Let Me Sum Up

User Friendly today pretty much nails it on the head.

Linky-poo, since I haven't cared enough to figure out how all this thing works.

Frohliche Weinachten!

I'd apologize for not posting, but I doubt it matters. The important thing is that it's Christmas Eve, and the world doesn't look too shabby. Of course I'm writing this under the influence of egg nog spiked with ginger ale and Miracle on 34th Street (new version, always gets me), but so what? Tonight is good, tomorrow can take care of itself. Maybe I'll go take my usual Christmas Eve walk around the neighborhood later, we'll see. Check back this week for an Evil Overlord/Cookie Ogre holiday retrospective!

I'm Still Standing, Yeah Yeah Yeah

At first I held off posting because I was waiting to see how the stuff brought up in the previous post would resolve themselves. That ate up a couple weeks, since then it's been mainly a lack of anything worth mentioning. Summer's been oozing by like an Elder God on the beach(see today's User Friendly), and mostly what I have to say for it is thank Urd for icewater. I now have my very own straw hat, and it even fits. The market's going kinda sluggishly, through a combination of heat and a lot more competition in the cookie market this year. I've had to go up and down Main Street selling shop to shop to make more than a miniscule profit, so these next couple of months I think I'd better do some serious thinking as to my future plans.

The job is still going fine, if my boss has any problems with my work she seems to be choosing to express her frustration with extra money. I'm only putting in three days a week at the moment, so I might be picking up another part-time job by the end of the month. We'll see. Made a mistake Monday and bought a seven-pack of various Tycoon games, since then my plans for starting a new story have been buried under the iron rails of Railroad Tycoon II. I'm not great at this game, but it's interesting trying to figure it out. The AIs whup me even on easy mode, since I'm not well-practiced at scheduling multiple cargo routes using the same regions of track. Still, it's got major points for geek value, PopTop is becoming one of my all-time favorite game companies thanks to this in addition to Tropico and its sequel. When it comes to fun and gutsy software toys, these guys are second only to Maxis in my book. Anyhoo!

Essentially, I'm just living life and trying to keep under the radar of those aspects of life I don't care for. As always, my brain picks idly at the thought of taking another college course or two, but I'm not sure it'd be the best idea right now. Still, I gotta get some writing done. Guess I'd better go make the attempt. Must...resist...Railroad Tycoon...

The Fight I Picked

Today I picked a fight with my brother Thom, who has been my best friend within my generation of the family. He's been there for me for a lot of years, and I've always had a lot of respect for him. Still, I picked this fight and while I know I'm not going to like the consequences I don't feel it would be right for me to back down before having my say once and for all, even if it costs me my brother.

Thom, it's about time you stopped pussy-footing around. Nobody asked you to spare my pwecious widdle feewings, or at least I haven't. Yes, I'm a pain in the butt and I'm sure you've all bit your tongue a lot around me. You all have no idea how much I've had to do the same these last few years, how much restraint I have shown because I have loved all of you. This is not an attempt to guilt anyone, I try to leave that particular stiletto to Mom. But there is one thing which I strongly suspect is going to one day (today, perhaps?) cause an irreparable rift between myself and the family I was born to: Religion.

I started this fight by stating that I cannot accept people using God as an excuse for the things they want to impose upon others. What I mean by God as an excuse is that when someone says that something must be so because "God says so" or "God wants it that way" without any additonal reasoning or argument, that completely invalidates their point. People have been using God as an excuse to do the most horrific things throughout human history, from the massacres of the Crusades to the modern Islamic jihad. It's easy to claim to speak for God when God hasn't made any verifiable public appearances or statements in centuries - if ever. The scriptures weren't written by God, they were written and often re-written by men. They're not interpreted or preached by God either, again this is done by men. Fallible creatures are men, prone to wishful thinking and fudging the details to suit the needs of the moment. How can one trust a book written by men to be the words of God? How can one trust the testimonies of men about the words of God? It's one thing to believe and be guided by belief, but faith is not synonymous with fact.

For anything to be factually accepted as the Words of God, they have to be verifiably spoken by God, and in such a way that he can be publicly identified as God. Do we even have a definite way of recognizing God if he were to make himself known? I sincerely doubt God has passport photos or a driver's license, although theoretically he could have them any time he wanted. Believe in him or not believe in him, you have the right to do either or both, but as long as God chooses to remain an unknown, he is not admissable as evidence.

Now, I am not arguing that everything God supposedly said is wrong. My point is that adding God to an argument does not strengthen it any, and using God as the basis of your argument renders it rather meaningless. If something is a bad idea, don't tell me God said it was bad. Tell me why it is a bad idea. 1 + 1 will equal 2 whether God is involved or not.

That is what "God as an excuse" means.

Beyond this, we are getting into the realm of what I myself believe about the universe. Ever since I started to publicly question Mormonism, I've heard all kinds of trite phrases to explain me away. "Ron was just offended by a member." "If Ron truly understood the Gospel, he'd come back." "Ron will come back when he's ready." "Ron just hasn't prayed hard enough for a testimony." My personal favorite is "the Devil is confusing Ron." Essentially, I have been told that because I have not come to the same conclusions as the rest of my family/ward/religion, my judgement, maturity, and mental faculties must be inadequate somehow. Ponder these things in your heart, but woe betide if you come up with different answers.

However, people doing and saying foolish things does not make a religion right or wrong. Every religion has people doing foolish things. Some religions are ABOUT doing foolish things. As long as you don't harm anyone else, I have no problem with it. What makes a religion right or wrong is its doctrine. Here are the points in which I cannot condone Mormonism. Frankly, they're most of them equally applicable against any form of Christianity.

Families Can Be Together Forever - Sounds great on the surface, doesn't it? Look closer, though. Families CAN - not WILL - Be Together Forever. If I don't toe the line, my family will be torn apart in the hereafter. By whom? God? The Devil? How will this sundering happen? Will I just not be allowed to see them again for eternity? Are they going to rip my heart open and nullify my love for my nieces? Are they going to make me forget them (or them forget me) forever? All of a sudden my family is a hostage to my good behavior? Is this God or the Godfather?

Prayer and Worship - Prayers over every meal. Prayers at the beginning of each gathering. Prayers before bedtime. Why? Supposedly you are communicating with God, but - except for some good feelings that are theoretically brought to you by the Holy Ghost if you're praying sincerely enough - it's very much a one-way thing. God isn't kneeling by his bed, praying back at you, is he? Oh yeah, I feel the love. Of course this next is easily just as much human silliness as divine gospel, but from my observational experience, prayers tend to fall into a pattern. First you thank God for everything, even if he didn't personally give it to you. Theoretically he created the world, but how much gratitude does one guy need? Thanking your mother for bringing you into the world every now and then is sweet, but doing it two or three times a day every single day is kinda creepy and emotionally exhausting. Part two is when you ask God to tell you how to live your own life. "Not my will, but thine, oh Lord" This is a particular hair-puller for me, as I hear it every night at dinner when Dad asks God to help us to use the energy the food gives us in his service. So the main reason we eat is so we can do more for God?

Here's the other part I don't understand about prayer and Christian religious observance in general: Telling God How Wonderful He Is. Okay, fine, he's all that and a bag of chips. Is he insecure, that he needs us to tell him this? Does groveling in front of the Mighty One make us better people somehow? Remembering that you're an imperfect creature and maintaining some humility is healthy, but do we really need to become whipped dogs, licking the hand that beats us? What does it say about a God that would WANT all this? Is God really that kind of raving egomaniac? It's not healthy for him, and it's certainly not healthy for us.

God's Justice & Mercy - Yeah, I know, life's not a bed of roses (unless you're counting all the thorns), but there are parts of the Bible that need to either be addressed or thrown out. What exactly are we supposed to learn from the story of Isaac and Abraham? Abraham finally gets a son, years after he thought it was too late. A few years later, God tells Abraham that he wants his darling boy as a blood sacrifice. Bad enough that this being would even ASK such a thing of a man of Abraham's background, but much to my stomach-curdling Abraham makes ready to go ahead and do it! At the last moment God swerves and tells Abraham it was all a test and offers up a scapegoat (somebody's lost ram) to gut instead. What if God had held his tongue and let Abraham finish the job? The bible would be a lot shorter, for one, but still. What kind of a God would ASK such a thing of a parent, even as a test?

Another one that makes me wonder is the story of Job. God and the Devil decide to have a bet. God picks a mortal, and the Devil puts him through hell to see if he'll give up on God. Job, of course, passes with flying colors of rotting burlap. His entire family's been butchered, everything he worked for his whole life has been taken away, and about the only thing that hasn't happened to him is death, but he won't tell God to stuff it. Hurrah hurrah, faith and hope are wonderful, but what about the poor people that have died because of this? Was it right for God to let the Devil murder complete innocents over a fricking bet??? We need to either stop telling stories like these, or face up to the implications.

God is supposedly a just God as well as a merciful one. However, the justice and mercy seem to be exclusively reserved for the afterlife. Okay, so he's holding back to let us humans be humans? I'm fine with that. But please make it clear that we're on our own until then. It's nice to believe that God will be with you throughout your trials, but a friend who stands there and watches as we try to crawl out of a pit trap isn't much of a friend.

The Pre-Existence - Supposedly we all signed up for this wonderful trial period. But can any agreement be binding if you don't remember making it? And with this War in Heaven, we had to choose between God's way and the Devil's way. Are things really that dualistic, that if we're not for one side we have to be for the other? That doesn't feel right somehow.

The Afterlife - Welcome to the Gated Community of Heaven, here's your keycard. Note that it only unlocks those areas authorized for your level of membership. And no, it's already too late for you to earn a higher level of clearance. Seriously, we're supposed to get divvied up into our kingdoms, and stay there forever. Is our free will taken away, that we can't become better or worse people over the course of eternity? Or is it just that the celestial bureaucracy doesn't want to process the change of address forms? The highest level of heaven gets a shot at creating new worlds in accordance with God's plan - does this mean you'll want to run everything exactly the same? Ooh, I'm there. And what about the rest of humanity, what are we gonna do for eternity? Stratified afterlife + infinite time = eternal stagnation?

Anyway, it's late at night and these are all the big points. Because I cannot resolve what I have been taught with what my mind and heart tell me, I choose to set aside what I have been taught and go with my mind and heart instead. If this is God, I cannot support him. If this is his one true church, I cannot belong to it. If this is his heaven, I do not wish to go there. Brother, you say to me that I don't believe in God because he doesn't do things my way. There may be some truth in that. But it doesn't make me wrong. If my judgement is invalid because I do not agree, then what was the point in giving me free will to begin with?

I know I'm a screwed-up person. I am very insecure, and I am quick to feel anger and depair. That does not mean that my hurts belong to the Devil and my joys belong to God. I cannot believe in one and only one brand of happiness, any more than I can believe in only one kind of person. Thus, I cannot believe in only one kind of God. I will heal in time, if I can get away from the crushing pressures I am subjected to constantly by a world I did not ask for. But please do not hate me if I heal into a different shape than you had hoped for. If your way makes you happy, then it is good. That happiness does not give you the right to declare your way to be the only way, however, and it especially does not give you the right to use your way as a weapon to cut off others from their own happiness. The happiness of others is not a threat to your own happiness, because happiness that destroys that of others, is not happiness.

Bottom line: I'm your brother. I'm a pain in the backside, and I do feel sorry about that. But I am not sorry I believe the way I do, even though I often express it in the worst possible ways. I will always be your brother, but I leave it to you to choose what that will mean. Each relationship is its own world, with its own rules. Sometimes worlds end. Sometimes worlds begin. And sometimes things typed while half-asleep sound terribly profound whether they are or not. Take it for what you will, or toss it completely. Your choice, bro.

Ron

Proudfeets!

Howdy folks! This here is your favorite Evil Overlord signing in to give you the latest snews on what's going on in the Evil Empire. First off is that the Evil Empire has a semi-official webpage now. In truth, it's just the new webpage on my new isp, but sooner or later I will get around to putting things that are Evil and Imperial on it. Right now it's just got pages for my old swashbuckling rpg and my new Firefly rpg, but all things come with thyme. Except for those that come with garlic.

The job is going well, and things are settling more or less into a steady groove. Not sure if we're a success or not, but thankfully it's none of my concern. The place does seem reasonable busy... I'm taking off work tomorrow, though, as my participation in the Farmer's Market has yielded a surprise opportunity. Tomorrow in Old Town is the opening celebration of the Bigfoot Rendezvous, an odd combination of scholarly symposium, museum exhibit opening, and street festival. Along with my fellow FM food vendors, I have been invited to come peddle my wares to the hopefully hungry hordes of hairy humanoid hunters and hecklers. It's an opportunity to make some sales and listen to live bands, so I'm there. What I don't sell tomorrow I can sell at the market. Unless of course I go completely ballistic and make way more than I could possibly sell... So far I've made about twenty dozen cookies, and am planning on baking a few more batches tomorrow. Hey, I can't sell what I don't make, right? Besides, the Market's been bringing in a pretty fair amount of money for me, I'm sure I'll make more than enough to cover my expenses at the very least. Pardon me while I do the Happy Happy Money Dance. You might want to take your kids out of the room until it's over, for their own safety.

Still nothing of note on the literary front. My inability to write this last year has been a source of major frustration for me, but sooner or later that dam will burst. My brain never stops ticking over, sooner or later the infinite number of monkeys will start producing Hamlet again. Or better yet, something that won't be a complete plagarism.

Anyhoo, that's all from the Evil Empire today. Keep checking this space, sooner or later something terribly exciting (or subversive) might happen! Maybe even a sudden attack by cute animated hamsters!

Avast, Matey!

Well, it finally happened. I got out my Pirates of the Spanish Main set (which I mentioned on here a looooong time ago) and challenged my brother Dan into a game. His kinderlings Jonathan and Caitlin joined us, and we held forth on a merry four-way battle. It was a complete and utter blast, and when Dan tells his wife that it's nearly done for the better part of an hour, you know he's having fun. Jonathan was the first to go down, having first made a pact with Dan concerning some disabled ship and then breaking it. Revenge of the Daddy can be cruel indeed. I, on the other hand, went after Caitlin. She fought valiantly, but my lightning slash attacks left the entire board severely afraid of a little three-masted schooner named Boston - even when there were mighty five-masters around. Gotta love the combination of speed, daring, and good cannon rolls.

Caitlin for some reason decided I was a threat, probably when I pounded one of her ships into submission and left it stranded on an island for the rest of the game. She managed to fight back and capture one of mine, but a fierce retaliation managed to sink the captured ship before she could tow it back, then tangled the rest of her fleet up in a nasty little battle that I eventually won. In the meantime Dan finished wiping out Jonathan, then at Caitlin's urging sent his fleet in my direction. His ships were heavier, so I finished fixing up Caitlin's boats and made ready to use my maneuverability and the nearby islands in my defense. The final showdown was in its first stages with me at the advantage when finally Denise reclaimed her family. We did a quick count-up of the points, and Dan won 71 to 67. If I'd been able to count my own ship that I sank, it would have been different, but fair's fair. And I quite probably would have lost the big battle anyway.

Anyhoo, this is probably the best fun I've had doing anything with Dan in a long time. I'm hoping that someday I can get up to Boise so we can get Thom into a game of PotSM with us. With the sheer amounts of table space available at Dan's house, we could very well spend a whole day rampaging all over each other... Ahhhrrrr!

POP goes the DSL!

This week I got DSL, after years and years and years of wishing I could afford it. As is typical for all things technical and involving me, it's taken pretty much the entire week to get it working right (insert a great deal of knocking on wood here). Still, ah laaaahhk it! All the guilt of tying up the phone line is fading fast, and now I can download stuff and check out all the weird videos I want to. Thom, while I kinda agree that metal rockers dressed like demons is not my thing, I must say that they did pick a rather cute girl for that LORDI video. Still, blonde demon cheerleaders... Ick.

I'm skipping the market today, but only because it's raining. It's a nice steady rain, the kind that will last pretty well the entire day. I love rain, I never feel like I could get enough (and this region definitely doesn't), but I wish it'd waited til this afternoon. Well, I did go down there for a few minutes to say hi to folks and sell a few bags, but Dan and clan are gonna be stuck with the odious task of helping me eat the rest. The horror.

Work seems to be going okay. The head cook had to take a week off to go visit family, and decided to take another half-week without telling us. She's fired now, oddly enough. I don't know if the boss is going to be looking for a new cook, but I'm definitely not going to apply for the job. I've got all I want with the shift I'm on, doing prepwork and dishes. I'm not an ambitious person anymore, or at least my ambition is to keep the job I have rather than stretch for bigger and only theoretically better things. I'm hoping that over the next few months I'll get used to having a job so I can let go of some of my worries and unblock my creativity again.

In the meantime, I've got a half-loaf of foccacia spread with garlic butter, ham, and mozarella baking in the oven for breakfast. Mmmm.....

Stout-Hearted 'Meh'

Well, the blog has escaped the guillotine, mainly because I can't rustle up enough emotional energy to want it gone. Emotional energy seems to be a real scarcity these days, I can't build up enough of it to really do much of anything. I have my job, and I do it well (at least I'm not hearing any complaints), and I thoroughly enjoyed the opening week of the Farmer's Market on Saturday, but aside from that I have all the ambition of a garden slug. When Thom came to visit, I got him interested in putting together a PBEM strategy/empire-building game with me, and since then I've done little but mentally poke at it every now and then. Even the poking doesn't accomplish much. It's hard to be mad at myself about it, though, that requires emotional energy. So instead I feel like a loser. No, this is not a plea for "it's okay, it's not that important, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera" ::King of Siam voice:: I know I'm hard on myself, and I know that putzing around on this game is not the end of the world, but I miss the person I used to be. Once there was a time when I could focus on something and get it done. These days... ::shrug::

I'm planning on having a long talk with my counselor about it tomorrow, I hope he can shed some insight on it, and maybe even direct me toward a way out of this lousy place I'm stuck in. The coffee shop's having its grand opening tomorrow, and that should keep me busy tomorrow. I'm baking some of my Ogre's Den cookies for the boss, since the main cook is busy with everything else. If she likes them, perhaps we'll work out a regular deal.

The Farmer's Market's gonna be my main source of egoboost for a while, though. Work is work, and I'm trying not to invest my self-worth in it since my own insane personal standards would drive me into a tizzy - which is not good for keeping jobs. The new Market location has its bad points, like freight trains that rumble by, but there's a lot of good too. The biggest change is that we now have space! There's two or three times the amount of possible booth space this year, and that much and more parking. I can't see one end of the market from the other now, which is pretty darn cool. The season opener went fantasticly, with a free pancake feed that brought in people by the truckload and a Dixieland band that's always great at putting me in a good mood. Let's face it, "Tiger Rag" is nearly impossible to remain depressed through. Anyway, the market has twice as many vendors this year, and the place stayed packed pretty much the whole morning through. All the food booths, including mine, sold out and it looks like everyone else had a great day too. I really hope we can hang on to this level of interest from the community, that could really make my summer.

Even without the monetary gains, it felt good to be somewhere where I was known for something I wanted to be. I'm the Cookie Ogre, and a very fine Cookie Ogre I am, too. Kids actually dragged their parents all around the market looking for me. My Ogre Laugh brought smiles to people of all emotional ages. My cookies are very yummy. This is a reputation I've built for myself, and whether I feel like hell the rest of the time or not, I have every right to feel proud of this.

Now if only I can get to where I actually DO feel proud of it...