team, costing her the only shot she would ever have at individual glory. Sacrifice isn't always a long, drawn-out deliberation. She had prepared her entire life for glory, and, at glory's cusp, instead chose sacrifice.

And gained glory.

Funny that.

Penrose-Carter Diagram of the Finite Observer Looks A Lot Like Einstein

Einstein didn't know the guy, but he loved his work.

Great little sidebar: A mother brought her son to the rabbi, and the rabbi said to the boy; “I will give you a guilder if you can tell me where God lives.” The boy thought for only a moment and then said, “And I will give you two guilders if you can tell me where he doesn’t live.”

Heresy, Apostasy and the Lovecraft Error

Recently, I've run into a glut of people who are always learning and never able to come to the knowledge of the truth.* Somewhere along the line, they've traded the adage "One never stops learning" for a counterfiet: "One never starts learning."

I suppose it is sort of Zen to "learn by not learning," but, in effect, it is no different than good, old-fashioned "not learning."

These people are not heretical in their attitude towards one's ability to comprehend. I wish that they were. Heresy is an error in thought or expression that can, if unchecked, lead to problems in execution. But the "everlearner who never learns" is an apostate. They've educated themselves well on the ins and outs of any given instruction, and choose to fall into the shadow of that instruction instead of walking in its light.

Now, to be clear, the state of heresy or apostasy is only one that can be applied to those who would otherwise claim Christ. In other words, non-believers can't possibly qualify as apostates or heretics - this is a misunderstanding that many non-Christians have (that all Christians view them as heretics, or apostates. Don't worry, non-believer - you are simply a heathen!)

However, as far as these theological concepts can be translated and applied in a different fashion, you just know I'm going to do it.

One of my favorites is what I call the "Lovecraft Literary Error." I enjoy the strange, cosmic stories of H.P. Lovecraft very much, but I have no illusions that his beliefs (which run completely counter to my own) held a heavy influence upon his work. Atheists with a penchant for the weird honor Lovecraft as one of the forefathers of speculative atheism. What strikes me as counterintuitive, however, is that a devout atheist would see fit to create an entire cosmology of alien races, posing (unintentionally or otherwise) as uncaring gods in an indifferent universe in order to demonstrate that the indifferent universe was cold to humanity. Good ol' ld H.P. made up some might hot gods in order to demonstrate their icy non-existence, I must say. Fortunately for his fans, Lovecraft's object was not to write religious allegory, but to make up some awfully throttling yarns.

How exactly does the horrifying image of a slumbering, octopus-headed Cthulhu demonstrate a lifeless universe? How exactly does the sneering diabolic plots of a soul-crushing Nyarlathotep demonstrate that man is without soul?

They don't.

The creative, emotional pull of Lovecraft's horrors can only be described in religious terms. There is no "no-God" in the Lovecraft-created world, despite there being a "no-God" in Lovecraft's personal worldview. His argument, of course, would be that the mystical creatures are, at turns, a lampoon of the supernatural and/or evidence that the created beings populating his books are evidence that human creativity is our only solace in a loveless cosmos. But I never get the impression that Lovecraft is trying his hand at satire, and I don't buy that human creativity would serve as anything but a humiliating goad if, in fact, human creativity was, truly at heart, nothing but a rigged, emotional shell game.

The Lovecraft Error occurs when one attempts to discredit a thesis by evoking the tropes of that thesis to prove its opposite. It is when, for example, atheists are forced (by their own admission) to develop "proxy liturgies" in order to touch on matters of the (non-existent) spirit. Theoretically, it could also occur if a Christian were to attempt to implement (not exploit) nihilism in a story in order to demonstrate man's dependence on God, although I'm not even sure how such an attempt might function.

If you've ever seen the Christian ixthus "fish" sign on the back of a car with feet "evolving" on it and DARWIN filling its belly, then you've seen the Lovecraft Error in action. Any Darwinist with a modified religious symbol on the back of his car is unconsciously admitting that a) Christian symbols are worthy of co-option and that b) Darwinism should be adhered to in a religious manner.

The Lovecraft Error artfully, probably unintentionally, demonstrates reason's blind spot. And if there's one thing I've learned from you people of earth, it is that reason, most certainly, overlooks its own faults.

*Second letter to Timothy.

Troll Gentle, Monster Kind

You don't want to hear this any more than I want to say it, but...boss's orders:

You might be lost, looking in the world for the one thing that will actualize you, while simultaneously running from the One thing you don't want to admit might be able to provide that connection.

Tough beans.

Turn around. Admit you've got no idea.

Repent, sinner! Repent!

Kickin' it old school. Hope this helps.

Dream of the Rude

Once, in a great moon, a human bothers to note that monsters still quietly roam, outside the range of cellphone cameras and AP wires. We show up on blogs, occassionally, but, if anyone is reading them, no one certainly believes them!

When I goof up and actually am noted, one of the first questions I'm asked either subtly or overtly depends on the disposition of the asker.

If the asker is a follower of boss Jesus, he usually asks something along the lines of "Aren't you worried that you are obscuring His mission with your constant cultural garbage?"

If the asker has nothing to do with Christ, his complaint is the reverse. "Shaddup about the Freak already, get to the decadent showtunes and French postcards already!"

Which gives me a good idea that I'm executing the Troll-Lord's commission: don't be the scit -- but be in the scit.*

I try damn** hard to keep my theology tight as a drum while pounding away at the beat of a world so loved that some god died for it. I don't know which side I'll err on at any given time. I just hope I err.

Error is the only way I know I'm trying.

*Believe it or not, I still read and recite in the Anglo-Saxon tongue from time to time. It comes in handy when I need to express something earthy without justifying my word choices. And frankly, I still think the Dream of the Rood opens best in its original language.

**Yes, literally "damn." Gotta keep sheol and its destiny in mind -- keeps me desperately focused. Yeah, even when I'm faking an interview with Steve Allen.